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.

We, uh, underplayed an argument we had with our upstairs neighbours who owned the freehold. They said we could do some building works but they'd just want to 'check a few things', then proceeded to completely obstruct us doing the work, including sending us a 'cease and desist' notice while we had no kitchen (and I was 30 weeks pregnant) - fortunately it turned out to be unenforcable so we were able to ignore that, but not until I'd spent 24 hours unable to eat or sleep with anxiety. But there was basically a stream of unreasonable demands (like demanding one tradesman accept legal responsibility for the work of another) and we had to give up on the structural element and rework some things. And then they charged US for their legal fees, which we held off paying until we wanted to sell and I convinced DH we'd better settle up in order to consider the dispute settled.

Anyway, we framed the whole thing on selling as 'Oh gosh, a bit of a misunderstanding and it was totally our fault'. Our eventual buyer was a sometime property developer, who we reckoned could handle them.

New owner actually sent me a text message a year or so in about the freeholder (I can't remember exactly what it was), but DH was 'Not our problem, don't get involved'. At any rate, new owner seemed to get his way and significantly remodelled and extended the flat in a way that I'm sure the freeholders hated, so we kind of liked the karma.

Always left the house/flat as described ... being especially careful to ensure formal property questions answered correctly! With our first house, the outgoing owner (a blokey bloke, and a surveyor too) smashed the main windowframe in the living room moving his furniture out - and he was two hours late in moving out. Fortunately one of the new next door neighbours was a retired joiner, saw what happened, and offered to fix it temporarily ... never spoken to him before!

Shitty neighbours. We were upfront with everything about them to the agent and buyer, but dear Lord I pity the poor buggers who moved next to them. Awful Royston Vasey types.

Not disclosing awful neighbours is the worst thing to me on this thread. Having lived with neighbours with serious drug problems and the stress and constant fear we lived with, lumbering someone with horrible neighbours is something I could personally never do from a moral standpoint. I understand people need to sell but I don’t think I could lie or not disclose “Quirks” that neighbours may have. I understand everyone’s situation is different, it’s just my own personal opinion that makes me feel that is a pretty shitty thing to do.

Child pinged the roller blind off its housing. Fell in the bath, missing the children and made a large crack/hole in the plastic bath. Bit of plastic padding and a bath mat hid it. Saving grace was the fact the bathroom was a disgusting brown colour which DH chose. Anyone with any taste would have ripped it out within days despite it only being a few years old.

Following

I can tell you what undisclosed i inherited.. bastards
No insulation in roof anywhere
No plaster on two thirds of the walls,
Cracks throughout front of house covered up by paint
Seals shot on all the double glazed windows (9) and porch
Shit woodburner with wrong baffle plate
and we paid the asking price because we thought nothing needed doing!

Dreadful karaoke at the pub next door that could be heard through the living room walls. But all guilt disappeared when the pub changed hands just a couple of months after we left and a beautiful local microbrewery took up residence.

DH and I were talking about moving this morning. On the strength of this thread I just don't dare to. I am hunkering down in my warts-and-all house and never moving again...

When my parents moved into their house in the early 80’s they arrived on moving day to find the sellers had taken all light bulbs and.... the lawn 😳 the sellers had moved within the same village which was awks to say the least...

@Savoury
It MUST have been a ground floor flat if it had a cellar under their floor. 😳

When we sold a flat, having fully declared the major works plus costs which were coming up, our buyer, a conveyancing solicitor junior, got her boss to check the paperwork, and 'suddenly realised' that she didn't have funds to pay for the major works. She took 10k off her offer price a week before exchange. We were in the lucky position whereby we had the money to suck this up (albeit with an awful lot of swearing...) and we really wanted the house we were buying, so we got on with things.

However, when the ignition for the oven broke between exchange and completion, I didn't feel any need to tell them, I left no form of instructions out for any of the appliances, took all of the curtains and light bulbs and didn't do a scrap of cleaning once we'd cleared the flat (not even the loo... sorry...). We threw away the touch up paint for the various rooms and didn't leave any info for where the bins / recycling was etc etc.

We had damp on one wall - I'd clean it off but it always came back. I bought a side cabinet to specifically that section of the wall just before we went on the market. I prayed the buyer wouldn't get a home buyers which they didn't.

On the day we moved out I scrubbed the wall like mad. I'm sure it will have come through again after we'd left. I do feel awful and know one day karma will come bite me!! I'm so sorry buyer!!

Our house is a complete bodge! Owners before us were serial bodgers and we would have to rip the house apart to fix it all so we just do our best to rip out what we can and patch up the rest.

This thread is making me feel much better though! We dont have mould, leaks, damp or any crystallised cat wee :o

all kinds of issues needing fixing in my old house, windows, loo, bathroom, shower room. On the plus side the boiler and rads were new, & electrics were sound. My buyers didn't even bother getting a survey as he was a builder and mates with the builder who did our kitchen extension. When he viewed the house he looked at one of the problem areas and said "it doesn't worry me, I can fix that".

They got a bargain, I know that, but I didn't have the cash (or energy) to fix everything that needed doing and just wanted to move on (divorce) it was a problem-free sale from that POV and evidently, according to my old neighbours, they love the house (fantastic location)

Absolutely nothing. I’ve had the dirty done on me twice now and had to pay out a lot of money on both occasions to rectify things. I even got the surveyor back the last time, but he had himself well covered, believe me.
I just couldn’t live with myself if I left someone with costly issues to sort out. I’d rather be out of pocket and have a clear conscience.

We had leaky french doors in our bedroom. The day the surveyor came it started to rain so I asked him to start in that room as I had urgent paperwork to do and needed to sit in there undisturbed. The floor did get wet but he did not see it.

Drove a camper van into a car park roof, it took a big chunk off the roof of the van. Painted over it in the same colour paint as the van and sold it

@VK456

Absolutely nothing. I’ve had the dirty done on me twice now and had to pay out a lot of money on both occasions to rectify things. I even got the surveyor back the last time, but he had himself well covered, believe me. I just couldn’t live with myself if I left someone with costly issues to sort out. I’d rather be out of pocket and have a clear conscience.

Me roo

Absolutely nothing. Unlike the two houses we've bought which promptly fell apart on moving in.

@HedgeSparrows so if you were unlucky enough to buy a house with terrible neighbours would you just live there forever? Realistically our flat would not have sold if I had gone into the neighbours social issues. I felt so sorry for them and took them food but are you suggesting that someone raise their kids scared to go out into the close after 5pm incase there were dealers/Johns out in the hallway?

Aside from being awful about major building works, freeholders were fine, I should add. And with two growing kids in a two-bed flat it was between saying 'Oh, and the freeholder won't let you do any structural work and will create huge amounts of stress' or, you know, being able to move to a house with enough space for us.

My flat was on market for ages, finally a punter made a date to view. I knew if I got a someone over it would sell and I was right. Offer was low but I accepted. Survey guy came to inspect. The flat had sash windows one of which the weight rope had broken so wouldnt open and one was well rotten, he didnt check the broken one and I stuffed snow off the garden over the rot. Got away with it!. He got cheap so he can replace himself.

An annoying neighbour who used to peer over the garden fences and constantly found things to complain about which she thought were our fault, like her driveway flooding. We had drainage on ours but her drain was sitting too high to the rest of her drive.
We were never in a dispute with her but I was glad to leave her behind for new, less irritating neighbours.

I had to use a wallpaper scraper on the top cupboards in the kitchen to remove the grease 🤢 leak behind kitchen sink floor collapsed, new roof, new flat roof. Oh nearly forgot the carpet in the bedroom was rank took up to reveal another carpet more rank than the top one. Dog fleas. But I love my house