What's the worst/most ridiculous thing you've found when you got the keys to your property?

[xandersmom2]

We got the keys to our new house last week, getting ready to move in later this week.

So far we've discovered:

• they only left us half a set of keys. When we questioned we were told 'oh, we never had a key to the back garage door or the patio doors in the living room'. Eh? They lived there 5 years!! No real biggie, locksmith has already been to drill them out and replace them. But honestly.....
  
• random boxes of trash in the loft
  
• the integrated fridge freezer doesn't work. When we questioned this (we wondered if we needed to flick a switch or a breaker to make it work) the vendor immediately 'lawyered up' and we got a call from his solicitor to say 'nowhere in the contract does it say the fridge freezer is in working order so we're not fixing it'
  

None of these is going to spoil the joy of us finally getting our own home, but it got me wondering: what's the worst/most ridiculous thing you've found when you got the keys to your new home?

[AwkwardPaws27]

Spudley - we had a bin of poo too!

Dog poo, in disintegrating bags, mixed with what I think was the dirty bedding from their rat cage (so urine soaked rotting newspapers, yay!).

Too heavy to move it, and also full of stinking liquid... I almost vomited throughout the whole process of tipping away the liquid, and then triple-bagging the solids...

[MaitlandGirl]

tall I don’t blame you for not throwing it away, it looks like the sort of thing you’d throw away then find on your bed 2 nights later!

[tallwivglasses]

This at the back of a cupboard. WTF is it? I'm too scared to throw it away incase it mysteriously returns...

[Spudlet]

dona Yes, I had a thread when we found another, thankfully smaller poo stash that had been put into a carrier bag and thrown over the back fence. It must have been there for a good two years .

Maitland definitely wins though - OMG.

[MaitlandGirl]

Mamma it wasn’t really a surprise as they’d been evicted as they kept threatening the neighbours - they were a nasty pair.

When the police came round they knew the previous occupants by name!

[MammaAgata]

@Maitland - you win the thread!

[MaitlandGirl]

Our current house :
blood in the kitchen floor grout,
blood splatters on the living room ceiling
a fist sized hole behind the door in one of the bedrooms
dart sized holes all over the master bedroom ceiling
dog tooth sized holes in most of the vertical blind panels through the house
grease stains in the living room carpet
a very large burnt patch on the back lawn where they’d burnt a plastic paddling pool

All of these should have been picked up by the real estate when they did their vacation inspection - BIL (our landlord) wasn’t happy.

We had to get the locksmith out the day we moved in as they’d changed the master bedroom door to a Yale lock, left the door locked and not left the key.

We’d been in about 2 days when we discovered they’d blocked the main drain with nappies and baby wipes :(

We’d been in 3 weeks when we realised the TV didn’t work so I sent DS up into the lift to check the aerial cables. They’d taken the splitter box when they left but forgotten to take the 8 cannabis plants, 5oz of pot, 2 handguns and 5 boxes of ammo that they’d been storing in the roof space. That was a fun phone call to the police

[AccidentallyRunToWindsor]

Wow, we were lucky by the sounds of it. The house was spotless when we moved in, the only baffling thing was that they had left all the curtains, except the ones in the master bedroom- the one place you really want curtains after a long day moving house. We moved in June.

[Etymology23]

AJP thank you! I had googled, but clearly not the right terms :)

[TammySwansonTwo]

A while after we moved in, I discovered an almost empty packet of fish food in the cupboard. Went and throughly investigated the pond and four massive fish appeared from nowhere. The pump doesn't work right and I have no idea how to turn it off to take it out and deal with it. So far I've been having to unclog it with a stick but soon it will pack in for good. Really angry they didnt tell us it was there.

Also, they removed the doorknob from the nursery, and took all the internal door keys (so no way to lock the bathroom) and window keys. Took us two months to find the water mains tap as it's very well hidden.

[PigletJohn]

There are numbers of companies selling window keys.

For example

Each manufacturer only has a few different keys and sends out millions of locks to suit. One DIY retailer once sent me a few free. I recommend you put a cup-hook in the top corner of every windowframe and hang the key there, where it is behind the curtain and out of sight of casual visitors, and of people peering in from outside, and out of reach of anyone outside. You can do the same with your back-door key. Try not to leave keys in locks as some types can be turned from outside, or through a letterbox, and it makes it easy for a burglar if he breaks glass or climbs in through a window.

[donajimena]

Spudlet have you mentioned that before? Your poor DH. It did tickle me though.

[confusednorthner]

The previous owners sat drinking tea and discussing where to start with the packing! Once they'd finally gone their cat wandered back through the cat flap!

[Spudlet]

A bucket of poo. It was in the bin, unfortunately compacted dog shit is really heavy and there was a lot of other stuff on top (we arrived to a full wheelie bin) so we didn't find it until the bin men refused to take the bin away.... by which time it had been there for a week, in the height of summer. And then dh had to drive it to the tip. Who wouldn't take it. So he had to bring it home again.

He described that as 'a low point'.

I ended up ringing the council and begging them to take it away - fortunately, as we'd only just moved in, they believed it wasn't ours and gave us a whole new bin, free of charge!

Also. In the oven, there was a sausage

[BertieBotts]

My dad and stepmum found a mummified cat. It was a really old house to be fair and apparently it was quite common back then.

My dad wanted to keep it but my sister thought it was sad so they buried it. I reckon they should have given it to the local museum.

[AJPTaylor]

I got 20 window keys made for our 1980s double glazing for the new owners. It was a website called something like window handles and keys!

[Etymology23]

How have people fixed the lack of window keys? I still have this problem...

My garden was left totally full of crap. It was awful and included bottles of piss and broken glass :(

[Kit30]

60 bricks stacked in the attic above the hall ceiling. Explains the cracked & bulging plaster Rat poison inside fitted wardrobes. 23 broken window panes. Full size totem pole in garden. I could go on. It's lovely now though😊

[unlimiteddilutingjuice]

How could i forget-

An archeological dig in the basement. That used to contain the remains of a plague pit. A young goth used to sleep down there "with the bones"
We made her come above ground when it started effecting her mental health.

[AnneElliott]

These are so funny - but who on earth leaves their pets!

Previous owner left his public order gear in the loft (he used to be a policeman). When I called to tell him, he suggested I drop it off with Kent police the next time I went down there (I do meet with them reasonably often) but still

Other stuff included half an oil drum, loads of rubbish in the garden, smelly trainers, a box of ugly bases and their kids playhouse.

[unlimiteddilutingjuice]

In my misspent youth, I used to be a squatter. The things I've found when moving into buildings have included:

A comode which we chucked out onto the curb where it was promptly shat in (in the street, in broad daylight) by a passing junkie.
Daniella Westbroke's diaries
A dead body
A proper horders house with household rubbish piled up in every room. The height of the rubbish varied from knee to chest height depending on the room and supported an extensive network of rat burrows.
A stack of questionaires on "social functioning" branded with the name of a popular anti depressant.

[Dailystuck71]

The previous owners wheelchair with his cap over the handles left in the master bedroom.

[thegreenheartofmanyroundabouts]

The previous owners sitting down to breakfast not having started to pack up their stuff.

[hamptonhangingpork]

Oh and the boiler which failed within a month of moving in.

I found a whole bunch of bodge fixes and scratches from a screwdriver which had clearly been used to start it. It was a death trap.

It was a divorce sale - I think the wife had left the husband who was more than a little bitter. After the state the house was left in, I couldn't blame her.

There was no point chasing via the solicitors because of the costs of pursuing versus the cost of just getting on with it.

[hamptonhangingpork]

No window keys either.
Loft filled with boxes as well as lots of clearly sentimental items, think: children's handmade Christmas cards etc.
Massive hole in front room ceiling.
All handles replaced with used, mismatching, rusting units and glued on.
Screws removed from all handles, blind holders and curtain pole brackets. When I went to open a set of Venetians, the glue wore off and they landed on my head.
They had clearly replaced the oven with a broken secondhand one.
All carpets had been ripped up and replaced with remnants.

Are you getting a theme? They had clearly removed the appliances and fittings that were there during the sale process and replaced with freebies and stuff they found in skips etc.

They left the newish wallpaper up which came down right away to reveal black mould and cracking.