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.

Your mention of the iron mark under the rug made me laugh as that is what we found in our new house last month.

In our old house we left a piece of glass that needed replacing as it had started to blow. £80 quoted but we'd already spent a fortune. That's it really.

Our sellers took the absolute piss. Not only were there iron marks on the carpets, the boiler has died, every carpet needs replacing, there were dead rodents in the kitchen cupboards, they swapped the fridge and freezer for old ones, the oven hasn't been cleaned in years, the blinds are all broken, the internal doors weren't open because of Covid rules on viewing - they just don't close (old house so can't just replace with cheap ones), the alarm was knackered and cost us £400 to have fixed, the external doors don't fit properly, the 'sauna' blows all the fuses when it's turned on and the pond pumps are both knackered. All the electrics are questionable and they were hiding huge cracks in the walls with tall furniture. The built in furniture is falling apart too and smells of mould.
To say I'm pissed off is an understatement. We've spent about £10k in the first month which had to be borrowed

As someone who bought my second home late last year after an absolutely awful year financially (due to covid), only to discover the enormous lengths the buyer had gone to to hide problems, I found this thread really hard to read.

I have two very young children (10 months and 2 years). The last few months of building work (in what was marketed as a refurbished and renovated property), having to rent a building to work from (I’m a childminder so can’t work from home with the work being done), having no kitchen or downstairs toilet, the whole of downstairs being stripped back to brick. It has been absolute fucking hell and we are now in quite serious debt. I cannot even fathom doing that to another person.

the problem is surveys arent worth much are they the basic ones anyway-they checkfro damp and if theybuilding is sound but thats it

weird how electrics and boilers etc are not mandatory checked

I always request any rubbish is cleared as part of contract. The agent checks this has been completed

I leave any spare paint, tiles for any repairs.. Other than that the house is cleared and cleaned

@Enwi

As someone who bought my second home late last year after an absolutely awful year financially (due to covid), only to discover the enormous lengths the buyer had gone to to hide problems, I found this thread really hard to read.

I have two very young children (10 months and 2 years). The last few months of building work (in what was marketed as a refurbished and renovated property), having to rent a building to work from (I’m a childminder so can’t work from home with the work being done), having no kitchen or downstairs toilet, the whole of downstairs being stripped back to brick. It has been absolute fucking hell and we are now in quite serious debt. I cannot even fathom doing that to another person.

That’s just awful but what on earth was your surveyor doing not to pick up on faults that need such extensive work?

I grumbled about giving my buyer £4K off because her homebuyers report suggested it needed reroofing. There had never been a leak until the day before we exchanged when the ceiling was sporting a brown patch! Afraid to say I did quickly stain block and paint over it

An ex neighbour did a lot of work without planning permission. After new owners discovered this pre exchange they got retrospective permission easily. Old neighbour got criminal record, lost his job as teacher as no longer passed police check, couldn’t get further loans, mortgage or insurance. Council would have given permission if he had applied but he thought he was pulling a fast one. Karma.

Also people buying soon saying they'll look out for all these things how can you

you cant start moving furniture and asking to see behind mirrors can you

I'm amazed that so much of the things mentioned have not been picked up by surveyors!
I am still doing little jobs even though I've agreed a sale. I've repainted the external doors since then, power washed and regrouted the terrace, and will soon get the carpets shampoo. My cleaning lady just broke the kitchen tap last week so obviously replaced that, the front door lock is getting stuck on occasion so will replace that.
I think houses always look dirtier once the furniture has been removed, even if they've been cleaned.
I bought my first flat off a newscaster - more well known then than now. He left a broken boiler and tried to remove the gas fire listed as part of the sale. I know this as when I turned on the heat the upstairs owners ran down (it made a horrible noise) and told me to turn it off as he knew it was faulty and dangerous but just left it. And they knew about the gas fire as they had to let tradesman in but when they realised what he was going to do stopped him - I can inly imagine they did not have the best relationship with the seller! He also did not repaint a leak repair which my lawyer was supposed to retain £250 for (but didnt). and I found out a few weeks later that he'd never paid his ground rent! I was a naive first time buyer with a crap solicitor and dishonest seller. I hiss at him every time I see him on screen.

@Brainwave89

On the reverse, the second house we purchased had been on the market for some time. We had originally not viewed as it was outside of our price range. Anyway, it was reduced and then reduced again. We were relocating so had nowhere to sell and we put in an offer which was excepted. The sellers were very unhappy (we found out later), with the price they had received and prior to moving out took up all of the carpets, a garden shed, all bulbs and several light fittings. None of these were that great or that new, so this was pure spite. After a couple of months they pitched up asking why we had not forwarded on their mail. We clearly advised them of the excellent service offered by the Post Office!

We had this - cranky because they couldn't get the price they wanted so they removed all the door handles, light bulbs and in some cases ripped the light fittings out (leaving exposed wires) so we arrived late on a rainy winters day to find we had no lights for the removal men to see where they were going. Helpful! Solicitor told us to get an electrician to replace each light bulb and charge labour for each one individually - and I think we also got them to pay for lovely brass doorknobs. Solicitor wasn't having it - told us to go nuts and he would make sure they paid up.

@Camphillgirl

An ex neighbour did a lot of work without planning permission. After new owners discovered this pre exchange they got retrospective permission easily. Old neighbour got criminal record, lost his job as teacher as no longer passed police check, couldn’t get further loans, mortgage or insurance. Council would have given permission if he had applied but he thought he was pulling a fast one. Karma.

I don’t understand. Our house needed retrospective planning permission for a change before we exchanged. It was granted and we went through with the purchase. There was no question of prosecuting the vendor. It’s a listed building too.

I have always left every house I have rented/sold immaculately clean and in very good order. My DS’s last rental flat before he bought a property was a lovely flat. I helped him move out and we throughly cleaned the flat. I was having a last look round the flat. I noticed a sort of yellowish goo trickling out of an air-brick type thing inside, high up on the kitchen wall. I asked my DS if he had ever noticed it before. He said ‘Oh that?’ It’s just the bees’. There was literally a colony of bees living in the kitchen ha ha! I asked him why he had never mentioned it to the landlady. He said he liked seeing the bees coming and going and didn’t inform the landlady as she would have had them destroyed! Always been a sensitive soul my DS.

Stroppy neighbour, not horrible just never had anything nice to say.
White lie about how much the storage heater and underfloor heating cost to run.
Shower stuck on max temperature.
Said neighbour's gable end mortar bits falling off onto the conservatory roof - which ended up breaking the roof a few months later! New owner didn't update her home insurance properly so that ended up being linked to me at my new address which is how I found out but hopefully she did manage to claim for it!
Cat smashed her way through the cat flap on moving day but there wasn't a lot we could do about that (buyer was particularly excited for the cat flap ).
Very beautiful but impractical glass/mirror shelves, installed properly but in no way load bearing.

Constant battle with slugs and snails and a recurring wasp nest in the garden.

It was a lovely and unique property which was definitely undervalued by about 5% so she got a good deal on a lovely house in spite of these issues.
Nothing was a patch on what we moved into

I bought my first house thinking the lounge carpet was grey. With no furniture on moving day I discovered it was originally peach, just filthy.

Three days after I moved out the boiler split and flooded downstairs. I genuinely didn't know there was a problem with it but as I had only moved over the road was embarrassed when they knocked the door. They did get a new bathroom, kitchen and redecorated on their insurance fortunately.

I didn't leave any unpleasant surprises, but am still annoyed at my naivety when buying my first flat in having paid several hundred quid for clapped-out furniture that, I realise in hindsight, the previous owner simply didn't want to have to bother disposing of.

Oh dear! I have never done this but when I was a child my father felt very pleased with himself because he’d stuffed a wall with foil to disguise the fact that a flood from burst pipes had rendered it sodden and about to fall down before selling.Great morality to teach a child.

The problem is surveys arent worth much are they the basic ones anyway - they check for damp and if the building is sound but thats it

All too often they're not worth anything even if a full structural survey's paid for ... the endless caveats and the highly protective FRICS make quite sure of that

IME it's better by far to pay a trusted plumber/electrician/builder or whoever for the time it takes to look over the big ticket items

We'd done a lot on our first house. New flooring, bathrooms, kitchen, doors etc. The slight issue was the light in the sitting room sometimes wouldn't work. You'd have to switch the hall cupboard light on and off a few times to get the sitting room one working (?!). Our buyers didn't include a survey of the electrics...
I don't feel particularly guilty. We'd been left that house in a bad way.

My Dad passed away September last year and I was charged with emptying his housing association house. Dad was a hoarder and had lived 30 years in that house so you can imagine how bad it was. I had to travel from the other side of the country to get there, in the middle of the pandemic with 2 preschoolers in tow.

I cleared quite a bit of stuff and a few big items of furniture but left behind illegal sliding patio doors (he didn't get permission for the building work), an upstairs saniflo toilet just randomly in the middle of the bedroom, about 20 black sacks of hoarded medicine and wound dressings, a huge metal shed concreted to the ground outside, and a weed farm in the spare room I took down the tents and all the associated equipment but left all the holes in the roof for the pipes and filters. I felt terrible at first until I read that that housing association had made £130 million in profits in 2019. I'm a single mum on UC. So, fuck 'em.

We have not sold a house before. But when we bought ours, the buyers lumbered us with the most hideous carpets known to man, plus some very wobbly decorating, but nothing too bad really.

Please make sure when having a survey, that you opt for a Home Buyers Report or a Full Structural Survey. If you have a basic valuation then you don’t have a legal comeback on the surveyors for anything they have missed.

We bought a house that turned out to have severe subsidence and had to be underpinned, there were obvious signs that the surveyor had missed. It was a probate sale and we believe the vendors knew about it and changed agents after a sale fell through. We had a miserable few years before the surveyors settled out of court, we had to find thousands of pounds up front in legal fees and pay a structural engineer to write numerous reports. We had to rent another house for six months whilst ours was uninhabitable as well.

If you know something major is wrong with your house it is really not fair to not disclose it.