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.

I've not left anything too bad I don't think - my old house had two showers on the bath, which I'd thought was weird when I moved in. Turns out one was nice and powerful but barely any hot water came through, so it was a lovely cool summer shower. The other one had hardly any pressure but was nice and warm, so was my winter shower! I did leave a note explaining this though. Someone had also previously put a patio door lock on the garden door but had removed it before I moved in, so there was just a hole. If it rained really heavily and at just the wrong angle, it poured through in to the living room! When I was there I just patched it up with (of all things) bluetack and black electrical tape (it was a black framed door). When I moved out I was embarrassed about my bodging so removed it. In hindsight I should have left it because I later heard that it had rained really heavily not long after and flooded the floor! Thankfully the new owners weren't too bothered as they were already planning on replacing the door and carpet anyway, but I did feel bad!

The house we moved in to was all style over substance. On viewing everything looked nice, but when you started looking closely once all their stuff was removed you could see how bodged things were. They'd hidden poorly finished and damaged floor edging with a rug, rotten decking was hidden by patio furniture, painting was only done as far as a roller or brush could reach, so if you stood looking down above a radiator the walls were totally different colours. They also left random stuff in the loft and the garden was absolutely full of dog shit.

The oven was a total disgrace. The smoke alarm went off every time it was used so we got a professional oven cleaner in who commented it was probably the dirtiest oven he'd ever seen. Once clean it only lasted a couple of months then it packed up!

I'm never moving again!

god this is not nice to read, but also useful as a warning to do proper research yourselves and dont trust buyers, no matter how charming

@Quincie

We had a doorway between rooms with no RSJ - it was originally an outside wall.

Oh sweet Jesus 😱

Well. We put the house on the market the exact week that the trees in the back garden came into leaf and hid the hideously close houses behind us.
Crack in garage wall.

When I moved in the front window sill outside was half newspaper and filler which I only found out when I looked closely. When I started ripping out the kitchen I found the floor under where the washing machine had been was rotten. I had a new kitchen coming 48 hours later and no time to get workmen in. I did a botch job and laid laminate on top. That later was replaced by wood but it always wobbled in that area.

The new owners will have found it when they ripped out the floors.

Not me, I wasn't involved in the sale - but a relatives ashes were buried in the garden before their house was sold.

The buyers have no idea.

We left a couple of very minor leaks and a really noisy shower pump however my mum once exchanged a (council) house which seemed very nice only to discover the previous tenant had neatly wallpapered AROUND all of her furniture in every room, and over the top of the radiator pipes - which was fun!

The garden fence fell down in a storm while we were waiting to complete. We managed to push it back up, used one proper fencing stake to secure the worst bit and hid the other ropes and stakes we used to secure it in the bushes!

Our house had a rather large hole in the garage roof and I fully expected the buyers survey to pick this up and them barter the price. We never got a call about anyone to go in for the survey and Google maps satellite view has been updated since we lived there and still shows the hole 😂

I guess it really is sold as seen!

We inherited an oven that was as warm as a light bulb, a toilet that didn’t flush, a wall not attached to the floor and an extension and stairs not to building regs (among many many other things). We guessed most of these things anyway and was prepared for a big renovation. The oven pissed me off the most as it a big range oven. Replaced it with a much prettier one now though 😍

This thread just confirms why I always buy fixer- uppers!

Last time we sold, the boiler leaked slightly but it had been repaired and had annual services, all the plumbers just said it was a quirk of the boiler. We did make the buyers aware so they weren't shocked - it was only 6 years old so definitely didn't need replacing.

I am never, ever moving after reading this thread.

We've never left anything but a lovely clean house but the woman who bought the house from the people who bought it from us has tracked me down on Facebook and accused me of all sorts.

Apparently we left a skip load of hardcore in the loft?? We didn't use the loft as it was a listed house and we were too scared to go up there but the people who bought from us had had the roof replaced and it seemed the old one was left in the loft.

She then badgered me about how to open the fitted cupboard around the toilet. You literally pushed a corner of the cupboard to expose the cistern and then they had a leak which went into the electricity meter which was obviously my fault although by this time we hadn't lived there for 6 years!

I just ignored her messages in the end. The house was beautiful when we left and we'd spent so much on it but the people who originally bought it from us wrecked every good thing we'd done!

We are not paragons, but generally we end up fixing everything we inherited, because there is no way in hell you could leave it. So we had expanding foam flooded into a chimney and then the hatch plastered over and a very odd damp patch - we dealt with it; we had a concreted in toilet, so you could not fix the ballcock - we had to chisel it off and out of the wall; leak on the chimney stack hidden by crap loft boarding - fixed that and you could smell it, so they knew; 7 different types of kitchen cabinet in one kitchen - must have been a skip raid on many different occasions and doors that opened in perculiar ways - sorted that. We have also learned that straight lines in construction are rare and precious things and if this is something that bothers you, probably better not to look too closely at anything! Honestly we try not to leave any video nasties but sure that something goes pop after we move, as stuff just happens normally, but intentionally, nope nothing major to report. Realistically, we also know that nothing is as it seems on the surface, so now think the worst and then anything you actually get is a bonus. Don't get me started on surveyors and we now have a builder look at anything we want to buy, as they do a far better job!

They thought the place had a damp problem but they just didn't know how to look after victorian houses. So winner winner there, I bet they were thinking we'd be gutted when winter hit instead it's all gone.

Any tips @NotQuiteUsual? Asking for a mouldy friend

Think this is the main think I inherited with my house. A lovely dry storage space is actually an incredibly damp mouldy cellar. Not sure there's much to be done without fully tanking it out, which isn't in my budget, so I make do. Do get some mould in the corners of kitchen and living room though, which is more annoying. It's not terrible but if I'm missing any tricks to get rid I'm happy to hear them!

Oh, and if looking at property, buy a damp meter!

ChristopherTracy did you get your on survey done on it?

The house was fine but the neighbour next door played Barbara Strisen loud after 1am every Saturday night. Apart from that she was actually a very quiet nice neighbour.

Mine are very minor - a cheap but new extractor replacing the one that died a week before exchange.
A folding internal door that comes unstuck. We taped it over and marked it - "Loose door - don't open" before the viewings - so hopefully they noticed.

Otherwise a really solid house that we had re-done really well to last another 100 years. Was very sad to leave it.

We are now in a lovely spacious new build - but I remember a horror story from MN of another new build where the builders 'forgot' to connect the sewage pipes with the drains - so there was a sea of sewage a seawage? under the house in a years time. I cross my fingers with every flush!!

Some of these are really not ok, I hope you get sued and if not sued then I hope karma bites you in the arse.

I left my last house immaculate, had a cleaner in for a full day in spite of regular cleaners coming day before. Also had a gardener come and do a day before we left.
The house I bought had a rat infestation. Dodgy electric socket in the bedroom. Horrendous students neighbours. Broken garage door. Other hideous neighbours. Rotten carpet, look okay till you lift it up then it’s rotten underneath. Windows that leaked when it rains. They order deliveries to my address as they know when I’m in and pick it up on the way home. And always tell me what a lovely house they sold me. I’ve started sending their deliveries away and pretending I don’t recognise the name!

When we sold my DGM's house, we knew whoever bought it would want to replace the family bathroom. At the same time, the wallpaper hanging off (who wallpapers a bathroom?) wasn't a good look so we stuck it back up with Pritt stick five minutes before a viewing.

We also didn't mention the fact that there isn't space to have the en suite door and the shower door open at the same time, although the buyers thought they'd turn it into a wet room so it probably didn't matter.

The oven was lovely though! I ended up living there for a couple of weeks getting it ready to be sold, and it was much better than mine.

A cat-scratched door frame where I painted over the scratched bit so the bare wood wasn't obvious, a badly-painted wall (had bought silk emulsion by accident and the underlying paintwork insisted on showing through even after multiple coats) and a couple of bits of old furniture left in the loft which I'd genuinely forgotten about.

However the house I recently bought was far worse: needs rewiring (not picked up on survey); has damp in the kitchen (ditto); the bathroom plumbing is rubbish - both the toilet and the hand basin regularly fill and refuse to drain - and the utility ceiling has dropped above the back door which doesn't open. It stupidly didn't occur to me during the viewings that the vendor only ever took me into the back garden via the French doors leading off another room. It's not as though I just paid for a minimal 'quick look round' survey either!

Oh, and when they had a new carpet, my grandad drew around the whole family on the boards underneath. I'm hoping that counts as charming though, although I suppose it could look like a mass murder had taken place...

It wasn’t a buyer but returning a flat to the landlord - I’d accidentally damaged the carpet so we cut out the damaged bits and used a spare bit I found to fill in the holes. If ever they lifted the carpet they’d find various glued down bits left behind.

That and the chipped sink where I painted over the chips with white nail varnish.

That was the least of the problems with that flat that I’d had to put up with (including the flooding) so I didn’t feel too guilty

When my parents were selling the family home in the 80s, my Dad used to make us sit and play on the hole in the carpet (through to the floorboards!) or would stand with his slippered foot on it when they had viewings. The room had been knocked through and was many sq ft so they'd never managed to afford to replace it. Still makes me chuckle, bless him.
Less amusingly, some months or years after we'd moved we were contacted by the new owners and their legal representatives as they'd discovered a stream running through the foundations of the house which was causing subsidence and needed many ££s to put right. Mum and Dad honestly had no idea and the survey didn't pick it up so nothing happened - but it was pretty shocking to drive past and see the huge hole full of water in the front garden!