Taking shelves when moving house

[legfaced]

We are due to move in a few months. We have long and quite expensive scaffold board shelving in our kitchen - AIBU to take it with us when we move?

how on earth are shelves made out of scaffold boards expensive!?!

They must have been purchased from www.isawyoucoming.com

Builder husband says...

Ah well, he must be an expert on property law! What is it on MN with people referencing their husband as if he's an expert (because he's a man, don't you know), even when he definitely isn't?

I do think a certain amount of horse trading is part of buying a house and as long as everyone is clear on what the deal is it's fair game.

This is what it comes down to, and is the reason for the F&F form. The form makes very clear what is included / excluded so that both parties know what is being sold.

The default position is that things which are screwed down (e.g. shelves) stay, but the vendor can specify otherwise, and it's then for the buyer to decide whether they feel the price is fair in light of that information.

Googling ‘scaffolding boards as shelves’ brings up really nice use as floating shelves. Cheap and cheerful.

OK y’all, we can wind the thread up now, @Franticbutterfly asked her husband 🤣

@Nicknacky

NotShiny Of course people don’t take carpets to use in new houses😂.

And what do you do if you take your carpet and the new house had carpets already?!

They certainly do. My buyer told me they were planning to rip up my newly laid carpet so we removed it and it carpeted three rooms in the house we moved to.

Last time I looked, fixtures (things fixed to a wall or floor) are part of the house sale unless it is specified in the contract document that they will not form part of the sale. That would not apply to pictures or mirrors (fittings) hung on a wall, but would do to structural elements such as installed shelving.

Bear in mind that the blind leading the blind can result in a nasty fall.

You have paid an estate agent and solicitor for their services and expert advice, so ask them.

@Ellisandra @ReceptacleForTheRespectable Ouch 😂. I was just trying to be helpful, my bad.

I would out of courtesy make sure that your buyer knows in advance if they were on the pictures etc, but sure take them if they're not 'part' of the kitchen.

When I bought my flat the estate agent details listed built in wardrobes in the bedroom. Turned out they were not 'built in', they were free-standing but designed for the available space so might as well have been, and the seller took them. The estate agent shrugged it off as their initial inventory details not being legally binding (I did know they were gone before final exchange though, not just when I turned up on moving in day).

@Franticbutterfly aaawww, thanks for taking it in good fun 👍🏻

When we part exchanged in November (I'm aware these rules are not the case for general sales), we were told that everything in the sales photos MUST be left, including light fittings, curtains, poles, blinds, anything securely attached to the wall eg fireplace and surround, large mirrors, obviously all internal doors etc, carpets and floor coverings, even the fridge and freezer!
We negotiated taking our freezer with us, and also removed our marble fireplace as we have had it since we were married, as well as our (expensive) electric fire as it is an optimyst effect one which I did not want to have to replace.
However, we bought and fitted a replacement marble fireplace and purchased a brand new electric fire to leave in its place so that there would be no outlay for the next people.
We also carpeted the dining room two days before we left, as the existing laminate floor was badly scratched.
We filled and painted ALL holes/defects left by taking down pictures and mirrors.
I labelled the spare paint cans for every room so that they could touch up the paint if needed, and left extra tiles for the kitchen and bathroom and some spare laminate boards for the floor in case of damage.
I cleaned the oven within an inch of its life.
We left every light fitting, including some very expensive and elaborate ones, blinds, curtains and floor covering in the house. I really can't see why people take these with them? What good is a carpet cut to fit a different room? Blinds cut to specific window? And who are these people who take light bulbs and door handles? It boggles the mind.
I would be gutted to move into a house where things like that had been removed, it would just leave such a bad feeling and really take the shine off a new home.

@Undead76 I really can't see why people take these with them?
What good is a carpet cut to fit a different room?

If you are moving out of a Council House, they insist you do remove any carpets, so a lot of people think it is normal to do so.

My parents (in the 1970s) moved house and took their living room carpet with them. It was sturdy hard-wearing and dark green. It had the shape of the fireplace cut out. In the new house, it was put into my brother's bedroom, and for over 20yrs it was there, still with the cut-out hearth shape. lol. Not exactly a lovely bedroom carpet to get out of bed to.

A great pleasure on moving into a new house is buying new curtains. I’d be so pissed off to find that I had to justify getting rid of perfectly good curtains I hated. Better, by far, to be left with bare windows. And please take “elaborate” light fittings - my taste is minimalist!

My point was that were were told to leave these things. Also, many people appreciate being left curtains, at least in the beginning, as its not always great moving into a house with no window coverings, even if it not to your taste.

If I saw carpets or similar excluded on a f&f form I'd want a reduction in the price unless it was made very clear on viewing.

If they weren't included in the f&f that would already be reflected in the price, you don't get to demand a further reduction!

OP take your shelves.

Genuine question - if everything that’s in the photos has to stay - how do you manage to take anything with you when you move? Eg furniture can include wall furniture.
Also do you still have to do a fixtures and fittings list detailing what’s being taken or left? If yes, then I fail to see why you can’t take anything as stated on the sheet?
That’s what happened when mil flat sold five years ago.

By comparison, when my sister moved house, the previous owner tried to add a £30k surcharge to leave all the curtains! Like they were made of gold or something 😂

I'm in Scotland, but here these are the standard (this is extracted from the client guide to the standard clauses) and anything which you want to take which is on this list needs to be explicitly excluded.

"the following insofar as any were in the Property when viewed by the
Purchaser: garden shed or hut, greenhouse, summerhouse; all growing plants, shrubs, trees (except those in plant pots); artificial grass; all types of blinds, pelmets, curtain rails and runners, curtain poles and rings thereon; all carpets and floor coverings (but excluding loose rugs), stair carpet fixings; fitted bedroom furniture; all fixed bathroom and cloakroom mirrors, bathroom and toilet fittings; kitchen units; all cookers, hobs, ovens, washing machines, dishwashers, fridges and freezers if integral to or encased within matching units; extractor hoods, extractor fans, electric storage heaters, electric fires, electric light fittings (including all fluorescent lighting, external lighting, wall lights, dimmer switches and bulbs and bulb holders but not shades); television aerials and associated cables and sockets, satellite dishes; loft ladders; rotary clothes driers; burglar alarm, other security systems and associated equipment; secondary glazing; fixed shelving, fireplace surround units, fire grates, fenders and associated ironmongery; "

Of course I couldn't 'demand' a reduction, but the price for a house is not fixed until the end of the sales process. If I had offered a certain sum because I believed the house was ready to move into and then found out via the form that there would be no carpets or that the kitchen was being gutted, then I'd reassess that offer. As mentioned before, since these aren't customary exclusions I'd expect them to have been raised before and any offer based on that. I might even pull out if it turned out the plan was to strip the place. Same as if I found major work was needed.

Obviously not the case if you're buying a doer-upper, but I've always bought houses ready to move into.

If you have bought a house advertised with pictures of a lovely mature garden, then to move in to find it has been gutted of nearly half the plants and shrubs with gaping holes left, would be very annoying.

The young couple weren't gardener's no, but they certainly could recognise when a garden has been left in shit having had lots of whats in it removed.

The garden and house were put back as it was, whether that meant new plants I've no idea, but it was made good.

I think it's an extremely dishonest, dishonourable thing to do and the solicitor was very unimpressed too.

It does happen to varing degrees I believe, but unfortunately a lot of people don't find out until the sale has fully gone through and they end up sucking it up.

Alsohuman Would you have taken the carpet without that conversation with your buyers?

My curtains are ones that block out all light and are neutral so go with most decors. The living room ones are Laura Ashley ones that I could only afford in the heavy sales as they are hundreds of pounds.

They’re standard size (228cm by 228cm) and fit most window sizes where I live so like fuck would I leave them behind for the new owner who may just chuck them anyway!

You do realise that 4m scaffold boards are about £13 each, don't you?

@Nicknacky

Alsohuman Would you have taken the carpet without that conversation with your buyers?

No, it was less than a year old so I assumed they’d be delighted with it. It was neutral and the same all the way through the house. When they said they were ripping it up I was surprised to say the least. We decided we might as well take it with us and use it where we could, particularly as the carpets we inherited all needed replacing.

Exactly, no one takes carpets as a norm. Obviously it suited you both but it shows it isn’t normal to take carpets.

I explicitly told an estate agent that I was taking a particular set of curtains that had cost £1500 only 3 months earlier. They never told the buyer that who expected them to be included and threatened to pull out the sale😡. I was raging.