To think fitted wardrobes come with the house...

[NeverMovingAgain]

We've taken bloody months and months to get to this stage and we're finally on the home stretch towards completion and exchange so it's entirely possible I've lost sight of what is and is reasonable but am I wrong to think fitted wardrobes should come with the house?

We've finally received a fixtures and fittings form today along with the paperwork we need to sign before we can complete and exchange and it says the fitted wardrobes are excluded from the sale.

Am I losing the plot to think they would surely be coming with the property? We're leaving them in our property, it never occurred to us not to because they are fitted to the space, so surley the whole point is they're designed for that room and you don't take them with you?

I've emailed to get clarification but was it presumptious of me to think they would be staying in the house?

The clue is in the name surely - fitted …. Therefore they should be included - madness if they’re not, especially as the agent details specifically sold the room as fitted wardrobes. Hopefully your solicitor will sort this.

Call their bluff. Ours wanted paying for her minging old carpets and curtains which were massive, and she was moving into a flat. We said we wouldn't pay, she was free to take them. Obviously she did not.

It’s a lot of effort to remove them, I would definitely say they were included.

I would query the damage they will cause by removing them and if they are going to make the damage right. It will surely cause damage to the wall or at the very least the paintwork. Also were they fitted before the current flooring? There may be damage to the floor or a different floor completely.

They could just be hoping you say you want them and will pay extra, either way it’s cheeky.

My grandparents moved into a house stripped bare, they even took the lightbulbs.

They thought the seller was a decent fellow turns out he was a tight mean spirited git. Fortunately light bulbs were cheap & easy to resolve & in the end it became a family joke that he might have take the light switches but ran out of time.

OP insist on what is legally right & fair , but don’t loose sight of the bigger game which is getting the house that you want.

I have learnt not to assume people leave anything. The first house I ever bought the previous owner took the lightbulbs, some door knobs (brass ones) and the absolute eye opener - the “s” bend from the kitchen sink. I assume this was because there was a washer attachment on it. I only found out about the latter when cleaning the kitchen ( they could clearly only clean to eye level) and the following day there was water on the floor. I’d been rinsing things in the sink and it was just flooding the cupboard and then floor 🙄

We were supposed to buy a house about 18 months ago and when the fixtures and fittings form was presented to us, the owners were taking two wood burning stoves 😳. Even the agents said they had never heard anything so odd. In the end, we ended up not buying that house but found another with amazing vendors and we are so much happier here than we would have been at that one, the first (of many 🙈🙈) houses we looked at.

Best of luck. It's such a stressful time 🍀

When my friend was buying her house the owners tried to make them pay for the fake grass in the garden a few weeks before they were due to complete.
They refused ,so owners rolled up the grass and took it with them 🤦🏽‍♀️

Call their bluff. ain't no one taking them with them unless the new house is the same builder and wardrobe sizes!

and the absolute eye opener - the “s” bend from the kitchen sink.

Wow that's a new low and this thread has seen some cheeky fuckery! Who the fluff takes the 's' bend!

Will be sure to check ours is in place once we finally get the keys.

Our sellers took shelving fitted into a very awkward little space that covered ugly pipes, removed a fireplace and all the curtains (fair enough) but they were a nightmare to deal with and didn’t move out until 3 days after completion day. And to top it off sent a removals firm a few weeks later to try to fetch the range cooker that they had definitely included in the price. The driver was told that MrsCF didn’t live hear anymore and had no claim on anything in our property.

Reminds me of a film I once saw where the sellers removed the swimming pool and took it with them.

Of course they remain, the sellers are trying it on.

Do not pay extra for them.
If fact you want a discount for them removing them.
additionally insist that you have a legal written agreement that if they are removed the areas where they were located will be made good and that they will ensure that the decoration matches the rest of the room.

Good luck to you OP.

Before I bought my house I was advised to state exactly what I wanted left behind in the house - apparently some people even go so far as to remove copper wiring. I stated that I wanted everything in the kitchen to remain as it was - and I am glad I did as the seller told me later he would have taken the units with him if I hadn't made them a condition of my offer.

He, too, was a tight git, judging by the state of some of the things I have found in the house since.

We had our third bedroom fitted out as a dressing room - fitted wardrobes all round and a dressing table/cupboards. Cost was around £8000 three years ago. We used Sharps and it’s really good quality. We were briefly thinking of moving earlier this year and when the EA valued the house, the dressing room and the kitchen we had refitted at the same time were classed as high end home improvements and increased the value of the house. We ended up changing our minds, and stayed, but it proves a point. If you carry out home improvements and they add value to your home, you can’t take them with you when you leave, because the buyer is paying for them already.

Our fitted wardrobes cost 6k. On thinking about It. Yes they could be removed and put in a new home. Would we. No. Could we. Yes.

we have some statues outside, I commented they looked like they had been there for ever and any buyer would assume they stayed. My adult child solicitor said it doesn’t matter what they assume, you can Just write on the fix fittings form you’re removing and they are not inc in the sale. Again I wouldn’t but again I could. It would then be about the negotiation,,was it important enough t0 me to lose the sale, or important enough for the seller to loose their buyer.

it wasn’t wrong to assume the wardrobes stayed as such but in reality the fix and fixtures form legally tells you what’s inc on the sale.

I’d advise negotiating them staying or a discount but if they refuse to budge , as ours did, and are willing to loose the sale over it and go back to market, only you know how important this is.

the bottom line is though you only know what’s inc in the sale when you get the fix and fittings form.

The ignorance of people on this thread is astonishing. It doesn't matter if it's screwed to the wall or bedded in concrete. If it's not on the TA10 it's not included in the sale.

If they were in particulars and mentioned in discussions I reckon they have just ticked the wrong box. It's easily done. Fingers crossed they confirm it's a mistake on Monday.

I get what you're saying in that the fixtures form is what solidifies what is included but does that mean you would expect nothing you saw on the floor plan or read about in the particulars to be included? If so why bother including them it seems pretty deceitful?

Also slightly tongue in cheek but using that logic does this mean you would expect to move in and find no toilet, bathroom sink or any doors, internal or external after all none of them are included on the form.

It does actually matter. Fixtures are included, fittings are negotiable. Fitted wardrobes are a bit of a grey area but I'd argue that if the room has been decorated around them (ie the flooring and decorating has treated them as permanent fixtures), they're fixtures, not fittings.

This may have been said, but if you turned the house upside down and shook it, the fixtures stay in place and the fittings fall out! IMO, fitted wardrobes are fixtures and it should have been made clear from the get go if they weren't included.

Regardless of what they fill in. If you’re not happy you can state that and get them to redo the form and include, reduce your offer to account for the cost of replacing the fitted wardrobes or just threaten to withdraw your offer full stop and their chance of getting into their new home they have found is greatly diminished.

You are in a strong position assuming a chain is established. Tell your solicitors you want them included or the sales price discounted by an amount similar to a quote to replace. The sellers will soon have to decide if they really value these custom fitted wardrobes that much to mess up their move.

@NeverMovingAgain if it's a fixture (fixed into the property) the assumption is they will remain unless otherwise specified, you should be safe assuming the toilets will be left in the house! Most people like you of course would assume fitted wardrobes fall in the category of fixture. If it's a fitting, (confusingly named but not fitted into the property unless by a few screws - eg pictures hung on the wall, potentially even curtain poles, but also the completely unfixed down furniture) the assumption is they will be taken unless otherwise specified.

Why so dramatic. No the poster doesn’t mean that. The point remains, the whole point of the process is this form is completed. You know what’s included and you can then decide to proceed or not. If it was everything attached to a wall there would be no -ping on the form. And of course a house needs things like toilets and sinks. It does not need a luxury fitted wardrobe.

I wasn't trying to be dramatic I did say it was tongue in cheek. Clearly I don't need the luxery fitted wardrobe more than I need a toilet but given both are in the floor plan and mentioned in the particulars I saw no reason to assume they both were not included in the sale.

Anyway a small update for those interested our solicitor has responded to the email we sent despite not working Sundays and although tone can be tricky to gage over written communication it's pretty clear she's not best pleased about the whole situation.

Hopefully now she's aware of the issue we can sort it out promptly tomorrow.

We have insurance restrictions about structural flood damage. The insurers say that fitted kitchen units are part of the structure, so I would have thought that also applied to fitted bedroom cupboards.