What were your let-downs/disappointments when you bought a house?

[MossyOilTank]

We're buying a house I viewed once for about twenty minutes. DH saw it twice. We know the area really well and it ticks the boxes so I'm not hugely concerned, but there's so many things going through my mind right now and it's still more than two weeks before we move. I've pretty much forgotten about anything not in the schedule photos already!

How much work will it be to rip out the horrible wood facia in the dining room? Should we just refit the utility room? Is that bay window going to make it impossible to have a decent sized sofa? And will it work having the kids' clothes storage in the hall rather than their bedrooms?

Just want to get in there with a clipboard, and find all the glitches ... argh!

When we moved we asked for another viewing a few weeks before completion. I said I wanted to measure for curtains and to make sure my sofa would fit through the door.

I also asked for a gas safety check to be completed. I paid for it and so I wanted to be there so that the engineer can explain any issues to me. The vendor was fine with it and let me poke around for about 1 hour.

We underestimated how long it would take us and cost us to do all those little jobs that needed doing. We knew it needed a new kitchen but we didn’t factor in the smaller things so that was an eye opener. I would have another viewing with a more critical eye and check you still like it.

The fucking cupboards broke within a week and so did the pneumatic door. Our sink has also fallen through.
Fucking new builds - but we have a years guarantee so they'll be sorted eventually (builders will only come 9-5 mon/fri

So much disappointment.
It was filthy - I’m talking three hours to steam clean the kitchen floor level of filth. Lots of scuffs to painted walls that weren’t there on viewing. Holes from hanging stuff on walls in every single room. All curtain poles, light fittings and bulbs taken (yes they were on the form as staying in situ) and holes not filled. Damage to laminate floors that had been disingenuously hidden under furniture for the viewing.

The garden, tidy when we viewed four months previously, was completely overgrown.
It was disgusting, completely ruined our first few days in the house and our solicitor said it wasn’t worth pursuing. I can only hope our vendors new house was of the same standard.

We moved ten days ago. We knew it was poorly maintained by the landlords who owned it before but the most difficult bits to deal with are:

Fridge smelt so badly it was unusable. Had to live without one for a week while we waited for new one to arrive.
Window locks buggered
Boiler on the blink (despite us paying to have it serviced!)
Handles coming off doors (meaning we nearly end up stuck in rooms)
Carpets I assumed would come up well after a professional clean, didn't.

The vendor banged on and on about how it would be the cleanest house I'd ever seen and I'd never have seen one cleaner etc etc.

We moved in and I could have cried, they'd had three dogs and it was filthy. It took me 3 weeks to scrub it. Honestly, I wish she'd never said anything as it would have been less upsetting.

When we moved in it was absolutely filthy! I had three children including a crawling baby and i could have cried, it was truly disgusting. Luckily we didn't move our things in straight away - it took 3 hours to clean one bedroom, there were stains up the wall, carpet just awful. Also rubbish left everywhere

Realising the tiles were coming off the walls in the bathroom. The toilet was leaking. Finding out, yes, there was goof hot water pressure but you couldn't add any cold water to the mix without loosing all pressure.... so you had to have a scalding shower or a warm dribble.

I replaced the bathroom.

Realising that everything that had ever been done had been bodged. Bodge job central.

We should have questioned why the house was freezing in December....the boiler broke on day 2 (it was a bodge job) and we had no heating or hot water (and yes there was a certificate saying it had been serviced etc).

We also should have looked in the adjoining house's front window - we would have seen the array of electric guitars and amps...

Anyway, we replaced the boiler, complained about the tenants late night parties (they moved out) and all is ok. Yes I would love a second bathroom but all in all we're counting our blessings.

A lot depends on whether you're expecting your dream home or moving for other reasons (we moved for schools and a bigger garden). I don't expect my dream home in London unless I have at least £2m to spend!

We moved house for a bigger garden, better area etc. Old house was lovely.

H went to have a shower after a gruelling day moving and was oblivious to the fact that water was pouring into the hall!

I can't believe I didn't complain to anyone!

I founds a load of Dog hairs in the oven when I tried to make our first meal. We had a take out that night.

No decent layout possible for our furniture in either the dining room or back bedroom due to the positions of doors, windows, radiators and cupboards. Things might fit IN rooms but they stick out an extra 20cm because of the radiator, making it impossible to open the door fully, or the height of the headboard completely eclipses the window which you’d forgotten was low. The patio is impossible to put garden furniture on because it is narrow close to the house and its width is needed for the outward swing of the patio doors. None of the windows have keys and some are locked open some locked shut. A tree with roots coming through into the undercroft. A sink which had never been plumbed in, just draped against a wall (who checks that the taps actually turn on?). Previous owners furniture left for use to dispose of. A fully decorated Christmas tree in the shed (I assume they just brought it in fully done and took it back out again after Christmas).

Dog shit all over the garden.

Graffiti all over the walls.

Kitchen appliances leaking carbon monoxide which we found after two weeks of headaches in our new house (fit your detectors and fire alarms on day one people).

Not all in the same house.

I'm following someone on Instagram who's just bought a new do-er-up-er and it's quite funny, in a perverse way, watching her despair at having to live in it!

Our sellers must have had shares in No More Nails. We've found door hinges, towel rails and plug sockets all glued in. Windows that don't lock, and one that won't open. Oh and the mains smoke alarm right outside the bathroom door.
I'm very happy that DH is a DIY wizard, and is slowly putting things right.

What looked like a perfectly-fine-for-now kitchen actually just having new doors and the rest was collapsing. Water from the shower running down inside a wall due to poor tiling. Tiling in kitchen and bathroom done over old tiling. I could go on. And on

Artex on the walls which we cant afford to get rid of

A massive turd in the toilet bowl

It wasn't the sellers fault but the person who lived there before had used a commode upstairs and it had leaked constantly onto untreated wooden floor boards so stank of wee.

When wee got the keys and saw itnfornthe first time without their furniture the walls and carpets were black with mould everywhere. Turns out it was caused by condensation which we have just about managed to get on top of over the years... windows open, fans in bathroom etc etc.
It utterly ruined our first few weeks as the redecorating was far more extensive than we had anticipated.

Not me but a friend. She bought a well-looked-after, beautiful house in a very nice, middle-class area from sellers who seemed to be a very normal, respectable couple.

For the first few weeks after moving in they kept having random people knocking on their door asking for a man who, to their knowledge, had never lived there. They also noticed a strange man hanging around their street a lot seemingly paying a lot of attention to their house.

One day the police knocked on their door and explained that the house (and couple) had been at the centre of a huge international drug ring so the random visitors were dealers, and the shady-looking bloke was an undercover police officer.

The night before he moved out, I think the seller did some kind of cleansing ritual and shaved every single member of the family from top to toe.

When I got the keys, in the middle of the pristine, brand new, shining white bathroom was a neat but massive pile of pubes

Spiders - everywhere, small ones, big ones, fat ones, skinny ones - I think she ran a retirement home for them. Sticky cobwebs everywhere - covered in fat in the kitchen! I have gotten rid of all of them, bar one in the dining room that hides behind the skirting, one in the sitting room that lives behind the radiator pipe and one in my room that lives behind the faux beam!

Cool in summer, freezing in winter - the boiler did a sterling job but was old and needed replacing. However, new boiler is doing a sterling job but still cold - new windows ordered!

Ghost! Footsteps wandering round downstairs, banging, singing, shadows passing windows - I am used to it now, but some workmen/visitors have seen things and they have been a bit spooked.

I do love the house, but sometimes wonder whether I should have bought a newer one!!

We brought ours as a renovation project (a nightmare in itself) we knew the house hadn't been looked after well (as a poster said above the vendors duplicity knew no bounds when they placed furniture strategically to hide sulphur floor attack issues thankfully we had an excellent surveyor who picked that gem up!) but did not expect one chimney to have caved in on itself when the vendors had taken out an old Aga and put in a boiler in the 70's they hadn't propped the chimney stack. We only found that gem when the builder was starting to remove the old boiler. Alas we also had wee problems in one bedroom where the previous occupant we believe when ill had a few accidents- had to replace the floorboards as we could not get rid of the smell. The final gem aside from the nightmare that was the renovation was the lovely infestation of ladybirds- I used to love them but having lived in a house where the windows were literally crawling with them I'm afraid I no longer have affection for them.

How the noise transfers from next door, and from bedroom to bedroom. The insanely noisy pump for the shower and hot water. Just how dirty it was. Thankfully had a week to clean before moving in.

The people we bought off told us the last next door was a lovely quiet single, which was true, until her partner got out of prison a couple of months later, not so quiet after that