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Original poster

Petty things to do when you sell your house to annoying buyers

73 replies

Ohrobin · 08/02/2019 14:48

I won't do this but am giggling at ideas.

Backstory. Our buyers have been absolutely pain the arse with this sale, yet been nagging and pestering us to complete by Feb yet they took 1 month to actually send correct paperwork off, another month to actually instruct their solicitor and now we are the point ready to exchange and waiting on them to actually transfer deposit to their solicitor 🙄 all this time nagging us to move by Feb which we said we will happily do if we can. They delayed it.

Anyways I had little giggling thoughts about being petty like taking the trays out the oven (we never specified the oven came with trays) or the cutlery holder out the dishwasher.

Any other petty things that people have done or come across when buying new houses.

I won't actually do anything as I'm too nice to do it but it is giving me amusement thinking about it.

OP posts:

katseyes7 · 08/02/2019 20:20

We were very lucky when we bought our first house. The sellers were lovely. They left us a bottle of wine and some flowers, (we'd done the same for their new house). l used to babysit for them and they came to our wedding.

callkiki · 08/02/2019 20:35

I sold my interest back to my cheating ex husband and I'll admit that I planted about 1000 potatoes in the front and back yard knowing how precious he was about the lawn.

Bestie drove by last year and saw craters in the front lawn where he had tried to pull up the potato plants :)

mineofuselessinformation · 08/02/2019 20:41

The buyers on our first house screwed us down to the last penny (we lost £18,000 due to the property crash at the time).
Knowing the only heating in our house was solid fuel, I swept the coal bunker out and put it in the bin, which was due to be emptied on the day of completion.
I didn't feel sorry about it.

RedForShort · 08/02/2019 20:48

Take the stairs with you. Then send them back step by step. That'll learn 'em. Unless it's a bungalow; then I'm stuck for ideas.

user1471426142 · 10/02/2019 14:04

Never forget that you might need the vendors to do you a favour at a later date. My vendors did something twatish when we moved in (we didn’t do anything annoying- the man was just a knob) and we have certainly not gone out of our way to forward on any remaining post etc.

Stylinit · 10/02/2019 15:28

I was so tempted to take all the lightbulbs or similar as our buyers were pains but in the end decided it just wasn’t worth it.

Moving on and feeling happy about where we were going to was the best thing we could do in the end.

Though the bathroom ceiling may have started leaking on moving day (gutters needed clearing out, I know that as the people we bought the house from had left the same gift for us when we’d moved in!)

Tortora · 10/02/2019 17:20

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

trevthecat · 11/02/2019 16:22

Oh this thread it great. Were due to complete in 2 weeks. Buyers have been a pain! Their requests have been odd. Some of these tips might be fun. Especially the bag of random keys!

Original poster

Ohrobin · 12/02/2019 10:25

@trevthecat I really Hope your not my vendors We are completing in 2 weeksish too! I'm sure your not as we didn't ask for anything odd!

OP posts:

trevthecat · 12/02/2019 11:37

@ohrobin I hope your not too as they have just said they don't want to complete till 15th march! Taking every tip off here now!!!

crosstalk · 12/02/2019 12:59

My vote goes to the crocuses. Sadly, they'd probably just be mown down. But not before they'd given their message. If there's a flower bed you could do it with early/mid/late tulips so the message only sunk in gradually.

Original poster

Ohrobin · 12/02/2019 16:08

@trevthecat defo not us and that's so frustrating for you! It's horrible waiting to move!

OP posts:

LonelyGir1 · 12/02/2019 18:25

Nothing...because I believe in trying to be a good person even if no-one is watching/I could get away with something bad

dryingout · 12/02/2019 19:28

The people we bought off of (at over the listed value due to 'a last minute bidder',) left a condensed gas fireplace and a loft full of crap and a garden full of crap.
We had to pay £100's to get the stuff removed and disposed of.

A few months later his bank was trying to get hold of him as they owed him PPI,
I told them what he told me and that was that he was emigrating.
I have since found out he is still local, so silly of him to have lied.

Original poster

Ohrobin · 13/02/2019 12:13

We've just managed to annoy our vendors because BT messed up! We rang BT to let them know our moving date for the day after we complete and they apparently started trying to take over the new line at the new house messing up the phone lines! Vendors understandably annoyed! Rang BT and told them to cancel whatever they are doing. I hope vendors don't take it out on our lovely new house! Urgh going to be a stressful few weeks until we are in the new house place !

OP posts:

NC0301191141 · 14/02/2019 14:06

There's the old "prawns in the curtain rail" trick... nigh on impossible to track down I hear!

When my vendors pissed me off (by demanding a £5k reduction in price 10 minutes before we were due to exchange contracts), I planned on hiding an alarm clock somewhere around the house, set for about 3.30am. I didn't do it in the end because I didn't want to annoy the perfectly nice neighbour and there was nowhere to hide it

I do, however, wish I'd left a slightly low battery in a smoke alarm hidden under a cupboard, behind the kickboard in the kitchen. I'd have loved the thought of them trying to find the mysterious beeping sound and driving them potty!

I love the crocus idea... and the potatoes in the lawn is genius!

SpringForEver · 14/02/2019 23:11

If you have a side window on the stairwell board it up, paper over it and paint the wall so that it effectively isn't there. Then replace the blind and leave it down so that when they open the blind there will be no window.

ThanosSavedMe · 14/02/2019 23:28

Love the key one. Simple, annoying but nothing they could have a go at you for.

Another one similar to that is to buy a light switch and fix it to a wall. It’ll drive them mad trying to figure out what it’s for

PCohle · 14/02/2019 23:30

High effort - paint the house the most hideous colours you can find. Do a shit, patchy job of it.

Low effort - given you're leaving the white goods, on no account leave instructions.

In real life I'd probably leave them a house warming card but I'd definitely day dream

AmIAWeed · 15/02/2019 09:11

We had a terrible solicitor and despite being first time buyers moving from rental, and our house being empty as the lady had moved to a nursing home 18 months before it took 5 months from offer to completion.
The woman was understandably annoyed however we exchanged, and she slipt in a note saying we owed her £300 for oil as she'd recently topped the tank up, by the time our incompetent solicitor sent it on to us was the day before completion and we refused, our solicitor made out she'd sent it that day. Wasn't until we got full reports after the sale (yes that's how bad the solicitor was) we realised the woman had asked a week before is at point of exchange, still not great but not the day before like we were led to believe.
She phoned all the neighbors begging them to drain the oil tank not because she wanted the money but because she didn't want us to have it. Thankfully they all refused. She'd told them all we were awful horrible people so they were a smidge worried about these 'nightmare' neighbors were. We were totally honest about our awful solicitor, didn't slate the woman once and thankfully our new neighbors were nice to us.
Sometimes things go wrong, and people invest so much time and money into a home that emotions are high. Be the bigger person and just leave them some wine and a card

SpringForEver · 15/02/2019 13:46

At least she didn't drain the oil into the garden like the neighbours of someone I know. They didn't want to leave it for the next people to use because they had paid for it.

youaremyrain · 15/02/2019 19:46

I've recently bought a house, and, as well as leaving all three wheelie bins full of heavy rubbish (council refused to empty!) they removed the fuse from the boiler. I replaced it, reset the boiler, repressurised it, checked the radiators, all good. Then I went upstairs to find that all the valves on the upstairs radiators (for bleeding them) had been left fully open and water was spraying everywhere.

Anyone who fancies doing the random keys thing, key cutting places often have a box of rejects under the counter 😉

Also, lightbulbs that have blown would work better than removing the bulbs as it wouldn't be immediately obvious.

Deeedeeee · 15/02/2019 19:58

Glitter.
Everywhere. Especially on carpets. Everyone loves glitter, the extra fine dusty stuff that's impossible to ever completely remove.

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