Would you buy a smelly house?

[silkcut100]

One that smelt of cigarette smoke?

If I loved the house, yes.

Yes - but I’d knock a sizeable chunk off the asking price as my offer, in order to completely renovate to remove the smell (offer about 8-12% less than asking price), and if someone else was prepared to go higher, I’d let it go!

We bought off 'stand by the back door/window' smokers.
The smell of fag smoke & tar shit on wall stayed for ages. Didn't smell it when we viewed.
Only really gone now we've had a new kitchen.

We bought a smelly house. It smelled like stale cigarettes and wet dog. I love the house and location and every morning when I walk downstairs I just can’t believe it’s ours.

The smell most likely did turn off other potential buyers though which meant we managed to afford it.

We planned on changing all carpets and soft furnishings anyway but we ended up having to shell out a lot of money to fix a leak under the floorboards in the kitchen that was contributing to the smell.

We washed down every cupboard multiple times but two years on I still open a particular cupboard in the utility room and get a blast of stale smoke. We’ll eventually get around to ripping out those units so I don’t mind too much and we use that area to store things inside plastic boxes so it doesn’t matter too much to me.

It’s been worth it for us but unless you plan on changing literally everything, have a good think about it.

How do you deal with the problem of your own furniture and curtains, bedclothes etc taking on the smell of the smoke and keeping it hanging around?

I imagine you wash your bedding and curtains, wipe down hard furniture like you would anyway, maybe get your sofa steam cleaned if it is a problem. I can't imagine that level of problem is going to persist.

It depends on the price and how much I liked it.

Purchasing a house is just a case of balancing what you want with what you can afford.

If a smoker was selling their house I'd factor in the cost of doing a full refurbishment and the inconvenience into the price I was willing to pay.

I knew someone who got a great deal on a house, about 40% off market value, because they were relatives of the woman who'd died there. She'd smoked heavily for years and whenever there was condensation in the bathroom, the tar oozed out of the walls. But it was worth the inconvenience of wiping it down because of the bargain price they'd paid.

@ancientgran

I imagine you wash your bedding and curtains, wipe down hard furniture like you would anyway, maybe get your sofa steam cleaned if it is a problem. I can't imagine that level of problem is going to persist.

But the smell is going to be hanging in the air and keep clinging to the soft furnishings after you've washed them.

I swear even the bricks seem to absorb the smell in a house with heavy, long term smoking going on. When we were house hunting, we saw a couple of houses that were completely empty but the cigarette smell was still everywhere, even in the rooms without carpet.

I did. Victorian house so old lime plaster rather than plasterboard, which might have been less permeable, but we stripped all the wallpaper off (not the ceilings though) and put up new lining paper and painted it, and washed all the carpets and gradually replaced them all as we could afford it. It didn’t smell after that.

I've lived in a lot of houses where I had little choice over the condition it was in, and in my experience the only smell that never faded (until the concrete was broken up and removed) was cat piss. That smell still haunts me in my dreams, the previous tenants bred cats in the conservatory.

Almost everything else is ultimately removable with an awful lot of work. We now have our "forever" home, and it was pretty ripe as the unfortunate prior owner had been cared for at home for many months before expiring alone in the bedroom.

When you came in from outside there was a faint sickly, fishy smell until we removed every last bit of carpet, laid new flooring and re-plastered... It's fine now.

@VodselForDinner

I have a really strong sense of smell and cigarette and cigar smoke gives me the most awful migraine that can last for two days so I wasn’t going to risk it.

Thanks for clarifying - that makes sense.

Agree re cat pee (even though we have cats!)

If it was a right dooer upper i would. Otherwise no.

I went along with DH and DD to look at a first car for her. It was lovely till the owner opened the door. I said “no thanks, it stinks of smoke” and walked away. DH just stood there like a lost puppy not knowing what to say.

I do have a habit of speaking the truth whether its nice or not. Its called being truthful.

The tar and staining would be too much, bloody rank.

bought a doggy house, thank heavens they took their carpets, it did wear off eventually
Never bought a smoker's house but am thinking that until a few years ago all pubs stank of stale smoke and when you go in them now they don't,, well maybe I've not been in any skanky ones that still have the same yucky carpets and haven't cleaned/painted the walls
So I'd not rule it out but I'd want it deep cleaned and decorated before I moved in if possible. A friend nearly did but the sale fell through for other reasons, it was the price that would have swung it for her

Definitley not if it smelt of cigarette smoke - massive migraine trigger for me. I would also be put off by cat wee smells, although I'd feel better able to tackle those as long as I could locate them.

We smoked in our house until about ten years ago. Nobody would ever know now. No plaster or floor removal. We have decorated and laid new carpet throughout.

No way. My parents gave up smoking 7 years ago and their house still stinks of smoke. They’ve had new carpets but it must be in the walls because it still stinks

Ffs, just clean and paint it, it's not a murder scene

Previous owners fostered for a cat/dog rescue, typically had 17-20 cats and 3 or 4 dogs.

Not a chance.

@Blossomtoes

We smoked in our house until about ten years ago. Nobody would ever know now. No plaster or floor removal. We have decorated and laid new carpet throughout.

"You" may not smell it, but I'd bet that others can. A home occupant tends not to notice smells as they get accustomed to it. Hence why so many homes smell of wee (human and pet), etc with the occupant not realising it.

I did but it was a complete refurbishment job anyway, otherwise I might have thought twice.

You" may not smell it, but I'd bet that others can

They can’t. Because it doesn’t smell. Our dil, who didn’t know us when we smoked, was astonished when she discovered we were ex smokers. And, as a pp pointed out, pubs used to reek of old smoke but very few, if any, do now.

A different situation but we inherited our house three years ago when DH's granny died. The house reeked of smoke and when we took down photos and fixtures you could see what colour the walls used to be, but we were in absolutely no position to buy a house otherwise and suddenly we had the option of living rent and mortgage free at (then) 29 years old.

A LOT of hard work and sugar soap later (I can still feel the brown, nicotine-stained water running down my arms), the place is redecorated, new soft furnishings, new flooring, and it is fresh as a daisy. We had to replaster the ceilings because the nicotine stains kept leaking through the fresh paint but that fixed the issue. The place hadn't been updated since the 80s so it needed to be ripped apart and put back together anyway, but it was worth it.

Some hilariously predictable posts on this thread. Most houses in this country that are 40+ years old are highly likely to have had smokers live in them!

We bought a smokers' house last summer. It did stink, and at first it was a bit bleaugh - I couldn't sleep properly the first couple of nights because of the smell - but we cleaned everything with bicarb etc, kept the windows open constantly, and had the walls repainted sharpish. Taking the layers and layers of wallpaper off the walls was pretty grim though!

However, it's definitely gone now - I have a couple of very honest mates who would tell me if I'd gone nose-blind. We didn't need to strip anything back to brick