Moved in yday, filthy house, took everything, raging!

[Mimmi78]

Don't post a lot, but am awake on a mattress on the floor of my new family home at 5 am, just raging/worries & generally cluttered mind! Completed yesterday
It's taken a year, mostly due to the sellers, they were slow, didn't produce paperwork and refused to have direct contact with their own agent! Then insisted dates etc were all convenient for them & no one else in the chain (4 property)
AIBU, when I walked through the door, I felt a surge of foreboding followed by disappointment. It's filthy. Not just a dust & vacuum required, I mean, never cleaned the shower, windows, vacuumed since showing the property! We asked to view again prior to exchange, they let us eventually, but insisted on not being there and I thought then, this needs cleaning. I asked solicitor to ensure it stated this, he said it always does. There was rabbit pop in the kitchen sink, their bodge a job removers had trailed the whole outside inside (& were there 2hrs after completion as was the owner, who refused to acknowledge us!) they had taken every single lightbulb and ceiling rose (this is a breach of our sale contract!), every pole, not even a big roll, just filth, piles of it, everywhere!! I'm furious, my sold property was left immaculate, little notebook with useful info and a welcome basket. The sellers have only moved a couple of streets away, wibu to trash & discuss their filth with new neighbours, who will no doubt know them and if I see them, call them filthy animals???? Make me feel better so I can get on and make this house a home for DD1 (7) & DS1 (5) who arrive today. Thank you

Agree with PJBanana and others wrt solicitor.

You would not be at all unreasonable to badmouth these people to anyone who will lend an ear in the coming weeks and months.

This happened to me when exH and I bought our house. What we encountered when we first moved in and discovered in the course of the first week had a horrible effect on me. It was such a shock.

We had so much unexpected work to do after moving in (on top of what we knew we would be doing) and no help (miles from family and no friends in new neigbourhood) and to have to clean the entire house top to bottom nearly did me in (exH was off at work).

We moved in with three children aged 5 and under, including a 6 month old baby whom I could not let lie/crawl/roll around on the filthy floors until I had tackled them. The kitchen floor turned out not to be mid grey tiles but lightly greyish white. The bathroom had such extensive mould that we hired a man to rip out the tiles around the bath and replace them. He found that ordinary drywall had been used instead of standard bathroom cement board. The oven was wall mounted and had no door seal, and inside, the surface of the walls had been destroyed, probably by using sandpaper to clean it, or at least scouring powder. There was dried-on food caked to the base of the kitchen cabinets. The fridge was beyond filthy. The cupboard where they had kept the bin was indescribable. There were old dog biscuits under the shag carpeting in the basement and when it rained the whole house smelled of old, wet dog.

I discovered animal poo in built in drawers - had to be cleared and disinfected by me before I could put clothes away - and during the first winter there we realised that the attic was winter quarters to a big troop of raccoons and had been for many years, to judge from the buildup of poo and nesting material.

The disarray and the sheer disrespect towards me of the sellers - bordering on active hostility I felt at the time - devastated me.

The former owners were a well-known architect/ architecture critic in the community [oh the irony] and his wife. So I spread the word far and wide. I also bumped into the wife one day while she was raiding the frozen dinner section of a local supermarket, and gave her the best evil eye I could muster up.

Speak to your solicitor - if it's a breach of contract you're entitled to return of the items or payment compensation. We had a similar thing several years ago with a seller who removed all of the gates! They returned them when solicitors got involved.

Just get on with making your new house a home. Wasting time seeking revenge by bad mouthing them to people who know them is pointless. It's also not going to make you look good. No one likes a bitch.

So forget them and just get on with it. It is what it is,

It’s not worth the money pursuing it from what you describe there. A professional clean and some ceiling rose and light bulb and curtain poles? Just concentrate on the good things like you are already in the house.

We arrived at my current house filthy and multiple house move has curtain poles removed. It’s fairly standard.

I would just forget about it yes it's annoying but in a few weeks you will have your ho.e just how you want it and will have made it your own happy home for your family. When we moved our solicitor said they advice against taking this kind of thing back to them as the legal fees are usually more than the items are worth ( obviously i don't know if this is correct or what they would all advice so you could certainly speak to your solicitor if you felt you wanted to ) but for me these things happen they are frustrating but I always think in x amount of weeks will I still be annoyed or will I have forgotten about it and in most situations I will have forgotten. Congratulations on your new home I hope your family us very happy in your new house

Can you stay in a hotel or family for the weekend and get professional cleaners in, it might make it feel better for you.

I’d get professional cleaners in every time as you don’t know how some pp live.

I think you can sue them, talk to your solicitor. If you don't want to sue, I love the idea of leaving all the rubbish at their new place.

You poor thing. Some people never cease to amaze me. At best, it's thoughtlessness and at worst it's nastiness, theft and mean-spiritedness (is that a word?).
I am afraid that I would also be on the case with solicitors and bad-mouthing the filthy, thieving, scummy vendors to anyone who would listen.

Zzzzz, not true. My house was immaculate when I moved out! The one I moved into, however, was horrendous! The cheeky sods even left stuff that we said we didn't want, like a metal bed in the loft room that we had to saw apart to remove. They left crap in the garage, a bathroom full of mould, even dirty pots in the dishwasher. I was gutted. Then they had the cheek to phone us the week after moving to say we hadn't paid them for the cooker they left for us, which we had agreed. It was beyond filthy! When he came round for the money, I hid and when they asked my husband if we were settling in, he said we would soon settle once we deep cleaned all their shit and threw away their crap in a skip that we had to hire. He thought it was funny!!!!
2 years down the line, we have a beautiful home which we love.

Move on. Look to the future. Just clean up one room at a time and make the place your home.

What sort of state was it in when you viewed it?

Take photos and contact your solicitor.

Go to B and Q and get those paper/disposable overalls for the kids (or sacrifice something they are growing out of) and sort out a room for them, pick up some new light fittings while you are there - if the old ones were filthy they have done you a favour.

Call cleaning companies and call in any favours from friends and family to get the place clean.

Be dignified and get cleaning, your new neighbour's will think more of you if you don't bad mouth the vendors.

At least it's summer and you can probably open all the doors and windows. Take before and after photos and enjoy the transformation.

This happened to me. They left all the cupboards full of pure shit. What pissed me off was I cleaned top to bottom in my previous house and mopped right up to the front door and then locked the door and never saw again. So had to start all over again. Pure laziness in my sellers part.

If they’ve taken the ceiling roses then they’ve definitely broken the contract because you will now have live loose wires hanging down. This need rectifying IMMEDIATELY and is a significant fire risk. They have made the house unsafe and I would expect uninsurable.

Find ANY local electrician who can come immediately. Ceiling roses are like £2 from screwfix, and they only take a few minutes to wire up, but they need to be done post-haste.

www.screwfix.com/p/6-pendant-white/8974J?tc=BB4&ds_kid=92700019938272150&ds_rl=1248154&ds_rl=1245250&ds_rl=1247848&gclid=Cj0KCQjwm6HaBRCbARIsAFDNK-hY72fX7uCTgktvI-mhWKOsg5ACJh0Bf1LOqnMFE6EvNWYISz7ptzMaArMPEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds&dclid=CPb_wbD9ndwCFeoh0wodwbkCvw

If you have live wires unattached get that sorted first.

Many of us have suffered from 'bad sellers' and much of the advice given here is good. As for the neighbours, they'll already have at least an inkling of what they were like and are probably glad to see the back of them.

One of my previous houses had almost every light bulb taken. They took an age, carrying out just one item at a time towards the end and when we looked in the garden later we found that they'd even taken the rocks from the rockery! Pathetic.

Struggling She did that too! Huge holes in window boxes and mud everywhere from where plants been scooped out.

When I moved house I cleaned the house to within an inch of its life.
I left a note about the heating, electric, gas etc. I left a bottle of wine and a new home card for them.
Maybe I'm too nice. But I didn't want anyone saying that the house I left was a filth mess.

I feel your pain, I was you 2 weeks ago.

We moved into a filthy house with not a single lightbulb left, no blinds, no curtains, no fridge, no washing machine, they literally took everything not nailed down. The oven had never been cleaned. EVER.

The first weekend was grim. We had our microwave and bought food everyday. There was an electric shower but using it was distressing because of the hair down the plughole. I wore flip-flops.

I had used a professional cleaning company when leaving my old house and I rang them. They spent an entire day here. It took them three hours alone to clean the oven!

Worth every penny, at least I'm not gagging now.

2 weeks in and it's a lot better. But I'd say it'll be months before I really settle in. There's still so much to do. Still have no blinds etc. Still have only a temporary tiny cheap fridge.

But I've moved on mentally from the initial filth, so that's all that matters.

Thanks everyone, solicitor says he will try and get them to pay cleaning & electrician (left live exposed wires ). I've called my mum /family cavalry and have stopped at my husbands insistence for a cuppa and a proper sob. I'm going to stop that now, pull on my sparkly rubber gloves and make this home beautiful for my family. Also, don't think we pissed them off but they did ask me if I was a Christian on second veiwing (house has crosses & stuff around it & kids in local religious school), I said something like "no but I like the values it instilled and that I ran a playgroup with mothers union" . They looked a bit annoyed and asked how I could do both. Maybe this?

That is how the lights were left when we moved into our house! For the first couple of days we had to walk around with torches at night.

However I cannot complain as the house was clean and she left us a ridiculous amount of Ikea furniture which saved us a tonne of money as we had no furniture.

ElspethFlashman I am unsure why you expected a free fridge/freezer and washing machine? When we left our flat we took these items to the house which when we moved in did not have these items as the previous occupier took the ones that belonged to her.

It looks like thankfully they’ve left the wires terminated, but they should not have removed the ceiling roses. You still need an electrician to come and install roses. Sorry for the shit

Lol great Christian values they have if that's the reason!

Our new house was dirty, not filthy and there were a few things left. The lady was a widow, elderly and not well.

We had already decided we wanted to do quite a lot of work so it did not matter that the kitchen was quite greasy and dirty - it’s gone now!

We also got our old one professionally cleaned so annoying - but that’s life!