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

Moved recently myself and vendors were 6 hours late leaving and obviously had not cleaned, but I suspect it could have been worse. It seems to be a worrying trend that some vendors are leaving their houses in a mess.
I think solicitors should play their part in this, for instance making it crystal clear in the paperwork that the vendors have to be out by a specified time and that completion means the house is no longer theirs from that time and there will be financial repercussions. Same with leaving a mess behind.

Isn’t there a final walk through before closing on a house? I wouldn’t have closed until things were taken care of.

OP, You need to get onto your solicitors asap and dig out the information you were sent regarding what was included with the sale. We've bought and sold both here and in France and our most recent move last October here, I'm pretty sure there was a clause about making safe and making good anything taken so you should have the same as I'm sure these documents are all standard. Take photos of everything for your solicitors as proof and you need to take legal action against the sellers and get professional cleaners in and claim that off them too. I'm also pretty sure there's something about leaving the house in a good/reasonable condition in the information too as I remember reading something last year in the information. I cannot believe that people would leave the house in that condition as it reflects on them to leave it in an appalling condition.

When we moved last year we got professional cleaners(recommended by the removals company) in to clean the house top to bottom as we'd not been able to do a proper clean since we started packing as it was a small house and there was boxes everywhere. We left our buyer a bottle of wine and a thank you card which she was very pleased with as she emailed us later and was lovely regarding letters and parcels arriving as we had only 2 days between exchange and completion so hadn't had time to redirect everything. Our new place we had negotiated the ceiling fans into the contract as we wanted them and they wanted to take them so we got them and it was just a bit dusty as the previous people moved out two months previously and aside of getting the oven cleaned(we had the one at our old address done before we moved)and having to ask the estate agent about the heating they did leave us some information and the estate agents gave us a bottle of bubbly when we collected the keys.

In France though, it is common practice to take everything, and I mean everything even light fittings but our sellers when we had an apartment left the light bulbs but I agree with a previous poster that they can take everything as long as they make it safe in French property sales.

I think how much the buyer paid the seller and how long the process went on for has a lot to do with the condition the property is left in. If they paid a low price and the buyers solicitor dragged out the sale then the seller could leave it in a bad condition out of spite.

I don't agree that all houses are filthy when you move in. It depends upon the seller. Our previous property was cleaned well as was the one we left for it,before we moved in and the apartment in France.

But yeah, OP you do need to get this sorted with your solicitors and take legal action as they are in breach of contract in a good few ways as far as I can see.

The position will be covered in the contract
But enforcing it post settlement is not easy
I really wish it was
If the sellers deny liability you will have to sue them and on the assumption you get decree you then have to enforce the decree
That is all going to cost time ,stress and money
Certainly worth one letter to the sellers from your solicitor
I would do that for free but solicitors obviously can charge and many will

We had exactly that too. It was utterly foul though mouse droppings/ dog dirt not rabbit poo it took an awful lot of work to make it habitable . They took things they shouldn’t have and left things they weren’t supposed to. The we’re still here when they were supposed to have been gone. Still the couple in question were well known in the area and I extracted my revenge by telling everyone precisely how foul it had been .
1 hour after moving in the chap who bought from us sent us a text ( from the lovely clean house we left ) saying how he was sitting on the sofa with a beer watching tv and said how lovely it was! I was cleaning until 3am just to be at the point we could go to bed. A few weeks later we decided that some things were so awful that they had to be ripped out. Builder put them in a skip on drive - person who sold us house drive past and asked if she could take stuff out. He agreed ( after all we were binning it) but it really really annoyed me that she took away a toilet to put into her new house which was far far cleaner than the filthy/ stained / revolting toilet she had left us. That made me mad. We could have claimed breach of contract but I just wanted to get on with my life. I wish you well in your new home. We’ve been here over ten years now and all traces eradicated of previous owner and it really was worth it in the end 😃.

The verbiage where I live is to leave the house “broom clean”. Walk throughs are done just prior to closing on the house. The sellers should be moved out. Keys are given at closing. Sellers aren’t to return to the house/move more stuff unless prior arrangements have been made.

ZZZZ That's not true..

I left my house sparkling, spent at least 4 days cleaning & removing everything unwanted, I left nothing that wasn't agreed in the contract.. I hope they are happy there & that they love the house just as I did..

I could have written the exact same post when we moved not long ago. We spent hours cleaning, leaving instructions, a card, a welcome gift etc etc. The new house was filthy, infested, full of the crap they couldn’t be bothered to take with them (I could go on and on). It’s taken a good while to get over a really crappy start but we got there in the end and you will home. Just try to believe in karma

On the plus side...our neighbours are so nice to us simply because we are not the previous occupants! (We get on anyway I should add)

That's awful! What a disgusting thing to do, especially knowing you're moving in with children!
I hope you can get them to pay for a full clean and electrician.

We suffered the same. Took us three days to clean the kitchen sufficiently that we could unpack any boxes in there. Shower doors couldn’t have been cleaned for months and the lawn had become a waist-high meadow. We had 16 month old twins and I was 6 months pregnant at the time.

As another member suggested, further up the chain, we were less than amenable when it came to their many parcels, invoices, marathon / iron man race numbers etc that were constantly being delivered to our house.

My parents bought our family home about 12 years ago from a family of 5 adults and turned out to be drug and alcohol users. They not only lied about another interested party to drive up sale price (definitely illegal) they refused a viewing before completion and kept delaying so in the end it was almost 10 months between offer and completion.

The day we arrived is something I'll never forget. Not a single thing in that house had been moved. Not one. Every piece of furniture, clothing, food stuff etc all in place. The filth was extreme. Your shoes stuck to the carpets and the walls shone (what looked like brown wallpaper turned out to be white). There were buckets full of what we thought was dirt. Nope. Piss and shit that had developed a crust. Dirty needles. Bottles. Used sanitary products. You name it.

Took us 6 months, 14 skips, over 2000 pairs of rubber gloves and a more than a few pairs of wellies each. More than 10 members of family working pretty much every spare minute they had from work to clear the house. In the end we had to take out every wall except supporting walls and all the floors. Found lead piping and ruined electrics so everything had to be replaced.

Oh and the garden was literally a jungle. Literally.

We tried to chase it up with the vendors but they literally disappeared. Police were looking for them and we STILL have issues with bailiffs coming for them.

It's literally been the house from hell.

Bag up any rubbish left and deliver it to their new house. Then draw a line, forget about them and get on with your new place

This. Other than that - leave it. Suing for contractual breach may well cost you more than you receive.

Try to deliver all the rubbish in full view of their new neighbours though - "Oh by the way - you forgot all of your rubbish! It's obviously of great sentimental value as you've obviously been collecting filth for years, so we brought it round."

I wonder if they just move house every five years or so rather than clean the house?

Needless to say OP don't be afraid to chase it up! You are more than entitled to a clean home especially as it was discussed specifically before completion.

I really hope you get sorted soon and your kids and you settle and enjoy your new family home!!!

It was the same when we moved in 2 years ago- the place was a sh*t hole. It took 5 hours just to clean the kitchen cupboards sufficiently enough to be able to put stuff in.
The junk drawers in the kitchen were still full of junk, as was the garden shed.
I was actually thankful when I turned the oven on and found it didn’t work- it meant I didn’t have to scrape out years of filth. We just didn’t have means to cook for a few days after we ripped it out and had to wait for delivery of a new one.
We had to rip all carpets out but walked around in flip flops until we could get it all done and new ones fitted.

We were advised that it would cost more to peruse costs than the costs we would receive. Hope you get some recompense op.

We are hoping to move on Friday.
The house we are moving to has been empty for months and vendor abroad so guessing it will be in the same state we last saw it in and will have to clean top to bottom.

As much as I would like to leave our house spotless for our buyers, DH is away until Thursday and whilst working full time with an 11 month old, I just don't know when I'll have time to pack never mind deep clean. I think I'll be hoovering as they load the van. DH said he personally wouldn't bother as we are in a slightly different position to most as buyers will be renting our house out so no one moving in.

As PPs said, it's a pride thing. I don't want anyone to have to feel like the majority of people on this thread because we've left something a mess.

then her relative turned up to get something they'd forgotten

I hope you'd binned it Remember

Last time we moved I paid the removal people to keep our stuff overnight and we had a professional cleaner go in and do the place from top to bottom. It cost about £250 and was well worth every penny.

My sister bought a house from a cat breeder though so basically that tops any horror story ever. She kept her cats in cages in every room. I can’t even begin to describe the smell.

The rancid stench of randy toms!

Nothing quite like it! (NDN had two un-neutered tomcats. Apparently getting their nuts off is "cruel", but it's not cruel to have them coming back with their ears hanging off, or missing an eye, or with their faces ripped open because they'd been fighting.)

OP YANBU at all. I have moved into 4 houses. First three I had no complaints. Prior to last move I left my fairly large house clinically clean and removed nothing that could give rise to complaint. Moved into present home, having viewed and noted it was messy but naively thinking it would be cleaned. Everyone I know that has moved has left a spotless house and we all helped each other clean. The place was a disgrace. How the previous occupant(a professional lady) could live like that beggars belief. I hope no mumsnetter would leave a house like that or do what was done to yours. Anyone who would do that is a selfish inconsiderate pig and I hope the home they move into is worse. I wouldn’t hesitate to revisit the contract or trash them to the neighbours.

Similar thing happened to me when I bought my place. I moved in the winter and couldn't even look around after I exchanged because they'd taken most of the fing lights. Later I found that almost all of the appliances were broken too...chalked it up to to life and have gradually replaced the things I needed. It sucks and I'm hoping that karma has sorted them out.

Take photos get thorough cleaning quotes and contact solicitor to get money off of them - so sorry for you Good Luck xx

They are thieves.
They do not clear up animal mess in a house so should not be keeping animals.
They are an environmental health matter.

Suggest you discuss this with your solicitor.

I agree on the suggestion about not forwarding mail.

Oh yes with ours they also feigned ignorance about the fact nothing worked or it leaked etc etc. Truly horrible, horrible people

@ Strugglingtodomybest if they’re my plants I’d be taking them with me to when I moved house. God help whom ever buys my house should I ever sell it cause all mine are moving with me, including several fruit trees when I go. The only thing I don’t get is taking lightbulb and ceiling roses. They never heard of B & Q?😂