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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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

162 replies

IclimbedSnowdon · 27/07/2022 00:44

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?

OP posts:
crazynell · 27/07/2022 15:57

Not our house but our next door neighbour when we lived in London. They were evicted for not paying their rent for months and general antisocial behaviour like noise, dealing and harassment of their neighbours. When they left, every electric socket in the house had been damaged by twisting a big screwdriver into it.

There were lots of TV sets hidden upstairs - people thought they'd been receiving stolen goods

the80sweregreat · 27/07/2022 17:32

It took us nearly 15 years to get around to our loft and get shot of the previous owners things. Then a trip to the tip.
I'd love to move to a brand new house without other peoples things in it.

SlouchingTowardsBethlehemAgain · 27/07/2022 17:51

Hundreds of left hand rubber gloves.
A small hole in the wall with string protruding from it. It was a tiny string dispenser the previous owner had fitted behind the wall.
On taking off the wooden cladding on walls and ceilings - not a scrap of plaster to be seen.

RinklyRomaine · 27/07/2022 18:42

We lived in company accom for quite a few years when I was growing up. My dad was often bought in to turn the business round so we sometimes moved into homes the previous occupants hadn't wanted to leave which meant they were usually a nightmare. My poor mum. One in particular stays with me. I went in with the first removal man and we discovered the previous occupants wife (it was the wife, he was in prison for serious fraud by the this time) had left her thoughts about the company, us, and life in general smeared on the walls of the lounge and hall in human excrement.

Removal man turfed me out and barred the door. They had moved us before and refused to let my DM in until they'd bleached it all off. Gross.

IclimbedSnowdon · 27/07/2022 19:21

Oh wow, some of these make for horror story reading!
Our kitchen was also filthy when we moved in. Dh had to remove the built in hob and oven it was so bad.

I just wonder why people would leave their home in the conditions described here.

OP posts:
Gingernaut · 27/07/2022 19:27

The address had been used for fraud - many debt collectors used to regularly send people and letters asking if anyone by the name of [NOT ME] lived there.

One debt was to British Gas, who refused to believe I wasn't the defaulting tenant under (yet another) assumed name.

That took over three months to sort out, meanwhile I had no gas.

Water, Council Tax and electricity were no problem.

Cherrysoup · 27/07/2022 20:02

Evidence of mice/rats. No keys for the upstairs windows that swung up like a garage door, totally unsafe. Had to change all the handles throughout. A wobbly hearth, just needed stabilising. Carpet used as underlay, totally filthy. Wallpaper badly applied, falling off. Kitchen cupboards that were weird frames, not proper cupboards. The boiler, directly over the hob. That needed moving. Layers of soaking flooring in the bathroom, the toilet was leaking. A massive dog shit on the patio.🤮A neighbour with severe mh issues, delusional and the reason the vendors moved, but never mentioned.

As a previous poster, all 3 wheelie bins full of the incorrect rubbish, took ages to sort out. Lots of begging letters from vendor’s bf asking for his various fines/traffic tickets to be removed. The overgrown lawn was covered in cat shit-vendor had a 4 year old child and was heavily pregnant. 🤷‍♀️ Bailiffs threatening to remove our goods until I pointed out it was the previous owners they wanted and where to find them.

In this house, it seems the previous owners had demolished an extension and dumped it behind trees. We found a huge kitchen window, a door, loads of breeze blocks, lots of broken crockery, old tools, car parts (they used to have multiple cars in various states of repair on the shared drive, wankers) There was a massive ball of concrete which was presumably whatever was left over from some project, inches under the lawn. We needed 2 skips. There were cork tiles then white wall tiles on the kitchen floor. The built in oven didn’t heat up so needed replacing asap. The chimney hadn’t been properly lined, so the bloke who came to service the woodburner described it as like having a fire in a box, not effective!

When we move in future, I will be going over any potential places with a fine toothed comb!

Bellyups · 27/07/2022 20:06

Mice

TheTeddyBears · 27/07/2022 22:14

Seems I've gotten off lightly in comparison to a lot of these. What is it with the bodily fluids, grim! 😱

In my first house we found an old sock & some male pants down the back of the radiator 🤮 luckily I think they were clean and had been put in radiator to dry and fallen down the back of it and got stuck. Also cat hair everywhere and not very nice smell, I know she did keep cats. Must have fumigated the place for viewing as didn't smell the 2 times we viewed the house.

Current house, I found a lacy bright pink bra stuck down the back of the fitted bedside cabinet lol. We also found that the main bathroom taps had been put in the wrong way so it says H but cold water comes out and the C tap gives u hot water 🙈 also really bad stains on the carpets that had been covered with rugs when we viewed. We were replacing anyway but made place look bad until we did.

We weren't left any instructions or codes for the alarm, brilliant. Still don't know it and was supposed to get smart meters fitted they said it might make alarm go off so I didn't bother in the end. Need to get round to getting a new one!

Also, a really weird one in the kitchen a drawer that wasn't a drawer it pulled out and was a board I cldnt make out what it was meant to be! Apparently I was told it's for ironing on. Anyway got ripped out with the kitchen lol. Oh and another drawer that was false just for show it was actually just a cupboard but door was shorter with what looked like drawer above but no it didn't open so we only had 1 drawer that actually opened in the kitchen. The fridge was also in the utility room and that drove me mad having to go there to get stuff out fridge when cooking.

PlasticsFantastic · 27/07/2022 22:18

A handprint in blood on a wall. It wasn’t there at the viewing.

TheCrowening · 27/07/2022 22:28

DaughterOfEvening · 27/07/2022 15:09

I’ve shared this before here. A few days after moving into our dream home (Edwardian villa that needed a fair bit of tlc but we knew could be forever) I was cleaning the understairs cupboard and found a box containing a human jawbone, compete with teeth.

Underneath that, another box containing bits of human bones that I was later told were leg bone.

The carpet in the bedroom at the front of the house had a large stain (over a metre wide) that looked like dried black coffee that hadn’t been cleaned properly. Later when the carpet was lifted, found it was blood that had also stained the floorboards underneath.

We did stay living there. For over 18 years. It was mostly a very happy home. We have recently sold up and moved far away.

WHAT

What happened next? Did you ring the police?!

DaughterOfEvening · 28/07/2022 06:58

Yes I rang the police (after I rang the estate agent, who was not at all surprised)
Spoke to local plod, who laughed at me 😒but took the details.

Long story short two officers arrived around a month later and took away the bones and I was informed by the coroner that there would be no further action as the bones were deemed archaeological finds (they had classification numbers on them, I didn’t look too closely) so were passed on to a local museum.

The estate agent subsequently told me that the previous owner worked in a bone-related profession. I would have thought they would have had slightly more respect for human remains though?

Regarding the bloodstain, years later a neighbour told me that she had helped during the birth of the previous owner’s baby….in the room where we found the bloodstain. Ugh. Why would you leave that?! It must have stunk before it dried out.

All the neighbours knew the story about the bones (small village) and we had lots of jokes about bones under the patio when we landscaped the garden.

Gonnabegrandma · 28/07/2022 07:25

We had to sell my late parents house and my brother panicked about buried pets in the garden . So …. He dug them all up and moved them to his garden . All well and good apart from the fact that the backgaeden looked like a battle field with trenches !!!!! But nothing left to scare new owners 😁

Ciela · 28/07/2022 13:04

Do bailiffs showing up for 10 years unpaid council tax count. Thankfully as it is Scotland they couldn’t enter the property. DH was able to prove we were not the couple they were looking for. We did however get an energy bill for the same couple for a property they must have been renting a year after we bought the flat from them. They hadn’t bothered to say this address was no longer theirs and they had fled without paying bills at the rental. Thankfully our solicitor was able to prove when we bought the property and that the other couples ownership and therefore rights to the address ended on that date.

The couple mentioned above left suitcases and rabbit food in the loft. They had a dog so goodness knows how long the rabbit food had been up there. They also left a dirty kitchen and a hall cupboard containing clothes.

The strangest thing left behind was at my childhood home. When my parents moved in they found a tortoise in the garden. Apparently the tortoise “Charlie” had been there when the previous owners had moved in too. Charlie didn’t need any human intervention and found everything he needed in the garden. Nobody knew how old Charlie was but the family my parents bought the house from had lived there 25 years.

xogossipgirlxo · 28/07/2022 13:32

Comparing to yours, mine's not too bad. Just rat poops in the shed 😂

YorkshireLass2012 · 28/07/2022 13:42

A gimp mask and lots of S&M gear in the basement 👀

TalkingToMyselfAgain · 28/07/2022 13:43

A used Tampax in one of the drawers 🙁

Cotherstone · 28/07/2022 13:51

The previous owners father’s memorial headstone in the garden 😂

Empra123 · 28/07/2022 15:02

Friend found a pistol under the sink the day he moved in. And loads of oasis for flower arranging. He gave the oasis to my mother and it lasted her about 10 years!

StoneofDestiny · 28/07/2022 15:28

So many gross homes on here 😱. As for the amount that were flea ridden...........ye gawd!

Danikm151 · 28/07/2022 21:32

@Ciela is Charlie still around?

WhatIsThisPlease · 28/07/2022 21:37

That my next door neighbour is the loudest man on the planet.

izzyb6488 · 28/07/2022 21:39

All walls replastered over painted nicotine stained woodchip in every room. Only released when taking out a fitted wardrobe and all the plaster fell off the bedroom wall leaving behind the horror! Removing the alarm sensors revealed the extent of the problem. Oh what a month of hell that was to remove!

Ciela · 28/07/2022 21:49

One of my brownies parents bought the house from my parents and yes my brownie still has Charlie.

Ciela · 28/07/2022 21:52

Danikm151 · 28/07/2022 21:32

@Ciela is Charlie still around?

My parents sold the house in 2012 so we know Charlie is at least 58 years old.