Ok, own up! What did you lumber your buyer with?

[BluTangClan]

Much like an old car, it's got to the stage with our house where we think "do we spend loads of money fixing it all, or bodge it all and try to sell it?".

So here's the opportunity to own up to; the mould you painted over, the crack in the wall that you moved the bookcase in front of, the hob that doesn't work when the oven's on, and the iron mark on the carpet that you put the rug on top of.

We will forgive you your sins without judgement.

Honestly, when I think of the way my old house was when we moved in...the electrics were mega dodgy and not earthed, the main electrical cable to the street was old and needed replaced completely, the bathroom door didn't close, the living room wallpaper was stripey wrapping paper glued to the wall, the bathroom sink was cracked, the walls were falling to bits and needed stripped back to the brick, the carpets were threadbare, the loft was full of the previous owners shite (and it was the biggest loft space I'd ever seen). There were pieces of skirtings missing in every room, some of the fitted wardrobes turned out to be old kitchen cupboards, the blinds fell down when you opened them.....I could go on. There was not a single original piece of that house left when we sold it on.

@LolaSmiles

If you buy somewhere and the neighbours are horrendous, or the shower leaks and there are umpteen other things wrong with the house, would you honestly fess up to all those things to your buyers when you came to sell?? It may not be the morally winning thing to do, but I’m pretty sure you don’t have to sacrifice your own happiness just because you’ve been stung in a dog eat dog process. There's a difference between being neutral about the neighbours and outright lying because everyone has their own idea of nightmare neighbours. On my street there's one family with children who are out in the garden most days. I think that's reasonable, but MN threads inform me that there's a number of people who think it's ghastly and antisocial for people to use their gardens before 11am on a Saturday. Cosmetic stuff i take your point, and same for a drippy tap, or a shower where the pressure drops sometimes. That's just life.

But, deliberately trying to conceal bigger problems or choosing to vacate the property unclean and covered in mould is wrong.

When we moved into one of our houses, the previous owner had left food in the fridge and the appliances clearly hadn't been cleaned in months. It was disgusting.

Yes I agree. Neighbour issues are subjective - your buyers might be as noisy/worse than the people who annoyed you after all. Small cosmetic issues also not a big deal. The things people are objecting to are deliberately and deceitfully covering up dangerous and/or very expensive things to fix, or a lack of common courtesy such as keeping the place fairly clean prior to completion date. Absolutely awful that people behave like that.

I didn't do anything like thay but got left these in my new house:

Painted over mould in bedroom and bathroom

Broken toilet and pipes

Broken livingroom light

Dodgy/broken floorboards in hallway that had been hidden by a rug

Broken tiles in kitchen hidden behind microwave

Because of covid there was a six month delay in offer and exchanging so wondered if some of these things happened then and they just didn't bither fixing

Found out the loft was full of the previous owners junk. Only time I sold a property it was to a relative and everything was cleared out. Needed refurbishment but sound.

On the day we moved, we realised we hadn't checked an alcove in one of the rooms. Found a box on the shelf whic, when we pulled it out, revealed peeling paper and mould. We had already exchanged contracts, it was 20 mins before we were due to hand over the keys and all the cleaning stuff had been packed and moved.
Felt bad about that.

The conservatory had no heating or air conditioning. The buyers knew it but we said it wasn’t an issue. That’s not true - it was bloody freezing. Before viewings we had a plug in radiator in there and I had scrubbed the mould off the walls and ceiling (from condensation) a few days prior. In the summer it was way too hot to use either so was a completely useless room. The people we bought from had lied to us about it too.

On the flip side we moved into a house that had so many issues! The electricity tripped every day, multiple times a day. The ceiling lights weren’t wired properly and it’s been a nightmare sorting it out. We don’t have any electricity in our extension because they mucked it all up.

None of the doors fit the frames properly so rattle or don’t catch and open themselves. There are big gaps under doors and they’re not straight.

All of the walls needed replastering. The oven didn’t get hot enough to cook anything. The windows all needed replacing, we could hear everything as though a window was open!

Random crap in the loft for us to deal with too.

Our buyer kept wanting more and more freebies, and I was happy to leave some things to be honest, because they weren't particularly new or high value (e.g. fridge, washing machine, dishwasher).
We negotiated a price on a new, high value range cooker, and at the last minute, he asked if he could have it for free as a "gesture of goodwill" (goodwill for what, I don't know, but the answer was no!).
Anyway, for that reason, I didn't feel too guilty that the washing machine that I was leaving had developed a bit of a mould issue that I couldn't fully eradicate. I also didn't feel too guilty taking down the blackout curtains in the main bedroom and replacing them with some 80s style lightweight ones that I found in the loft.
He hasn't complained, but I've noticed that black binbags have been taped to the windows of the main bedroom now (the house is on a main road and I'm still local, I've driven past a few times and months later, he's still sticking with the binbags.)

This thread has sent my anxiety soaring

With our last house we got shafted. The survey didn't pick up somehow that the cellar had a hole in the ceiling near the outside wall so you could see the pavement, the boiler was fitted in the 70's and was older than me (didn't see it on viewing as it was in the loft and I was pregnant).
Double glazing on its last legs, very dodgy electrics and mould underneath the bay windowsills. You could only see it if you were in the floor but it was black. The cellar had a gas leak as well.
The neighbours were awful and loud. The screaming at the kids and slamming doors type.

When we collected the keys it was really late and apparently it was because 'they just couldn't let it go'. It was all bull shit. All of it.

We went for that house because we had no money for renovations, in the end we had to get a loan for a new boiler and someone to fix the hole in the cellar. Another loan for the gas leak because it turned out we needed new pipes and extras. New oven as it didn't work. Security system as our car was vandalised.

We got into so much debt and it nearly destroyed our marriage.

We spent some money doing it up (another loan) and fixed what we could and sold up.

Horrendous and people actually do this to their buyers consciously.

Bought a house in which the kitchen had been left filthy and had a waste disposal that had obviously been broken for a long time and stank.
Left a house in which I had 'boarded' the back of an alcove with cardboard and masking tape all painted over with white emulsion and the place where I had attempted to take a bit of skirting off, failed and filled the subsequent hole in the plasterboard with crumpled newspaper, polyfilla and again painted over.

I should add that I inherited so much worse in my new house (didn't have a survey because I'd had a builder check it was structurally sound... planned to gut and replace everything else, but didn't expect to need to do so immediately):

• Boiler completely gone (no heating for first 9 days this January)
• Electric garage door broken beyond repair
• Patio doors fell off their hinges within the first week. Apparently they were slightly too small for the space. Had to pay over the odds for custom ones.
• Leaking sinks in multiple places in the kitchen and utility room.
• Plaster caved in by the front door due to damp - previous owner had shoved scrunched up carrier bags in the hole and filled over them.
• all three loos broken or leaking and had to be repaired (luckily all within a day or so of each other and we fixed as we found the issues!)
• both shower broken
• every double glazing panel blown in every single window
• birds in the loft!
• birds now relocating in the soffets after being moved on from the loft (I quite like hearing them but they drive my DP mad!)

I'm sure there's more, and I've only lived here 2 months! The only expensive things have been the doors and boiler, and the windows (which I knew about before buying). Everything else has just been the cost of spare parts, and just really annoying more than anything. I don't think our buyers meant any harm - they haven't lived in the country for over 10 years and had rented the house all those years. It had been empty 9 months prior to us moving in which doesn't help either.

@tigerbread20 we need to know more about this ghost!

Moved into a new house in the middle of winter only for the boiler to completely die a couple weeks later and needed replacing

Even after we got the new boiler, the second bedroom was always ice cold and mould started appearing on the walls. Everything in the room became damp, mouldy and sticky. It was awful!

Also found the last owner's vibrator down the back of the wardrobe!! Make sure you check EVERYWHERE before handing over those keys...

Oh last house before this one - we found previous owner's stash of porn magazines on top of some bookshelves. I hope he did not miss them too much as we did not send them to the forwarding address We binned them

Nothing. Left house spotless. Even paid to get a hole in ceiling repaired when husband fell through the morning we moved out. People should leave the house as theyd hope to find their new one. Moving is stressful enough without being left a disgusting hell hole. Take your cr*p with you.

The day I moved in, I discovered one loo would not flush and there was no hot water from the kitchen taps. I immediately rang the vendors and asked about these things and they denied all knowledge - claimed both had been working perfectly when they left the previous day. Didn’t even have grace to confess.

Neighbours from hell - to the point that I had been approached by the newspapers about it. However it was declared, and as far as I know the buyer hasn’t had any major issues with them.
Otherwise usual stuff,damp, rotten windows, damage kids had done papered over...they had a survey which luckily picked up nothing.

My new neighbour moved in next door where a family lived before with 2 young children. The family had filled a skip before they left and took what they wanted but left behind what they didn't want, the house was left badly hoarded and thick with grease, grime, mould and in bad condition. I still don't get why my neighbour didn't realise how bad it was before he bought the house.

We part exed our house for a new build so this is kind of opposite. We had to make good all the walls (they retained £1000 until after completion and inspection of the house).

In one room we had, had the tv on the wall. We had painted around it but saved some paint to do behind the tv - the except it was dried up! So the last week before we moved we had to repaint half the room - chose a contrasting colour so did opposite walls.

6 months later I popped by old house as we had a few days between the extension of post redirection and I was expecting post. Builders were there, our house had been bought by two guys who basically took down all plaster to re-plaster walls, did some major work including new kitchen/bathroom but basically all our hard work filling holes and repainting was wasted

Following

@121hugsneeded

Friends of my husbands left a completely flooded cellar. They simply screwed new floorboards over the whole room where the hatch was. Awful.

That's appalling.

I think the only thing I have left behind was an unfixable damp problem which was characteristic of all of the houses in the area and to do with the way they were built. We spent a lot of money trying to fix it but of course didn't mention it when we sold it on.

Karma is going to get you.

Not me, but a lot of people on here seem to be lumbering the buyers with awful neighbours. They don't disclose that their neighbours are horrible and the problems they are having with them. I see it on here all the time and I think it's a horrible thing to do.

The neighbours from hell: drink, drugs, fights, shouting, swearing, police...
We just said we didn’t really know them and changed the subject to the nice man on the other side.

We brought a house in August with some exceptionally dodgy wiring - Had an electrician round to fit a new shower as the old one was making a strange noise, only to be told that the wiring that the existing shower was connected to was half the thickness that it should be and was basically a death trap waiting to happen if we had turned it up to full power or heat!

Previous people who owned the house had 2 small children; I genuinely do not know how the lived with the fear of this!

The worst we have left was a shower which used to leak slightly in our ground floor flat. Nothing serious and tbh, if my husband had taken the bath panel off and had a look, he may have been able to fix it (It had done this before) but we were majorly stressed with moving...Shitty excuse but seem to be very mild in comparison to some horror stories on here! Very glad to have only moved last year and to not be moving again for a very long time (I hope)!

@HedgeSparrows

Not me, but a lot of people on here seem to be lumbering the buyers with awful neighbours. They don't disclose that their neighbours are horrible and the problems they are having with them. I see it on here all the time and I think it's a horrible thing to do.

How will they ever get away from the horrible neighbour if they tell everyone interested in buying the house about them? I agree with you to a point but revealing terrible neighbours is hardly practical if you need to sell your house.