What's the most petty thing a home owner has taken with them?

[MarvellousTimeRuiningEverything]

We completed on our house yesterday. Sellers have been a nightmare, very difficult and tried to increase price by £12k the day before exchange. So we knew they'd probably screw us over and we haven't been disappointed. Lightbulbs, toilet roll holders, some handles from cupboards etc... but the most petty thing has to be the clock. They had one of those god awful clocks where you stick the numbers to the wall then screw in/add the arms. They've left the numbers, but removed the arms and taken them with them!

Exactly. If you’ve just sold your house for several hundred thousand pounds, why are you worried about items that cost hundreds? Especially items specially made or bought for the house you are selling. Unless you are moving to an identical house, they will be of no use to you at all. I think it must be some variant on a sunk costs theory

My parents moved into a house with one very large very tall room, and because getting carpet and curtains for it quickly was going to be a bit of a nightmare they bought the brown carpet and curtains that were there. Nasty dark colour but good enough for a stop-gap, they thought.

After the previous owner moved out my mother discovered that the carpet was actually rose-pink wherever there had been furniture sitting on it; the owner simply hadn't cleaned the house for about twenty years. And when she tried to draw the curtains they spread the way a very old shirt does, all the threads parting into a net. We had thought they were brown velvet, but in fact they were some sort of thin linen material covered with a thick coating of dust mixed with nicotine. Mum walked off with the end of one in her hand and got half-way down the hall with it before she was brought up short by the other end of it still being fixed to the curtain-rail.

I can't believe how many mean spirited shits take the light bulbs!

We brought a house which was going through probate and had already been empty 6 months, there was very little in the house when we viewed it, so the inheritors didn't even really need to come back and clear the house.

They took the carpets.

They were loud 1980s patterned carpets. We didn't really want them but we didn't want to move in to bare floors either.

Why....just why 😂

Why on Earth do people do this??
The people we bought our current house from left the house without cleaning it, but they were just dirty fuckers.

It does just seem massively selfish to take things like carpet that are cut to size/shape and likely no use in a new house.

Like how does anyone justify that to themselves?

Frankly after living in my current house for 12 years I'm looking at our upcoming move as a chance to massively declutter. We are going to move out all the stuff we are keeping and then sell/donate most the rest (unsalavagables will go to the tip/scrap man).

I suppose we are different to others as we are going to continue renting 2-3 months past getting the keys so we can live as we are while we do the renovations and then move stuff in at a more leisurely pace.

I just don't understand taking stuff you don't need, then you just have to store it in your new house. You would only punish yourself by robbing yourself of space and creating more work for yourself by doing that.

Plants out of the garden and all light fittings, despite the contract stating all fixtures and fittings were included. We'd only just got back from working overseas and I just didn't have the time or patience to argue about it

We sold it 18 months later for a good profit so it kinda worked out.

My PILs once moved into a house they'd bought to discover that the vendors had not only taken all the light bulbs, loo roll holders, curtain poles, and so on, but had also dug up literally every single plant and shrub from the back garden, and had emptied the pond and dug up and removed the pond liner. They also had a gravel path, from which the vendors removed both the gravel and the weed membrane thing from underneath. FIL said he was actually amazed they hadn't rolled up the turf like a carpet and taken the lawn with them as well.

I had the opposite which was equally a huge inconvenience
Apart from the TV and bed
The complete contents of the flat were left in situ!
I had to get a friend to take sofa etc to the tip before I couldn't fit mine in
Gave the towels to my dog Walker
Kept the unopened pack of toilet rolls

My first house was a doer-upper that I had to sell unexpectedly due to redundancy and new job relocation. I had just had fitted a lovely new bedroom carpet that a friend admired. I did remove the new carpet and give to my friend on moving out as it fitted nicely into her bedroom. The difference is, I negotiated this with the buyer and it was agreed in writing. Plus, it was in the late 1980s when things like moving carpets were still heard of (much more common in earlier decades).

more recently DH and I bought a property from an elderly couple that had moved into sheltered accommodation and I think they just locked up and handed over the key. They’d taken their clothes and emptied the fridge but otherwise it was like they had just popped out. Bed still made with their jammies under the pillow, soap and flannel by the side of the bath. Lots and lots and lots of nick-nacks. We’d agreed they would leave white goods and large furniture but it took weeks and several skips to clear the rest.

We once bought a house that had been vacant for a while so assumed it would look the same when we got the keys. No, it seemed like the owner had used the intervening time to fill it with so many black sacks of rubbish and pieces of broken furniture that he must have invited everyone he knew to dump their trash there. We had paid over the asking price, caused no delays and made no requests about contents.

Lesson learned about checking a house before completion. It took weeks to clear it out.

Lesson learned about checking a house before completion. It took weeks to clear it out.

But can you check it before completion? Don't you normally complete and only then get given the key?

Most agents understand why a buyer may ask to do a quick check before exchange/completion, especially if the conveyancing has gone on a while. We’ve done it, and it was a literal 5 minute whiz through to see the house was essentially still standing and no significant changes since we made the offer.

of course it doesn’t prevent a bad faith vendor from doing something malicious between then and completion, but it can help.

I think you win.

A quick check before completion sounds an excellent idea; I just wasn't aware that it was A Thing!

@nonumbersinthisname when I bought my house the owner refused to let me go in after viewing until I had the keys - mind you he was an awkward sod the whole way through the process.

They took the u-bend pipe from under the kitchen sink!

I have mine in huge pretty tree planters, rather than in the ground for this very reason. I love them all so much that the idea of having to move/transplant them and potentially kill some of them upsets me. Especially my massive Lady of Shallot who is utterly magnificent.

My OH laughs at me because we have been in this house 8 years and have absolutely no plans to go anywhere. 😂

So when we sold/bought our house 3 years ago it stipulated we were not to leave any curtain poles, light fittings or lampshades etc. Was a real PITA to be honest as none of them suited our new house. Likewise our vendor wasn't supposed to leave anything either. Nothing was left unsafe and we left light bulbs etc, but I suspect this is more of a grey area than people realise!

Door handles I don't get?

I should say we did leave a bottle of prosecco, box of chocs, a village magazine and a welcome card though!

😂😂😂

I recall my late father who a was council housing committee chairman years ago that roses were an exception to the rules about not digging up plants to take with you when you moved.

That's so random. Plant-ist.

I would have been quite happy for sellers to take plants with them. We don't know how to take care of them and just feel guilty letting them spoil. Much better they go where they are loved!

They took, the controller (hive) for central heating/boiler and the smart metre which can only be used for this house! We would have been grateful if they’d taken the flea ridden carpet, broken greenhouse, rotten decking and a stinking freezer, broken fitted wardrobes,
piles of rubbish and cleaned the disgustingly dirty house!

I suppose it depends how awkward you want to be in return! In our case conveyancing had gone on for 15 months (!) and the owners had already moved out, so the place had been empty for over a year. Everyone agreed it was a sensible thing to do a final check before exchange - eg we’d seen from the outside that the gutters had blocked with massive clumps of weeds growing so we wanted to check there wasn’t any serious water damage inside.