What was included when you bought a house?

[sawseesaw]

Not sure what is reasonable to expect.
Did your vendors include things like made to measure blinds or charge for them? What about built in appliances? What about curtain rails?
Our vendors have made it clear that they don't want/need blinds and appliances but want well over £2000 for them. Is that normal?
We (selling) have included all fitted appliances and fitted blinds and curtain rails (all are made to measure or cut to size) but have taken curtains as we like them. Should we have tried to chisel every last penny? Are our vendors being greedy?

I think this varies from person to person. The people we were buying from them were desperate for us to buy their greenhouse, only because they didn’t want to dismantle it. We declined.

When we bought our house the vendor took everything including lightbulbs and cut a plug off something. They also ripped a 30year old gas cooker from the kitchen which was probably worthless, destroying the surrounding kitchen cabinets. Made us laugh because they were really wealthy - suppose that’s why they had loads of money- those lightbulbs must have saved 4euro

Call their bluff. Tell them you don't want them and if they are going to remove them they need to make good any fixing holes. Alternatively they can be included on the fixtures fittings and contents list. Most people like this are trying it on and won't want the hassle of removing and making good. Email your solicitor and ask them to forward that message on to the Sellers so that there is no doubt they either include or removed and make good.

Like I said before we were sort of cornered into doing this by the estate agent and valued all the bits realistically, but things are only worth what someone will pay.

It would really be helpful if estate agents were more upfront in the negotiating stage what the fixtures and fittings price would be and agree to lump it into the house cost. Somehow whether you buy for £350K or £351K makes little difference to the mortgage, but being asked for an extra £1000 when you've closed the deal feels really cheeky.

We were told once to imagine the house could be picked up and turned upside down, anything that stayed in position forms the fixtures and fittings and should stay, anything else is up to you.
We moved eight years ago and we did take a lot of stuff we really didn't want because the purchaser had been such a nasty piece of work.
Post for a previous owner label Deceased and drop back into the box.

Call their bluff and say you don’t want them, chances are they will be there when you move in.

I thought that you had to leave fixtures ie built in appliances but not fittings.

Either way 2k is a ridiculous amount for 2nd hand items probably without warranty.

As long as the vendor makes good any damage by removing things/leaves an adequate replacement, they’re entitled to take anything they like provided it is fully outlined in the form that forms part of the Contract of Sale.

We're hoping to move soon. We're leaving all newly fitted carpets, curtain poles, a semi fitted wardrobe and light fittings, all included in the price. We're not leaving the curtains, medicine cabinet or mirrors, regardless of whether or not our buyers are prepared to pay for them.

Unless you really like and want all this stuff and it would cost more than £2k to replace, I'd tell them where to go, that's a piss take price for second items unless all very high quality, to your taste and needed.

They will either leave them anyway or remove them and you can buy your own stuff.

I would say that asking for money for fixtures and fittings is taking the piss really. Either take stuff with you, sell it completely separate to the sale, or leave it when you move. Before they changed the stamp duty system, it did used to be more common to sell things separately to get round the jumps in stamp duty, eg I had a friend who paid £124.9k for the house and £1k for the kitchen appliances and curtains as this saved her over £1k in stamp duty.

When we bought our first house they left some G Plan furniture, which I hated and didn't realise it was really good quality and I could have sold it . I think it might have either been burnt or taken to the tip.

The couple we bought off had split up and lost 30% (sounds a lot but it was £42k down to £30k) of the purchase price in a couple of years (they bought at the peak and we bought after a crash) and the man had been obstructive throughout the sale - he smashed the bathroom sink and slashed all the curtains which were horrible anyway, they were a 20 something couple with pensioner taste.

When we sold that house we gave the man who bought it the cooker and the washer because the house we bought had built in appliances.

They weren't worth much, both being over 10 years old and it was much easier to us to just leave them behind. As a single FTB he was very grateful.

We didn't pay any extra for fixtures and fittings when we bought our second house, but it came with some horrible mahogany bedroom furniture which I sold on ebay for a couple of hundred pounds.

We took curtains that we thought we could use in the new house, but left any that we wouldn't be able to. We left light fittings as I wanted to start again with those (and we hadn't spent a lot on them anyway). We also left a freestanding IKEA wardrobe in the master bedroom - didn't believe we could get it down two flights of stairs without wrecking it anyway. We had a form to fill in where we indicated exactly what we were leaving, and what we were willing to sell.

The house we bought, we were left all curtains, light fittings, a couple of sofas, a foot stool, some garden furniture, a ladder, a strimmer and a leaf blower - but it was two sons selling their parent's home, so they probably had no need of this stuff, we kept getting messages in the weeks up to moving asking if we'd like them to leave x, y or z.

If you don't want to pay that, then just say you don't want the items, and it will be up to them whether they remove them or not. Ultimately they do own all that stuff (though I thought it was expected that in built stuff would be left behind), but I imagine most people don't bother quibbling about stuff they will have no use for or won't fit into their new house.

Last time I sold I left everything (was listed on F&F), including an amazing bookshelf art thing because to remove it and make good the wall would have been a nightmare.

Last purchase the vendors left all curtain rails and some curtains and all blinds. Just Ikea roller blinds but makes a difference because in this house the walls are so difficult to drill into!

They also left the WM but it was super shit and basically broken so essentially I got conned into paying for the disposal of that 🤔

Do not pay £2000 for second hand curtains, you'd be better off buying new and getting exactly what you wanted.

When we moved in to our home we paid £1000 for a table and six chairs, a leather sofa, two sideboards, 2 antique chairs, a washing machine, a tumble dryer, a large freezer and a whole room of conservatory furniture. All the (very nice) curtains and blinds were left. The owners had also emptied the septic tank, had the boiler and Aga serviced and left the house immaculate. (They were the best sellers ever!)
They also left a very, very comprehensive list of the tradesmen they and had used when they had renovated the house, all the guarantees and instructions manuals for everything in the house in alphabetical order!

If we ever move (Don't think I will) I will try and do the same for the next owners.