What did you find when you moved house that you would rather not have found?

[IclimbedSnowdon]

Was thinking back to when we last moved.

The loo in the bathroom wouldn't flush, and when we went up in the loft we found a dead rat. It looked as though it had been there for some time.
The worst by far though was what we found at the bottom of the garden. Dh was digging and came across a heavy duty green plastic bag. When he opened it the smell was awful. Inside were the bodies of two cats!
Who in their right mind buries an animal in a plastic bag?
So what did you find when you moved into your home?

Only 1 house was ever bad that we moved into, it was a short term rental and we were desperate but even so ... the previous renter had some issues and for whatever reason had released himself into all of the carpets 🤢 the smell 🤢

That the locals are self absorbed arse holes..

We were greeted by small pile of toe nail clippings, on the kitchen counter. They were all neatly piled up in to a little pyramid.

Filthy kitchen, greasy, sticky. An oven uncleaned for God knows how long, incinerated remains if muffins or roast potatoes stuck to the bottom in an inch of grease...took the professional a whole day to get it back to normal
Shitty neighbours ...

A gun under the shed.

This house - three wheelie bins full of the incorrect rubbish, a garage dull
of skip only rubbish, poo in the toilet cistern. Toilet seats only fit for the bin.

and not installed on viewing, but on moving in, the neighbour had put up a camera 7ft away and directly facing into our bedroom window.🤬🤷‍♀️ - It has been moved now….

In a doer-upper:
Pile of dead wood lice
Ivy growing in through the doors
Shed full of empty food containers (yoghurt pots etc) including some that dated back to rationing 😂
The shed was completely overgrown with Ivy so you couldn't actually get in to it - was like a time capsule.

In a rented property:
Porn
Kitchen ceiling coated with grease 🤮

Place marking..

A pair of used red crotchless panties under the bed .

That the neighbours are wankers.

A spoon in the toilet with burnt residue on it, and lots of used needles behind the radiators.

Walked into the house and it just stank of wet dog. It had been very carefully hidden by glade plugins before. We had to rip up the carpets in the end. My husband’s dad did the survey, qualified architect, claimed he’d done ‘loads’ of them. Missed the fact that the whole house needed a rewire and so we moved into a death trap basically. The old people had run a wire from the house down to the shed under the grass and the electrician said he hoped we hadn’t been mowing out there. We asked why and he said it’s live and we could have been badly injured/killed as there was no RCD board had the mower touched the live wire!

Moved into a housing association property so it was totally empty upon viewing. Just a small list:
nicotine and grease covering the kitchen cupboards- had to use elbow grease and a wallpaper scrape
claret and blue front room
a pair of knickers and toothbrush behind the landing radiator
a pregnancy test in the bathroom radiator
mice!- plugged up all the holes with wire wool and filler and nothing since(fingers crossed)

Only ever moved once to our now permanent home and this was twelve years ago.
Windows that did not open (should have checked when viewing)
Gas boiler that only heated the water if the heating was on (this was June)
Only one plug point in bedrooms
Dodgy electrics everywhere
Leaking roof into bedrooms covered up with new paint etc
Electric fire in living room (was assured by vendor we could have gas but found it had been capped off for safety reasons)
Forty years of garden rubbish/concrete/you name it at the bottom of the garden
And this is a really lovely house !
Next time I will remove the goggles I was wearing. I will inspect with a fine toothcomb.

Our current house was generally unclean and needed a scrub. Oven was disgusting.

However we were also left with the following, some of which the previous owner told us was there when they moved and so not their problem:

• a double garage door in the garden plus loads of hard-core, bricks, kitchen counters and off cuts of wood
• loads of building bits on the roof of the out building
• a leaking roof in the utility room
• 6 different types of tiles in boxes
• carpet edging metal thing, off cuts of pvc cable, insulation etc
• 3 spare internal doors in the shed
• some very grimy bathroom scales

-plus very many bodge jobs that had left holes in walls

Took the shine off of our new house for a while

Those that had carpet beetles and managed to get rid of them - how did you do it?

We moved into a new house and got our heating upgraded from oil to gas and the engineers found porn dvds stashed in the immersion 😭🤣 I was so embarrassed for my husband for them thinking they were his lol (they has clearly been there since the 80s/90s)

I bought this place when an old lady moved in with her daughter three doors up. she had been cared for for years by her son who had died.

The entire house was as if the two of them had just stepped out to go shopping. All their clothes and personal effects were here. I called the vendor asking him if it was to be cleared and he said no.

I had a four day bonfire. I gave the mans army medals and effects to a woman in the village that confessed to an affair with him thirty years before : )

A massive and insanely heavy concrete lawn roller. It was found under the house, and the house was on a hill, so while we were able to find someone who wanted it, it took 6 of us to roll it out and pull it up the driveway. Luckily the people who took it had a longish ramp on their car trailer, so we were able to get it onto the trailer. I have no idea how they got it home or got it off the trailer. Was glad to see the back of it!

This thread is absolutely astonishing. How could some of these things be missed when viewing a property. That oven didn’t get in that state between viewing and completion. Don’t people look at ovens?

Various friends have found-

1. Every kitchen cupboard full of empty jam jars. Every single one, stop to bottom.
2. Old internal doors buried 6 inches under the lawn, which was very flat but grass free.
3. A squirrel in the hot water tank.
4. A bat in the shower head. Or technically, bits of boiled bat with the shower head acting as a sieve.

The worst thing we had was a light switch downstairs in the kitchen which turned on the light in the bedroom above. Took a year or so to work that out.

The house that Jack built - in both of my last houses. "Handymen" who could quite frankly have killed someone.

My first house that I moved into, I found used needles in the back garden amongst the gravel and used to have people turning up at all hours of the night very aggressive, looking for the previous tenant. I was 8 months pregnant and my partner was out of the country for work (came back a week later luckily!)

my current house was filthy. The amount of dirt was unreal. Food marks on the ceiling, walls, doors, even in the bathroom. I had my second child when we moved to this place who was then 4 weeks old. It was years worth of dirt. Had to get it professionally cleaned as we just couldn’t get rid of the grime!

Lately you have only been allowed 10 mins to view a property. Covid restrictions meant you weren’t allowed to touch anything - no opening windows/turning on taps etc. plus several months can go between viewing and completion - more than enough time for things to rapidly get disgusting. Some vendors literally don’t care or want revenge on buyers etc.

I work for a firm of building surveyors and the following has happened to them: survey of property being sold as part of a contentious divorce, surveyor up ladder in roof space - ladder removed and loft hatch shut on him. We had to arrange a 2nd visit and say no one was allowed in the property while he was there. Another contentions divorce, porno pictures stuck up all over the walls in every room of husband and his girlfriend. Probably plenty more.

When I sold a house that had been rented out and the crappy agents used their deposit to 'clean' the house I had to go in and arrange another clean (was still really filthy) and take down the kitchen blind as it had spiders webs literally carpeted behind it and remove loo seat - beyond disgusting.