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?

A flooded kitchen floor from where they'd disconnected the washing machine and left the pipe dripping. The water had soaked into the kitchen cabinets and ruined them so we had to rip the whole lot out and put a new kitchen in. Our insurers wouldn't cough up either.

A boiler and gas fire which were immediately condemned as a death risk when we had them checked!

Titanias I called the tenants and asked if they were coming back for their Rottweiler and he sounded surprised but said he woold be back at the weekend.
No pets of my own at the time so we spent a very happy few days together until his owner came for him - no apology or explanation, just collected him and that was that.

A very large bag of used tampons

Nothing on first glance; but when we ripped a wall down in between the bathroom and kitchen it had been stuffed with newspapers (circa 1994) and underwear. Bras, pants, pop socks and tights. Weird as fuck.

First house. Broken boiler and gas leak. Transco came out and capped our supply. It was February without heating. Fun. We had to save up for a gas engineer to re-lay the copper piping.
On the upside, this meant we could delay purchasing a fridge and simply used the cupboards for bacon, butter and milk.
The wires for the wall lights were live....but they had taken the light fittings away. Fil jumped a little when he touched those.
2nd house. Broken freezer in shed. He'd agree to leave it as a deal. We got rid and bought new.
We had it easy. When my mum moved house, the previous owners left their rabbit in the outbuilding....if my mum hadn't ventured down the end of the garden, it would have starved. However, she found it, fed it and changed the straw.
A few days later, the old residents returned asking for their rabbit!!! Lucky for them that my mum is a compassionate person.

Hopping that's mad, how can you forget your own dog? Nice that he had a little holiday with you though.

Previous owners Mum vacuuming upstairs! The family were still bloody moving out, we had to give them half a day to leave!

Wall lights ripped out and the live wires just left, same with the bathroom cabinet. All should have been left as per the agreement.

House was completely empty except for a dusty old Victorian mirror with a note stuck on it saying 'not to be removed from the house'

But did the mirror have a ghost? Perhaps the mirror is a portal to another dimension.

I did wonder that Titania, but the mirror is still hanging on my wall and I've not seen anything strange in it...yet...

My friend arrived at her new house having been instructed that all the money had gone through etc, to find the ex owners eating their dinner with not one single thing packed !!! We gave them a few hours and when they still seemed to be making no effort to pack anything , we started to take their stuff out and put it on the pavement.

We lugged the sofa out and the husband just went and sat on it .

The previous owner's final 'Meals on wheels' dinner in the oven, cooked but sadly never eaten.

Two new baths in the Master bedroom where the bed would be put.

A dead fox in the kitchen
An pit full of rubbish in the living room
Asbestos in the roof
Straw in the bedroom

Ok we bought a barn but wow the fox was stinky!

I’m still seething about this one. When viewed our rental property was told a ‘deep clean’ would be done. Well it wasn’t a deep clean in my view and we went on to realise the house had fleas (with an 8 month old it isn’t ideal!)
The property only came with 2 sofas so we decided to use flea powder/spray and give them a good vacuum and steam clean.
A ‘deep clean’ for our letting agency doesn’t include putting your hands down the sides of sofa to see if anything was down the sides....

Not something I found, rather something I left....an album of photos of me naked on the beach when I was in my twenties - it was a couple of months before I got it back. Obviously I didn’t know I’d left it, I’m not that much of a show off.

More dodgy wiring and plumbing than you can imagine. Highlight was the wires going through the toilet cistern, via holes drilled halfway down each side, for no obvious reason. The consumer unit that both electricians and the leccy company both refused to touch because it was clearly dangerous caused a standoff for months.

The keys they had left with the estate agent didn’t fit and vendors were halfway to the other side of the country.
Fortunately one of our removal men was a small ex jockey so using tools we had in our removal van we removed the front loo window and shoved him through the gap.
Vendors had left outbuildings full of crap and a “sweet “ message saying they hadn’t had time to clear it.

A family friend moved into a lovely cottage to be met by a cat. Enquiries revealed that the cat went with the house and had lived there for years. Fortunately she liked cats and had no other pets, so they lived happily together for quite a few years until the cat eventually died of old age. The cat had lived in the same house with four different lots of owners over the years, and was well known in the village.

So the cat owned the house? How bizarre! But I love it.

Light fittings ripped out of the wall, carpet partially eaten by moths, polly filla’d walls that hadn’t been sanded down so we’re lumpy, a dirty toilet (poo), a sink full of half eaten vegetables, a front door that didn’t shut properly, a kitchen covered in a thin layer of grime and a box of condoms in the (grimey) kitchen ‘in case our new house got us in the mood’. Gross. Just. Gross.

My mums old next door neighbour was buying the house next door from another neighbour who hated my mum and this lady.

She deliberately let the dirt pile up in the house when she heard it was my mums friend buying the property. By the time mums friend had the keys to move in the house was so disgustingly filthy that it took a week just to clear the crap out and mums poor pregnant friend had to clean in short burst in between running out the front door to throw up and get some air.

Dirty knickers left everywhere dirty nappies the lot. All left to fester over the summer. Nice.

Dodgy internet viagra pills with the shipping note hidden on top of the kitchen cupboard.

Gosh I feel awful, in my first flat I sold I left a broken oven - in my defence it had broken two days previously.

But I also left (as agreed) a washing machine and fridge, both working perfectly.

The previously owners had left all their diy materials in the boiler cupboard - huge bits of chipboard, carpet, wallpaper. It filled a small skip.