Shit stuff in the house you just bought

[TheFrozenCanal]

This is a semi lighthearted thread, hopefully popcornable.

We recently moved house. Buyer beware is of course the rule at play here.

We offered when houses were being snapped up within a day, and eventually found a house though had to go 20k over the asking price for it. We desperately needed to move - work and no space for dc. We had no money left in the budget for anything more than a quick coat of paint.

We moved in and the:

Boiler is dead. It's -2 outside and I've had two plumbers over to quote on a replacement and they've both told me they fixed it, only for me to discover it isn't fixed.

In bringing the furniture down to move they gouged chunks out of the stairs wall. It's not even that tight to come down. To make space, they took the handrail off (and discarded it I presume) leaving huge holes in the wall. I now need to replaster the wall really.

The upvc windows are extremely draughty for some reason - I didn't think that would happen it wasn't noticeable when we first visited last May!

The whole house is papered in a paper that really needs to come off. But in taking the paper off I see that it was put up to hide some really shonky plastering. Between that and the wallpaper paste gloop that I'm struggling to scrape away, we can't decide if we ought to replaster the whole house (as a DIY job) or sand it down with an electric sander.

What delights were in store for you when you moved in that were not picked up by the survey?

😄

Loving the idea of you putting the pot noodle back in the wall Biddie... one builders mysteriously missing lunch becomes legendary talisman...

We're an odd species aren't we! 😁

When we moved it was a lovely hot day, went to crack open the windows and 'ah, no opening windows in the living room or on the upstairs landing'

You all need to sue your surveyors or ask how much kickback they got for passing the houses. I've never ever heard of the things you've all mentioned.
You really should have taken the puppy to a shelter. They may have dumped him seeing as they didn't want him poor little thing.

I bought a house from the family of a very elderly lady who had lived in the house from new. I don't know how the family of the vendor could do it to their elderly relative as when we moved in the shower did not work, neither did the oven or heating. The loft was 'boarded and had a light', it didn't. The electrics were completely dodgy and the smoke detectors were not wired into the main electrics and did not work.

All of the money that we had for decoration, carpets etc went on essential repairs.

Six years later we are hoping to sell (the now quite comfortable) house and I am a bit worried about what we will find next time 😱

When I moved into my house I discovered that they forgot to pack up the kitchen. The husband had left it to the wife to do who thought the husband was doing it. It was very strange walking into my new home with cupboards full of food and medicines etc!

We thought it was a simple new kitchen/bathroom and redecorate kind of house. When we moved in we realised it was filthy, it stank of cat piss and one corner of the lounge te carpet was stained yellow. We were gagging as we cleaned the filthy kitchen and there was car hair everywhere. The house was left full of junk and the garage was full of crap including paving slabs, zimmer frames, commodes and odd bits of furniture. We complained and vendor said if we left the garage open they'd take a bit of their crap each day, we refused and insisted it was removed immediately and they arranged for. Man and a van to take it away. The hall ceiling fell down, we discovered the boiler wasn't vented properly and was dangerous, we had a family of rats living under the patio and have the neighbour from hell next door (yet they ticked the box saying no disputes on pre sale documents).

A few months after we had moved in and got a skip in to chuck more of their crap we found, they rang a neighbour and asked if they could ask us if they could have a can of paint they had left behind as was perfect for their new place!

Bought a flat, moved in, put clothes in the washing machine which had been included in the sale, it filled with water when switched on then nothing happened, couldn't drain it or open door. Had to get someone in to look at it to tell me it wasn't worth fixing, had to buy a new one. Seller obviously couldn't be bothered to get rid of it. Also after moving in discovered the neighbours were really noisy and no proper insulation between floors so I heard a lot. Seller hasn't told me this even though I'd asked about noise from other flats.

Can you rally around friends who can do bits and pieces for you in return for something you can do for them?. I read on a recent thread here that some streets help each other out with odd jobs, borrow tools etc. Might be worth looking into a community website maybe??

Moved in and had to throw the carpets out the windows- covered and stank of dog pi$$.
Squares on the walls where pictures had been removed and the tar from their smoke had marked them. Boiler died 2 weeks after moving in when it was thick snow and -12 temps. With no carpets (see above!)

When doing up our house a few years later, we went right back to brick. Builder found the chimney in our bedroom that had been removed from the lounge below was only held up by plyboard. Eek!
Lots more but we've fixed most of It now. Dreading moving again

I've just remembered more.
When we turned the heating on for the first time the house filled with putrid smelling smoke so that needed to be replaced.
A front window simply fell out when I opened it. It was just balanced on there.

@BumpySkull my parents found a WW2 bomb in the house they bought when I was a kid! They had to get bomb disposal guys out. Very exciting when you’re 8 - not so much for my parents..😂

Surely when significant items on the seller's particulars of sale prove to be false at the point of moving in - eg boiler not working, banister removed, leaving holes, there should be some sort of redress. Is it too late to speak to your conveyancing solicitor?

I think there are always relatively minor issues that you find when moving to a new house. With us, it was a big hole in the fitted carpet that was covered by a rug. It wasn't worth raising the issue, but the purchase and fitting of a boiler is quite expensive.

A non working boiler is always a risk you take. It’s so common it’s sensible to assume it needs replacing unless it’s still under warranty. Then it’s a bonus if it works.

Two massive compost bins full of dog poo.

They handed the keys and said “oh by the way the compost bins have dog poo so you may want to leave them a couple of years”!

So much other sh*t also left and we have filled over 3 skips with “things they thought we would find useful” ie rubbish they couldn’t be arsed to move with. The husband of the couple we bought from was a hoarder! But the dog poo was definitely the worst!

What really made us laugh/cry was when we saw the previous owners a couple of years after the move and they mentioned the house they moved to was a “real project” and weren’t we lucky to move into theirs!! (Obvs dog poo doesn’t make a house a project but we had to have the whole house re wired and re plumbed which I think constitutes project to most people!)

We were both too gobsmacked to say anything! 😂 but then again they didn’t leave a bomb so maybe we were lucky! 🤷‍♀️

ellyeth, depends how people word ito n their form.One chap this week had ticked no knotweed (instead of "don't know"). There WAS some he had not seen behind something else in the garden. That mistake will cost him over £200,000 or the whole value of the house he bought. People therefore tend to tick don't know on these forms.

We moved into a house that we knew needed shed loads of work. The worst three things, a serious mouse infestation, a boiler heated by an immersion heater without a thermostat (we could hear the water boiling), and electrics so bad that the workmen who came said they were surprised we hadn't had a house fire. We had conducted a full structural survey and it was all missed!

Oh please, both of you. Leave OP alone. Do you remember what it's like to move house?

I mean these two!!

Did you make a claim against your surveyor?

Yep. Defo the tops prize, but Please Do Not Touch.

Had anyone successfully sued a house purchase surveyor - they have so many get out clauses.

Way DH is taking the news that our new house kitchen does not have space for his beloved plumbed in American Fridge Freezer with ice making bit... I'll be leaving HIM behind or requesting visitation rights!

That the electricity had been turned off for a month before the place was redecorated. We moved in to discover that during that hot summer month with no electricity no one had bothered to look in the fridge that had been left with food in it. Not pretty.

Ours were a couple who were getting divorced. They were barely able to communicate, plus their teenage son had broken both his thigh bones in a bike crash and the woman had cancer or something so it was always going to be a shit show.

However.... We moved in to find broken glass and rusty razor blades under the standalone bath. We had a 2 year old and 3 week old... Was a bit of an "exciting" discovery.

Their dog had shat all over the bedroom floors and it had just been left.

The heating didn't work and the house couldn't get over 15 degrees.

There was a cable running 2 inches under a flower bed to a plug socket on the fence. I found that with a spade. It was exciting.

They'd boarded over a patio door in the living room. The curtain was still in situ covered in mold and dust.

The living room had beautiful wood flooring. Laid over a flipping carpet. Of course it's bouncy af so has been ruined and I dread to think how dusty and grim it is under there.

@Idtotallybangdreamoftheendlessnotgonnalie
They laid floorboards over the bloody carpet