First house joys what did you get?

[Deebee90]

So completed on my first house today and got the keys. What lovely surprises did you get if any?

mine is 2 broken toliets and one including someone’s pee that they clearly couldn’t flush

also they’ve left me socks in the washing machine.

not checked the loft yet. House has supposedly been empty 7 months too since the owner passed away.

but I am on the housing market and that’s all that matters

Got the keys to our first house, turned up to the family still bloody moving out! Took them another 3 hours to leave and give us the keys they had kept. They didn’t quite get that vacant possession and please leave all keys with the estate agent meant they had to be out fully by 2pm.

I know we forgot to empty our crisp cupboard when we left so the new owner got a large plastic tub full of crisps and our lap trays as an extra welcome present.

The owner still there with his shoes and socks off

totally ruined our first house move in vibes

oh and cctv cameras in the bedroom and living room

Inches of chip fat & nicotine that had to be scraped off in rolls, we went through gallons of sugar soap & bleach. A stair carpet that stuck to your feet & again had to be taken up with a scraper. The grill & oven were so thick in grease there was hardly any space to put food in. When my dad disconnected the cooker circuit to remove the oven, the cooker was still live & wired into the shower circuit, the shower was connected to the cooker circuit & was lethal with bare wires. The kitchen was in the skip on the first day, we had already ordered a new one. Lumps taken out of doors & walls where the owner had battered his wife with a hammer. The vendor had 'helpfully' painted the whole interior in vivid purple from when we had last viewed the house. The bathroom had been plumbed in by his wife using what I can only describe as offcuts of pipe & a million compression fittings, when you emptied the bath, the shower cubicle filled with water. We had bailiffs constantly knocking looking for the vendor, he had been doing booze & cigarette runs to France & selling out the front door, apparently the hall & lounge had been stocked floor to ceiling with packs of beer &, wine & cigarettes, he made so much money he bought a static caravan on the coast until he got caught.

We got the keys on 12 October & moved in on Halloween, we had managed to get two bedrooms decorated so we lived & slept in one & had a dining table & chairs in the other one, no kitchen, just a microwave, sandwich toaster & the dishwasher plonked in the empty kitchen. My dad rewired the house, the kitchen was finished by 1st December, exh & I put laminate flooring down in the living room, we had my brother's old 3 piece suite, television, washer/dryer, a new bed & fridge freezer, I bought cheap curtains from Primark & Matalan, if I'm honest it was really the only time we were happy together, having the whole house finished & furnished with new furniture didn't make us happy. I loved that house & it broke my heart when I had to sell it after we split up, if I had the chance I would buy it back in a heartbeat.

House A - A ventriloquists dummy in one of the fitted wardrobes. Scared us shitless.

House B - Plastic Halloween skeletons in the attic.

House C - A smutty book and some gay porn mags hidden in the garage behind some foam put on the wall to stop the car door hitting the bricks. The house belonged to a married elderly man and his wife.

ironing board and christmas decorations in the attic

A dozen pots of half-used paint stored in the loft.
Cracked washbasin with a non-functioning tap.
Dishwasher where filters had not been washed out - they lived on lentils! Ditto kitchen cupboards, sticky with olive oil, coated with ground coffee.
Landing floor giving way.
And we had a top level survey! Next time I will take a builder round.

Blocked drains- the previous owner had redone their kitchen to make their kitchen sink and washing machine go into a rainwater pipe. Flooded the garden with crap three days after moving in!

We had kindly refused the offer to buy their washing machine (we'd bought a new one a few months before) and their slimline dishwasher (because we knew they were moving into a new build with a full size one; they had said how much they were looking forward to that), and they just left both behind anyway.

Oh my god, the dog definitely wins. What on earth were they thinking leaving him behind!

When we arrived at our second house purchase the older gentleman left every single cupboard full of junk he didn't want. He had taken his clothes, cups and plates and that was about it. He was also very proud of the ivy he had been growing up the front of the house for over 20 years. My FIL took the shears to it on the very first day. I felt awful when the seller turned up to collect his post a week or so later.

We bought our last house from a couple moving to Australia to be with their adult children. They gave some furniture away to friends but left pretty much everything. It felt like they had just gone to the shops and were due back any minute. We had extra tables, chairs, beds, kitchen appliances. Even left dressing table full of makeup and bathroom full of shampoos and body wash. She had so many cleaning products I didn't have to buy any for over a year.

A wok full of crusty food in a drawer under the oven. House had been empty for a while before I moved in.

Used tampon down the back of the bathroom radiators, bogies stuck under the bedroom windowsill, broken conservatory window, dog shit all over the garden, full chip pans in the kitchen cupboard, absolutely disgusting toilets - I threw up cleaning them. Dirty carpets ,missing light fittings that we had paid for , garage remote control absent….and more. We had to delay the move by a week just so we could clean
This was a 6 bedroom house in a very well to do area btw . I honestly don’t think they bothered to clean since the day we viewed !

A cat called Orange

A strange smell that I assumed was just a place in need of ventilation and not yet “my” house.

it was actually a damp carpet that someone had laid laminate flooring on top of.

Bonus

A pelvic floor machine found on top of a cupboard

First house someone had died in and everything needed doing as nothing had been done for 30 years. But it was left spotless by the family.

Second house, new kitchen extension, modern decor etc. Bloke didn't move out half of his broken stuff. Every room had a large item of furniture left and it was filthy. At least a cm of dog hair on stairs carpet. Onion peel in the cupboards etc... oh and a garden full of junk he was supposed to take away.

Some people just have no pride I suppose?

A grill pan so thick with grease it was immediately binned.
A dish of mandarin oranges in the fridge
Bare wires where wall lights once were.
More bare wires behind the cooker.
Dozens of empty whisky and gin bottles under the floorboards.

The same thing happened to us and we paid £50K over asking price after being gazumped.

We also had the two filthiest ovens in the world. I’m taking an inch thick of dark brown/black grease. Those ovens had NEVER been cleaned. And the couple were both doctors. 🤢 Oh and no keys for the house other than a front door key.

A very nice dining room table in the loft. Far too big to get through the hatch, no idea how it got there. We left 20 years later, and the new owners asked how to get it down.

2 teeth in the kitchen cupboard was a highlight

Some of these posts are making me feel better about my contribution (which at the time we cried about!):

Double garage full of rubbish (couldn’t even walk in the door) also the garage door fell off after a week
2 sheds full of rubbish (including fireworks/flammables)
1 bathroom was so filthy we shut the door and waited to have it ripped out rather than clean
cupboards full of food so mouldy it was mush
kitchen took 10 hours for my mum and I to clean - thick with grease/mould
All carpets had to be ripped up (threadbare and they stank - if we had shampooed I think they would have disintegrated!)
Every room was covered in rubbish all over the floor - our movers said they’d never seen anything like it before

Luckily had a couple of friends over who helped decorated the kids rooms before they moved in (they had to stay with grandparents). Unbelievably, this wasn’t an empty house - previous owners were living in it right up to moving day! I still can’t believe people live like that. However the state of it meant we got the house about 50k cheaper and it looks nice now.

Three bottles of wine and a very old Jamie Oliver dvd at the back of the top shelf in the airing cupboard, that was in a rental.
When we bought this house the seller left us a brand new fitted dishwasher. Apparently the old one was on its last legs and she felt bad about leaving it.😀

We turned up and there were no appliances - fridge, freezer or washing machine. I was sure we'd agreed them in the sale!
Turned out the solicitor had missed the email saying they were taking them. I was cross!

My first house I was left limescale in the loo that was brown. Family of 4 moved out, obvious the loo hadn't been cleaned for months. Ended up scraping it off with a knife.

Last house was a rental. I was eligible for free insulation which the landlord was more than happy to agree to. Engineer came and got up in the loft to find it jammed full of the previous tenants stuff. Needed a skip to dispose of.

Current house the previous owners were supposed to be taking everything that wasn't bolted down - light fittings, appliances, curtains etc. I was mid-divorce and scraping every penny together and they left the fridge, washing machine, all the curtains and lights. Winner!

About 4 skips of absolute junks, plastic toys, broken garden storage, bikes, fridge without the plug, mugs etc. It was everywhere. We kept finding new stuffs for ages.

Most noticeable items are baby pictures (binned), panties 🤢, syringes and weird liquids in random squash bottles 😱.
There was also a paper copy of an email the owner had sent her boss complaining about her workload. At least she uses the same smug tone than for the tomatoes (see below).

Despite my multiple requests to the agency for the house to be cleared (people had already moved out so no reason to not clear the house), we spent the first week clearing and cleaning.

Owner had made a big fuss for clearing some tomatoes from the cupboards as I'd been really insisting for them to be cleared as I didn't want them to stay there for the 6 months required for paperwork to be done (it was just after covid so loads of houses were sold/bought, clogging the system.

This is my wisdom tip for the next purchase: make sure you have one last visit before exchange. If you have a doubt, make sure they are aware that you will not exchange if house is cleared and any delay will results in penalties to be paid by them.