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Original poster

Seller wants £500 for carpets in the house

43 replies

karmi2010 · 13/12/2016 13:04

Hi, would really appreciate some advice. I have found a really nice house, made an offer (£5 over the asking price as the estate agent said there were several buyers and I really wanted the house), the offer was accepted, the process started and I received the Fixtures and Fittings form today, which says that the carpets in the bedrooms and on the staircase are excluded from the sale and the seller wants £500 for them.

I don't want the carpets as I was planning to replace them anyway (I will probably have to use a credit card for that, but I think I need the new carpets as my DD is 1 years old and is crawling everywhere now, plus there is a chance she is allergic to cats and the sellers have a cat...)

If I say "no, I don't want to buy the carpets", what's next? How will the house look like if they rip the carpets out? I assume I won't be able to move in then until the new carpets are in place?

I am also worrying that the seller may pull out if I don't buy the carpets? I think this would be silly as it is only £500, but then shall I just not take the risk and pay these £500? But I will be really short of money and now even think I won't be able to pay for the removals company and will need to pack everything myself, hire a van and ask friends to help, so given that I will be getting new carpets straight away, paying £500 for the ones I will be ripping off does not feel right...

OP posts:

Leviticus · 13/12/2016 14:09

I'm with everyone else. Politely say no. I'd be amazed if they took them. Who does that these days?

BattleaxeGalactica · 13/12/2016 14:21

Very possibly a try on. We feel for this one with a shed years back. Cost £300 and I'm still bitter

That said our buyers wouldn't stump up for carpets when we sold and we took 'em with us because they were new, expensive and could be cut to size to replace the threadbare rags our vendors were leaving so decide if you can live with moving in on underlay and gripper rod if you have to.

ginghamstarfish · 13/12/2016 14:28

Two options - first, if you want the carpet to stay even if for a short while, then tell them thanks for saving you the trouble of disposing of it. In that case they will leave it to spite you. If you don't want it left, then make it a requirement legally so that have to do it or they may still leave it because it's too much trouble.

gamerwidow · 13/12/2016 14:32

I bet they'll leave the carpets anyway. It'll be a massive pain in the arse to remove and dispose of them otherwise especially seeing as they can't really do it until the house is emptied of furniture. No way I'd pay this unless I really really wanted to keep the existing carpets.

AMomentaryLapseOfReason · 13/12/2016 15:00

Our sellers did this. Wanted some silly amount of money for the bedroom carpet. We just said no. They did take it (left really manky underlay and gripper rods) and it didn't affect the sale.

Previous house they wanted several hundred pounds for the horrible frilly blinds and shower curtain!!! Also said no.

They were most put out, and we had lots of communication from the estate agent about how lovely (they weren't) and expensive (don't care, they were vile) these things were.

Also didn't affect the sale at all. Tell them thanks but no.

PossumInAPearTree · 13/12/2016 15:03

I wonder if my mum is moving? She does this and she always takes the carpets if the house buyers don't pay!

Original poster

karmi2010 · 13/12/2016 16:32

Oh, OK, I will just say no, thank you, then! Thank you so much everyone for your responses!

OP posts:

graveyardkate · 13/12/2016 17:00

My sellers wanted money for everything - bathroom fixtures (towel rail, loo roll holder, mirror unit etc), fixed shelves, curtains, even the garden shed! Admittedly they had done a lot of work to the house in the previous couple of years so most things were quite new - and they were probably miffed that my lowish offer was the only one they received in time to secure their dream home - but I declined to purchase anything, expecting that at least some of it wouldn't be worth the bother of removal. However, they took everything. When I got the keys I remember rushing in to look and see if they really had gone to the bother of dismantling the shed - and they had! At least I got to choose my own replacements - but years later there are still a lot of filled holes in the bathroom tiling where the new fitments didn't quite match up.

PossumInAPearTree · 13/12/2016 17:04

Cow of a seller of my house wanted £100 for her 1960s oven. It was honestly like something my gran had when I was a kid. I declined and she said she would leave it anyway to save the gas disconnection cost. Moved in to find she had taken it! I was six months without an oven due to kitchen refitting.

PettsWoodParadise · 13/12/2016 22:56

I remember vividly my vendor chatting to me on the drive while we were waiting for the money to be confirmed it had gone through. He was moaning that where they were moving to the people had taken the toilet roll holder and left holes in the wall. Lo and behold we enter our new home and they'd removed all the bathroom fittings.

My mother had a chandelier and some rugs and offered them to her purchaser at a very modest price but he declined them so she sold them to a dealer and got quite a lot of money for the enormous rugs and Italian chandelier. When the buyer turned up he was furious and said he thought my mum would just have left them so hadn't agreed to pay for them but said if she had been serious she should have told him.

ClaudiaNaughton · 14/12/2016 09:31

Would have thought bathroom fittings would be part of fixtures and fittings. Did arrive at one house to find all light bulbs had been removed.

specialsubject · 14/12/2016 11:10

All this stuff is of course defined in the fixtures and fittings list, so if sellers do take stuff included in the sale you can sue. If it is worth it.

2boysnamedR · 14/12/2016 11:14

Just say your not buying them. There was nothing left when we bought our house. No curtains - but we did get the carpets. We bought for exactly 250,000 so I didn't pay to keep anything not listed as it would take me over the stamp duty. The owners sold the curtains at a car boot. Stingy barsteds.

BreatheDeep · 14/12/2016 11:19

I'm perplexed - what are they going to do with the carpets they take?! Surely their new house will have even different dimensions. I didn't realise this was something people did!

wowfudge · 14/12/2016 12:26

Taking carpets used to be far more commonplace. Thirty years ago or more, decent carpets were more expensive than they are now, relatively speaking. When I bought my first place twenty years ago it was a selling point that the carpets and curtains were included and highlighted in the paper brochure.

TotalConfucius · 14/12/2016 13:07

MIL was harangued constantly by her vendor to pay £300 for the 'made to measure crystal chandelier'.
It was clearly a Dunelm light fitment. Very clearly, since MIL had an identical one hanging in the hallway of the house she was selling (and didn't much like it anyway, FIL had chosen it). Despite answering No on the f & f questionnaire, the vendor phoned, emailed and sent messages via the estate agent.

MIL was quite emphatic that No she didn't want to purchase the light fitment.
The day before completion, the vendor's son sent a message to say that the electrician would cost £30 to remove the fitment and MIL would have to settle the bill. Needless to say, MIL ignored. The light had gone the next day. As had all the light bulbs in the house.
People can be right strange about their 'treasures'.

Randonneur · 15/12/2016 20:52

You can request to have the carpet measurers around between exchange and completion, we did that for our sellers. Gives a head start on the carpet buying bit xx

InfiniteSheldon · 15/12/2016 22:54

IThreatened to pull out of my purchase when the vendor asked for money for the carpets. Stair carpets are unusable for anyone else they can't be refitted and I instructed my solicitor to pass that on and say the stair and upstairs hall carpets were a deal breaker but they could remove any others providing they also removed all underlay/gripper rods etc swept and cleaned and left the rooms safe for my dc. The vendor took the downstairs carpet (a nice patterned seventies semi threadbare monstrosity) and left all the rest so worth standing up to her. Bare stairs are a pain I would insist that they are left.

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