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!

They left so much - loft, sheds full of crap. And came back every day for a week wanting to look for things. I finally said no more.
BUT what I discovered several months later in the big shed under all sorts of crap were some incredibly rare old collectables dating back to the 1940s / 50s. Sold them for lots of money which made up for the inconvenience😊

I honestly cannot imagine being so unkind to people moving into what had been my home

@scoobydoo1971 I think we have a winner 😲

Always check the fixtures and fittings list down to the last detail. I've always had the opposite, owners have left their old furniture and in one case an old bed and multiple tyres buried in the garden (we thought it might be an Anderson shelter, alas not!)

We moved when we had a very young baby and a 3 year old. Our removals lorry turned up and cleared the house in the morning and we were to meet them after lunch at the new house that was nearby. Long story short, the buyer ‘disappeared’ without completing with his solicitor so we couldn’t get the keys to the new house. We ended up in a hotel for 3 nights as there was nothing we could do until after the weekend. We only had the clothes we stood up in, and nothing for the kids. We had planned to leave light fittings/curtains/loo roll holders etc (although the weren’t listed in the particulars). I’m ‘ashamed’ to say that we went back to the empty house over the weekend and stripped it bare. We then had to take the buyer to court to recover the costs we had incurred during our ‘homeless’ weekend.

I bought a house and the damn sellers left the kitchen!!

It was in a skip by day 3 though thank goodness 😂

We had exactly the same situation, lightbulbs, loo roll holders, the mirrors which filled a whole bathroom wall previously we were left with a bare wall with screw holes. Didn’t like the feature wall really but still! Total CF! It was on day 2 I realised they’d not taken the washing line which had been left across the garden with a couple of pegs. I had their forwarding address so I posted it to them with a note saying “you forgot this and as you seem to have taken everything else thought you’d miss it”

Hm maybe but even so.
So would you leave the curtains too because you would need to loosen that screw a tiny bit to lift the pole to remove the curtains? Then put the pole back because it's not decoration?

Toilet roll from both bathrooms

The seller of our precious house apparently wanted to take the (extremely average) laminate flooring from the conservatory but the silly old estate agent had included it in the listing so we got to keep it.

He took loo roll holders and towel rails in the end. I say ‘he’ because his wife left us a note of exactly which Ikea utensil rack had been removed from the tiled cooker splashback, so we could replace with one that fitted the holes … the tightness I think was all him, with her trying to make good.

Well that’s fine, but as I understand it, you’d have to make good the wall damage from removing the curtain poles and put in a basic £2.99 pendant style light fitting.

A - you’re supposed to screw the pole in place so it doesn’t move when you open and close the curtains
B - by that logic you take the pole and leave the brackets?

They took the gas cooker out themselves, must have switched gas off and then back on after removal, but didn’t cap the pipe to the cooker so just left the gas open 🤬 took every light bulb and the toilet seat(which we had already brought a new one anyway, but still) then came back next day for wheelie bin

When we moved into our last (not current) house the place was a tip, elderly couple, the lady was poorly and husband couldn't wouldn't, more like be arsed to clean it up. I cried the first night we moved in.
So, they left us an awful swirly-patterned carpet chock full of cat fleas and an ancient duck (drake, actually -- Charlie) in the garden along with half a dozen hens and a cockerel. They did apologise and said they couldn't find anyone to take them. So we had successive generations of ducks and hens (got a mate for Charlie called Blodwen) for the next 30 years or so. Great eggs, though. I miss those.

The opposite experience in our current house, older couple who left it spotless.

My parents refused to pay 12k for some tbh stair carpets that were thread bear....the seller moving into a flat tore them up and binned them. Parents found a very expensive item left behind..think 12k...they told the solicitor and seller collected it.....no thank you. Asked my parents about this....it was wrong to keep said item as not ours. Goes without saying seller took light bulbs, tbh anything not attached...all curtains etc.... parents paid asking price.

We have been lucky - bought 3 houses, all lovely sellers. Our present home, they left a bottle of champagne and tins of paint for the house - with notes to show which room. But this thread may me think of this story.

https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/15m-home-looked-like-war-8471993

I think I would yeah... But I wouldn't turn up to a house and be raging that they took the curtain poles...

@scoobydoo1971 that happened to us too, with a gas fire!

We walked in after closing to find a relative of the previous owners in our kitchen on his knees prying up a tiny ugly woe begone cabinet, that looked like it was made by someone who nailed a few rough boards together, from the wall and floor. I asked him why he was in our house. I had to follow him out to his car to make him give me the keys. To my house. I had to tell him several times to hand over the keys.

The sellers had ages and ages to take whatever they wanted from the house (which they did). But seemingly there was one more thing 😂

We accidentally took some instructions for fitted kitchen appliances when we moved. We only realised about a year later and decided they'd think we were mental if we took them back. It was incompetence rather than malice!

BUT IT IS It petty to take it all.

The estate agents list is supposed to make sure this doesn’t happen, but there is no redress so buyers have to suck it up. I cannot imagine a world where I’d take fitted wardrobes or laminate flooring, or carpet or secondary glazing!
Mad. However if you are a CF at least have the decency as @jlpth says to put in a basic £2.99 pendant light fitting once you’ve ripped down ‘your’ lights.

We did this! Our sellers were trying to flog us their blinds (for very unique sized windows) for an extortionate sum. During our 'measuring up' visit I mentioned that our current house also had unusual sized windows but that since those blinds were no longer of use to us, we planned to leave them for our buyers.

Luckily the wife took this onboard and they left them for us without charge. I think he was the tight bastard in that relationship, they divorced a year later.

My ex when we sold our house when we split went round and took off all the expensive light switches he bought and left those normal white ones. I was upset until that point then he gave me the ick.

Oh and the day before we moved out I had taken all of my stuff and gone and I said I don’t want the other woman in my house. When I popped back there she was in the garden. Well she ‘wasn’t in the house so I couldn’t complain’.

He also backed into the neighbours car and thought he could get away with it but they caught him. Prick.

But I digress 😂

I think it’s partly how you ‘make good’ those things too. It’s really not the done thing to leave bare wires but if you replaced an expensive fitting with a cheaper one then it’s fair as long as it’s made clear in the F&F list.
Id assume if viewing a house curtain poles/blinds/light fittings would stay. Moveable things like lamps etc obviously not.

I had a friend who moved in to find 2 chipmunks abandoned in a small cage in one of the bedrooms. That was annoying, on moving in day.