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?

😄

Help me out here please. What is "dioxide idealisation stuff?"

I metre sheets of asbestos left underneath the house. I wasn't sure what they were at first, I tried to move them and they fractured so I would have breathed a whole lot in.

OP we also had to offer £20k over asking to secure our new house due to insane competition. Our sellers had expensive taste in furniture so the place looked beautiful- not quite so great once it was all removed…

Boiler broken- got a plumber who claimed he’d fixed it. It wasn’t fixed, had to be replaced. More thousands spent!!

No living room door! Can’t believe we didn’t notice this but that’s what happens when you have a 10 minute viewing to make a life decision. As our whole downstairs is open plan it means we do not have any door separating downstairs from upstairs, and regular sized doors do not fit the frame.

Ill fitting window upstairs therefore constant draught in the bedroom.

Shoddy, incomplete insulation in the loft.

Terrible paint jobs.

Loads of cracked floor tiles in the bathroom, I assume we didn’t notice because us and the estate agent were standing on them!!

Huge gaps between the skirting boards and the walls.

A fancy looking kitchen which now we’re using it we’ve discovered is completely impractical and I miss the basic, functional kitchen I had in my small flat!!

Garden fence absolute joke, had been hidden by large plant pots.

Half covered shed roof, they stopped where the ivy grows over it, as we discovered when we started cutting back the Ivy yesterday.

In fact so many “half” jobs we have actually lost count and it’s become a bit of a joke whenever we discover another one.

Feel like we’ve been conned and like fools for spending so much more than it’s worth, but argh that’s the market for you!!

Some of these are terrible!

the day we moved in to our house (with toddler and 6 month old baby) I thought I could smell gas. Called someone out to check and they said both the boiler and the gas fire were leaking and condemned. The boiler was so old it couldn’t be fixed so only option was a brand new boiler. So we had no heat or hot water for 2 weeks (and it was snowing) and had to shell out for new boiler which was £5k we hadn’t budgeted for.

Smashed window, leaking radiators, condemned boiler, every single wall cracked, wonky doors, leaky roof, squashy floor and a mattress on the drive. I also grossly overpaid 😂

skiddy stains in the toilets. 3x bedrooms and a bathroom with no door on (doors “didn’t really work” for previous owners they said).
a used sanitary pad left in the bathroom cupboard.

a dirty, grimey oven with the door hanging off.

carpets that reeked of alcohol and cigarette smoke.

broken glass and animal bones all over the garden plus a bucket of pig fat (they loved a bbq)

a giant hole in the kitchen ceiling where the bath had leaked

a sinking driveway

gym equipment and furniture just abandoned on the front

a snapped front door key which they claimed had happened just that day

and just loads of their stuff, everywhere, in drawers, cupboards, in the loft….anything they couldn’t be bothered to take

they were still moving out around us at midnight the day they were meant to have been out by 10am.

We had exactly the same in our house! The entire upstairs seemed to be running from a series of extension leads….

in our previous house we were left with an ancient fridge freezer they had started to move, but obviously then decided not to bother so they abandoned it in the middle of the lounge. It was unplugged so had defrosted all over the lounger carpet and soaked the carpet. There was a terrible smell and we found in the freezer a packet of defrosted Brussels sprouts they had clearly forgotten about - rotting and full of maggots…. Lovely.

Cannabis farm in the loft space - damp ceiling and rotting plants so all fell down on the builders. They said the smell was unbelievable.

Thank you for starting this thread. It has made me feel so much better about my own new house problems!

We have some odd wiring going on. The 2 way landing light basically controls the upstairs and downstairs light circuits. If we use either of the switches for the landing light it turns off the lights on one circuit.

The roof leaks. DD had a wet bed when it rained heavily. It's been fixed but I think we're looking at a brand new roof soon.

The back door lets water in when it rains heavily too.

The boiler drops pressure regularly. It's been checked, there are no leaks. It just needs topping up every few days in the winter.

The peeling up DIY lino in the kitchen was covering an asbestos floor :-))

Oh no. Didn't the surveyor pick up on that? No one should buy a house with asbestos in situ unaware, why did vendors not make this clear? How could they not be aware?

Curtains stapled onto the curtain rails (no wonder they didn't take them with them). Tiles on the fire surround stuck on with blu tack.

Plenty of dodgy boilers over the years and feel your pain. A big expense when you aren't expecting it.

@sleepwhenyouaredead

😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱

One cupboard had used condoms in.

Oh my God. Do people really live like this???!!

I have already posted on here about a particular moving day but here goes....

1980s I think. East Dulwich, London.

We get to the house. They haven't even started packing... It is snowing. Luckily I notice a pub not far from the house. I go on ahead to ask if it is ok to bring a cat inside. Luckily they said yes. So there we were for I dunno how long.

Within 30 minutes of moving in, the lights fail. An electrician comes round and refuses to touch anything as the place is a 'death trap' apparently. Poor Dad has to do rewiring. No oven in kitchen but we find a cute little Italian one upstairs. We start to use it and it billows out smoke! For some reason (maybe lack of money which is why my parents always bought do-er uppers) they don't get a new cooker for about 6 months! So everytime we are in or near the kitchen when the oven is smoking away, our eyes would water!

The same place we had to treat the floor in the breakfast room (rising damp, wet rot or something). We had to walk on a plank to get from the kitchen to past the breakfast room but no one informed the cat! Paw prints all over the place!

In another place we dug up a garden roller and several old fashioned milk bottles. Apparently it was quite common to bury stuff in the garden!

In another place when my parents removed a carpet there were several layers of lino, magazines and newspaper on the floor.

OP I think you can go back to the solicitor about the damage you have found if it wasn’t there when you viewed/surveyed.

Huge aperture in kitchen wall that makes stunning “open plan living” to the conservatory is actually just a massive open hole to outside temperatures.

All 3 toilets have a “knack” (are broken)

Boiler needed replacing within days of moving in.

Every job that needed doing for the last 30 years was done as cheaply/shoddily as possible.

No roof insulation. Just no insulation really. So cold.

Aga that costs £500 a month to run.

Rotting window frames covered up by creepers.

Yes - both houses we've bought in last twenty years needed the boiler replacing...

The first one followed multiple requests for a corgi certificate -never received - it didn't work and as soon as the gas engineer looked at it, he condemned it. We'd moved in on a cold December day a few days before Christmas- happy days 🙄

The house was built on piles. We did commission a building inspection, and the inspector did look under the house, but there was no mention in the report. I can only imagine that he didn't go that far in and therefore didn't see them.

I wouldn't be surprised if the seller simply didn't know they were there. It was a pain getting in there, the hatch was very small.

Also this was NZ where people probably take a more relaxed view about things like asbestos lying about.

We just bought a house re done by the local property maintenance guy with the best reputation in the area…

We were looking forward to having a downstairs room we can shut our indoor cat in whilst coming and going… ah yeah that would be the room where a radiator is installed over the doorframe so we can’t close the door! Floor needs to come up, pipes refitted, new radiator of a different size to resolve that one….

Just prepping our lounge for wallpaper (cosmetic update only we thought!)… radiator was not removed when they replastered and the back of the rad is basically filled with plaster….NO idea how we resolve that!

Numerous things hung from or fixed on walls inappropriately. We’re either tiny pins to suspend an Ikea Kallax above a fireplace (they kindly left it for us) or huge 4 inch screws on a very light shelf!

we removed the built in wardrobes in the bedroom as they were clearly just a cheap handmade job (complete with garden gates as wardrobe doors) and it turned out they built it first and replastered AFTER meaning we had to get a plaster to fill the gaps!

random bit of skirting board in the middle of a wall removed.

plastered between picture rail and skirting so they skirting is now flush with the plaster, no lip or grove.

They had gutted the whole house back to brick and redone themselves so we know it’s them. We can’t fathom why people who do this for work, with a great reputation, did this on their OWN home!

Oh and when I got my qualified electrician Dad in to removed the sockets from the chimney brest, the wiring was found to be dangerous!

safe to say, we won’t be using their business for any property maintenance!

When we bought our house it was a doer-upper so we knew the inside needed everything fixing. But, left behind in the garden was a barge! Yes, a boat, slowly rotting. Also plastic animals nailed to trees - we were still finding them months after moving in!

@OnceRuralNowUrbanbliss
I know I was at work and thankfully by the time we got there they had cleared it all out - I don't think they could work with the smell
When we looked round the house (we knew it needed major works so went a few times) there was a prostitute in one of the bedrooms with a different client every time.
Classy all round

There wasn't much needing done in our old house as we kept on top of maintenance but we did do loads of little bits and pieces before moving so that the new owners didn't have to. In hindsight, it was a waste of our time and money as it seems it's not common to have the same level of decency or consideration. We also left a gift and 'welcome to your new home card'.

2 houses were just left full of shitty junk
1 had ‘tumble dryer’ on the kitchen list … it was in the garden and broken …

A shotgun in the wardrobe
an illegal leopard skin in the loft

current house - so dirty. So so dirty. They ticked that they weren’t leaving the oven but Wohoo. It was there! Broken. Why not scribble’not working’ on the list?
a noose in one outhouse
snakes under a tarpaulin (ok not their fault 😂) and in this house, a gun safe … should have kept the shot gun 😆

The upstairs windows in our house must have been second hand and were not fitted to the house. The bedrooms at the back had windows that were 3 inches too short and the gap was covered with plastic and sealant so just leaked every time it rained.

The windows in the main bedroom were held in by one screw on a diagonal, one push and they would have come out.

The damp was something else too. Condensation running down the walls.

We also had skirting board round windows and made into shelves in two of the bedrooms.

They obviously made the hole in the wall around the gas meter too big and rather than fill it in with bricks, plaster etc the hole is just stuffed with tesco bags.

Roof leaking into the bathroom.

Radiator upstairs leaking into wall cavity and down into the kitchen. Only found it when we stripped that room for new window and replastering.

I could go on and on. Every single thing that has ever been done in the house is a bodge job and is costing us a fortune to put right.

This is reminding me of other examples. We bought a 2 bed flat to let out in the 1980s (we resold it at a massive loss in 1996 in the property crash so I call it a buy to lose flat). The wooden floor boards in the bathroom were rotten so had to replace them. We did just about all the works ourselves including repainting.

Then when my son bought as well as stuff being left in the house I was surprised earlier they had agreed to gives us the kitchen appliances which seemed to work okay but the cooker and 1 or 2 others of them all had to be replaced soon after. They also had an electric lead from over the kitchen counter to the washing machine which we had to get change and then the electrics under the sink went and had to be fixed. Then the upstairs shower leaked downstairs.

By the way in English law you may have a bit of recourse. In theory the property should be left empty. With lettings my son's landlord in Bristol for their house of 8 students charged £10 for each black plastic bag of stuff left behind so those students cleared it all out before. For sales of a property you might be able to charge the seller for leaving things if there are incurred costs - no just your time - of emptying the house but most people just do not have the time or want to risk legal costs to bother.

On the form when you sell you will be asked questions like is there asbestos and if the seller knows there is and puts no you might have a claim.