Your moving horror stories?

[7yo7yo]

I’ve been to help a friend move house today, loaded up the first van went to the new house and......the old owners are still there.
Didn’t realise they actually had to move today! Thought because of covid they had a period of grace and would move when it was mutually convenient.
Meanwhile back at friends house, removal men from their buyers will arrive in an hour and these little still had breakfast plates on the table!
They’ve been forcibly removed, but the mess!
Aibu to ask if anyone else gas gone through this? How do people not realise?

I moved a few times as a child and cannot recall anything like this but speaking to my mum it turns out that 3 out of 4 moves were horrid and mum, dad and whichever family members got roped into helping always sorted the kids rooms out first, then the sitting room.

My last move was so awful that I plan to leave this place in a box. I can’t face another move. The house was lovely when I viewed it but the sale process was drawn out because the vendors couldn’t find anywhere to move to. When the great day finally came, they were still here (didn’t finally fuck off until 10pm) when I arrived with my lorry and amazing removals guys. Heading over keys involved the husband tipping a bag of about 100 keys out in the kitchen while his wife cackled at me. The place was squalid, truly squalid. Even the tough as teak removals chap looked horrified at the state of it all. I couldn’t use the master bedroom as they had let the en suite leak so the wall was rotten and black with mould. The toilets were revolting, bath wasn’t plumbed in, just filthy. It took about 6 weeks to clear the smell of the bogs. They had taken all the light fittings and left live wires sticking out the walls and just abandoned rubbish and rubble in the garage and garden.

And the piece de resistance... it wasn’t the bailiffs or the endless post or the attempt to serve court papers on them or the disgruntled customers turning up looking for them. No, it was the attempt, 3 years after they moved, to use the house as collateral for a large loan from a bank in Cyprus!

The day we moved it snowed loads. We live in quite a hilly area. The van with all of our possessions couldn't get up the hill to unload stuff. They were actually a great local firm, really accommodating. We had to go to my parents house to stay over. We went to the pub with them and got Chinese takeaway! They men who owned the company took the van to one of their houses and left out stuff inn it over night. With our permission of course Then luckily in the morning the company had a slot so could unload everything super quick.

I looked at going with a bigger company like pickfords or something and I'm so glad I didn't as they have huge payments due if they aren't able to complete to removal and unloading on the day like over £1k! Ended up being £50 to £100 more even though they worked several more hours and stored our stuff overnight. They got a good review! So all wnede well but felt like a bloody nightmare at the time.

I moved into a very old cottage with my three year old. The actual move ok, as moves go. My son started to talk about his new friends at school. And he kept mentioning names. Will, William, Ada, Jack, George, George Wallington, Callum, Louise etc. A couple of weeks later, I was sitting on the end of his bed, and he said all matter of fact, 'oh, Ada and Louise are here now'. I was confused. Where are they? In the village? Have they been away? He told me they were right there in the room. He noted that George Wallington wasn't there yet and maybe he was waiting for me to go. I kept it calm, I left, albeit door open and I made sure I slept in there that night. He talked about the three of them and their pet matter of factly occasionally all the time we lived there. Said if asked that they must live in the loft. We moved away when he was five. Stopped mentioning them. When he was about ten Idky one day I was telling his younger sister about them as a thing kids do and he was there and he said that he remembered them clearly. Described their clothing in detail. Ada and Louise to me seemed victorian or earlier, George W maybe 1940s. He now 20. I mentioned it again this week as he left for uni. Do u remember when.....He still remembers and he was able to add more detail.....so glad I moved there and lucky they liked him! His sister researched it and a boy with that name and near identical.surname lived there this century, that's as far as she got

@ThatsAllFolks

I moved into a very old cottage with my three year old. The actual move ok, as moves go. My son started to talk about his new friends at school. And he kept mentioning names. Will, William, Ada, Jack, George, George Wallington, Callum, Louise etc. A couple of weeks later, I was sitting on the end of his bed, and he said all matter of fact, 'oh, Ada and Louise are here now'. I was confused. Where are they? In the village? Have they been away? He told me they were right there in the room. He noted that George Wallington wasn't there yet and maybe he was waiting for me to go. I kept it calm, I left, albeit door open and I made sure I slept in there that night. He talked about the three of them and their pet matter of factly occasionally all the time we lived there. Said if asked that they must live in the loft. We moved away when he was five. Stopped mentioning them. When he was about ten Idky one day I was telling his younger sister about them as a thing kids do and he was there and he said that he remembered them clearly. Described their clothing in detail. Ada and Louise to me seemed victorian or earlier, George W maybe 1940s. He now 20. I mentioned it again this week as he left for uni. Do u remember when.....He still remembers and he was able to add more detail.....so glad I moved there and lucky they liked him! His sister researched it and a boy with that name and near identical.surname lived there this century, that's as far as she got

Oh this reminds me of a story my work colleague told me! They were viewing houses with their first child, he must have been about 5 or 6? Saw a lovely old farmhouse out in the sticks, went round the whole place and fell in love. When they came out she asked her son how he would feel about living there, and he said “I liked it. The lady living there was nice”. When she said there was no lady in there he said “yes there was, the old lady in the bedroom. She smiled at me”.

Needless to say they didn’t buy the house...

Oh yes. Lots of random stories

-Me and ex (then fiancé) bought our first house. We found a week or so into us owning it, the last people who lived there were letting themselves in to “collect post”. Dick head ex wouldn’t let me go to the police.
-A friend was moving from a flat to a house. Buyer of the flat tried to gazunder at the last minute, friends husband went mad and said fine the deals off. They rapidly retracted their CF attempts. Then when the friends arrive at the new house, the previous owners were trying to decant a 3 storey house onto 2 hatchbacks. At which point they seemed perplexed why my friends were there, errr because it was their house as they bought it . Friends and removal men were patient for a time but they started taking items into the house as the light was fading

My parents had the nervous wait, all packed up in the lorry and then a message to say money from the first time buyer at the bottom of the chain hadn't cleared yet. Cue a nervous wait in a local supermarket car park for an hour.
The house I now live in was a disgusting shit heap when we moved in. We knew it was a fixer upper, but the vendors clearly stopped giving a crap from the moment they accepted our offer. They'd caused some damage and left an overflowing skip blocking the garage. That was a pain to sort out.
Most annoying of all - both times DH and I have moved house we've ended up with bailiffs chasing debt of the previous owners and the police turning up at our current house looking for the previous owners. We had no forwarding address, they seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. Eight years on we still get DVLA letters for the husband.

Years ago, moving ourselves because we 'didn't have a lot', or so we thought, we booked a large vehicle with a tail lift. When we went to collect it it hadn't been returned, we were offered a transit van that we could keep all weekend instead of 24 hours.

Moving day, blowing a gale, loaded the 1st load into the van and went to the EA for the keys, been told it had all gone through, the person responsible at the vendor's end was at lunch, come back in an hour. An hour later, he'd apparently gone straight home from lunch and wouldn't be back until Monday, no-one else could release the keys. At that point I sat done and said that the loaded van would stay blocking their car park until we got the keys, we did, eventually. One hell of a week-end though. Luckily our purchaser was out on an oil rig somewhere!

All moves are awful but the most recent will take some beating. For reasons I won't go into we had different solicitors for our sale and purchase. On the day purchase solicitors email to say we are 36k short, please transfer it immediately. This was news to us, and so with our stuff in motion we had to furiously phone both solicitors to find out what was happening. A very condescending paralegal on the sale side said that the 36k was not 'lost', it had never been there and they had made a small mistake on the draft completion statement, but her figures were the right ones. Our purchase solicitor eventually spotted that the paralegal had got the sale price wrong. I phoned her up to tell correct her and, still in smug superior mode told me she didn't know where I was getting that figure from, but she'd check the contract. I waited on hold, and waited, and waited. Eventually the phone system bounced me back to reception, I got put back through to the right team and the other paralegal answered, said yes they were sending the 36k now and apologies for the inconvenience. That first lady nearly made us homeless with a three year old and a two month baby, and she didn't even have the guts to come back and say sorry.
When we finally got into the new house the bath was blocked, the kitchen electrics went down, the oven was broken and the previous people had left loads of their crap behind. We survived, but only just.

I am a solicitor and spent some time in the Conveyancing department as a trainee. I couldn't handle the responsibility of ensuring completion Friday afternoons were the worst!

The worst one I had was at Christmas - 23rd or something like that. We acted for buyers who when they arrived at their new property had the vendors in situ - like completely in situ, presents under the tree etc. They didn't realise they had to actually move out that day and thought they could stay for Christmas
My poor clients had to spend Christmas in a hotel.
We always draw down mortgage money the day before and if we know we are the bottom of the chain we try to send the money the night before/ first thing in the morning.

One tip - beware the divorcing couple. More than once we have had one party refusing to leave or turning up on the day to lay claim to the property/ an item of furniture. We have had to call the police more than once.

My personal one - moving my ILs. Complete hoarders and also tight fisted- they refused to pay for removals and so me, DH, BIL and SIL all helped. Except they also hired such a small van that it took about 6 trips - we started at 6am (they moved into a new build and fortunately the developer let them move their things in) and we eventually only finished at 8pm. The buyers were furious.
Whilst we frantically packed and got things in and out of the van my MIL spent the whole day deciding where to put her (vast) china collection in the kitchen. She then had a tantrum because she didn't want to sleep on a mattress on the floor so me and DH spent 45 mins (at midnight) putting her bed together. I have never been so tired.

One more tip - hire professionals if you have a lot of stuff. It always takes longer to pack and load than you think.

Our removal firm got pulled over by the police and turns out they were over the weight limit so had to unload half of our stuff on the side of a busy A road, come to the new house to unload then go back 😂 this was 6 days before Christmas. The poor bloke was freezing and sat under a blanket.

Mines similar to others!

Completed and money transferred on a Friday but vendor stated they wanted to move Saturday because they were at work on the Friday. Being young and naive (18 &19!) we just thought that was how things went so we agreed.

Saturday comes and all our small stuff is packed in a van borrowed from DHs work and as it was our first house we'd arranged for our big stuff (white goods, new sofa and bed) to be delivered Saturday afternoon.......

Vendors eventually handed over the keys at 6pm. We'd had to cancel our furniture delivery and to add to everything it was a bank holiday weekend, so we spent the first three nights in our new house sleeping and sitting on the floor!!!

Oh another one, this time my cousin who I was helping. She was moving from one smallish farm to another, and things work a bit differently when there's livestock & vast amounts of machinery & equipment to move, so there tends to be a bit of leeway in moving everything except the household stuff. Luckily she "only" had about 2 dozen horses to move, some cage parrots, 4 elderly pet cows and household pets - household pets class as household rather than livestock & move on completion day of course.

The vendor was emigrating to Europe, and in fact had left the farm a few days before completion so should have been easy. Get to the new farm about 12 noon, cousin went to EAs to collect the keys. Money hasn't gone through yet. Checked, the money from the sale of the old farm had gone through nice & early but was somehow caught up in the system. We had 2 removals vans sitting on the driveway, meanwhile I was tucked up in a disintegrating filthy caravan behind some straggly bushes in the garden with elderly disabled mother, 5 dogs, 3 cats, 4 large cages of assorted exotic birds, and a young pet peahen. Eventually the EAs contacted the vendors in Spain at 5pm, who kindly said "for goodness sake give them the keys now!".

Money went through the next morning.

I don’t know why anyone moves house.
The thought makes me sick!

First time seller moving into rented accommodation. Hired van , packed up, posted keys through EA, moved half way across the country. Realised at 4.50 pm hadn't heard from lawyer. Rang them. Sale hadn't gone through! Bank holiday weekend. 5 very anxious days til sale confirmed.

Helped two friends move that were filthy house owners. One did absolutely no prep work, it was like I just walked into her house and had to start from the very beginning including packing and cleaning. The other one had such a crusty kitchen it took forever to soak all the gunk off.
Also, my brother was moving and had to be out by a certain time. He got two moving people and the head mover was drunk at 10:00 am! My brother still had them move as he couldn’t get another time slot soon enough but was beyond stressed the entire move!

@7yo7yo he was never located. I'm told he went abroad, whether he did or not I don't know.

We moved in the beast from the east seller told our landlords there was oil in the tanks, no oil, house was freezing, turned heating on and all the pipes burst, water everywhere, this was after we spent the weekend in an outhouse, that used to be there office, as it had a wood burner and only space with heat. When we finally unpacked, bottles in kitchen boxes had all frozen. Also one van broke down with TV so nothing for a week.. it was really fun

@WitchQueenofDarkness

Solicitor sent our £750K to a random and wrong bank account.

I aged considerably that day....

Aged? AGED!? I would probably get a heart attack.

The container on the ship leaked when it weathered a really bad storm and most of our possessions were ruined by salt water. The cardboard boxes disintegrated and...well it was a complete loss.

We bought a new build, should have done completion/exchange on Friday got a call on the Thursday morning saying they hadn’t quite got round to finishing building the house and can we move in a few weeks... can we fuck.... we went to the office to get the keys on the Friday and they were still installing the kitchen. 😂

@PlanDeRaccordement oh that’s awful! I bet you were gutted! We’re you insured? Please tell me it wasn’t sentimental!

I'm reminded about moving quarters in our military days, we had to do what was/is called a 'march out'. Back in the day everything was supplied down to the last spoon-egg and at the end of one's time there everything was inspected. The frying pan used for a few years had to be pristine, we once had someone doing the march out who got onto her knees in front of the gleaming cooker, out her hand underneath and scraped her nails on the underside, 'There's grease under there'.
When families were being moved out because a block was being renovated the flat still had to be sparkling clean, including the windows that were being taken out the following day.

@mrsBtheparker

I'm reminded about moving quarters in our military days, we had to do what was/is called a 'march out'. Back in the day everything was supplied down to the last spoon-egg and at the end of one's time there everything was inspected. The frying pan used for a few years had to be pristine, we once had someone doing the march out who got onto her knees in front of the gleaming cooker, out her hand underneath and scraped her nails on the underside, 'There's grease under there'. When families were being moved out because a block was being renovated the flat still had to be sparkling clean, including the windows that were being taken out the following day.

They are still like that, but most people chose unfurnished these days. The ovens have to be showroom clean. I had to scrub a kitchen ready for the workmen to rip out a few years back.

Luckily they have also come up with 'Dirty March outs' where you just pay a cleaning charge instead.