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 sold a very well loved and looked after ex council flat. I painted every room and did up the shared garden which involved removing multiple needles. I also painted the kitchen ceiling where my kettle sat under which had made a lovely area of condensation where a little mushroom once grew out of.

The neighbours (a lady who had multiple gentlemen callers a day and kept her crack pipe in the communal hallway and a man with severe psychiatric problems) I had no run ins with and had made no complaints about them but I also feel no guilt in selling. Was I just supposed to live there my whole life and raise my children with them so I wouldn't feel guilty??

This thread is making me feel very stressed out!!

@Camphillgirl

Do you mean RSJ rather than JCB? 🤣

Not a single thing and the new owner and estate agent said they have never came across such a clean, tidy and exactly as described house. Sadly the same can't be said for the bastards we bought our house from. Boiler packed up on day two (middle if coldest winter with severely asthmatic baby), oven blew up 3 days later, electric hob only had one working plate, marks on carpets everywhere, plaster came off walls with slightest touch and roof leaked. Did a complete renovation a couple of years down the line and had to replaster all interior walls, put new roof on, redo all the electrics, redo all the flooring, new central heating and to top it all they seemed have buried all their and our neighbors crap in our back garden. Only thing solid was the brickwork 🙄

We just bought a house that looked lovely at the viewing.

I think the people living here must have had physical fights in the house or something. Some walls and things have clearly been kicked and badly repaired. Dishwasher is hanging out and looks like it was damaged somehow. Cupboards and drawers off hinges and broken. Carpets completely fucked.

The house we moved out of we had professionally cleaned and the new owners complained one of the rooms had a cobweb.

We bought a new build showhouse. Moved in late Friday afternoon in autumn and Boiler didn’t work so no heating or hot water. I told site manager he wasn’t going anywhere until fixed he ended up staying with us for hours until repair man came. Turns out a circuit board was missing. Neighbours eventually confessed their boiler had broken and repair man had stolen the one from the show house to fix it. They felt bad watching all the hassle we had on move in day.

We actually swapped flats in the same building (we wanted to upsize, neighbour wanted to downsize) so this shouldn't have come as a shock, but our heating is shit. Victorian flat with high ceilings and giant windows and the radiators did absolutely fuck all to keep it warm in the cold. We swapped in August.

The apartment we moved in to is over/next to to the next-door building's boiler room, so it's always lovely and toasty warm and we never even have to use our radiators.

We left a sinking patio. It was visible so no surprise. As were cracked travertine tiles in the kitchen. Otherwise in very good shape. My very handy husband had spent years fixing builders’ short cuts.

The new owners ripped out light beige 20/80 heavy weight wool twist loomed in Kidderminster for cheap polyester on trend grey carpet. They ripped up the front with tumbled cobbles chosen to match the undertones in the roof tiles and bricks and replaced with a wall to wall grey forecourt. Two cherry trees came out and five rose bushes along with countless perennials and Spring bulbs. They kept the 15 year old kitchen though. 🤷🏻‍♀️ They also skipped chandeliers from John Lewis and replaced with trendy stuff that looked cheap to me.

It’s hard to guess what matters to people. If I had known they didn’t want the light fixtures, I would have taken them with me. Possibly the carpet too! (It’s expected to last over 30 years, thus the boring colour.) Both are better quality than the new house has.

Did none of your buyers have surveys?!

Decking that needed renovation. The patio table was over the worst part but anyone who took a walk over to it could see it needed an overhaul...guess they were happy with it.

Bedroom windows which leaked when wind and rain came in that direction. Felt a little bad about that originally but after the buyers showed their true colours at exchange and got abusive with our estate agent I don't anymore. After going quiet for weeks about a moving date they insisted it had to be in 10days time (this is when the first lockdown was just lifting) and wouldn't negotiate to give us an extra week to organise storage etc. It cost us an extra 1K in mortgage fees to do this. But they did overpay the next highest offer by over 10k so we reluctantly agreed.

Wow ...

Damp. Relentless damp. A dank windowless bathroom with a soggy ceiling that never dried out, despite having a working extractor fan and the heating on.

Living there was a constant uphill battle of bleaching and repainting.

This thread...
Can't be doing with other people's shit. Glad we bought a newbuild, then built our own house years later. Left the former one in the state we would've liked to find it if we were the buyers! No fault that we know of.

Humans are despicable and I KNOW this is nowhere near the worst of it. 🤢🤮

Nothing massive - broken immersion heater and the grill in the oven didn't work due to a problem with the knob (oven/hob worked fine), plus a few other niggles. I declared them all on the property form though so my buyer knew before moving day!

We have the opposite issue that our vendors hid a significant issue (that our extensive surveys did not pick up!) that has caused no end of stress. I currently have the builders in rectifying it

Same here. It was a long time ago when insurance was linked to the building society. We contacted ours and discovered that the vendors also had the same one, had claimed for the same issue, been paid out and had not done the work. We had no idea and the survey had not found what was a major issue. We were in a flap imagining we woud need to start suing vendors and the surveyor but fortunately our insurers sorted it out.

I didn't have time to properly clean my old flat before we moved out, and we left food in the freezer but had turned the freezer off, I really hope they noticed that nice and quick!

I didn't feel too bad as I had really been messed about with them taking ages and nearly lost the purchase on my new home. I'm still not sure how you are supposed to be able to pack up a whole 3 bedroom flat, and clean it top to bottom before midday on moving day!

We - fortunately - aren't gullible and took our builder to every house viewing so knew that our current house had issues including...

A live electrical feed to the garage simply cut through and not made safe
Dodgy electrics elsewhere
Holes in the ceiling literally papered over
External render used on ceilings to try and cover water ingress
A dangerous room simply bricked up
Dangerous plumbing
Original features bricked up with cement or levelling compound
A massive hole in the floorboards under the sofa
A rat infestation
An extension with no building regs so no RSJ
Mould
Rotten joists
Sodden carpet

Thankfully, we knew what we were doing, got a good price and we've dealt with 90% of the issues to create/rediscover a lovely 100yr old house.

We have never hidden a thing when selling.

I viewed a house and then bought it. When I moved it, all the carpets had been taken & e every lightbulb in the house. Excellent 😂

This makes for bad reading. I know people are dishonest but it just puts the fear of god into you re buying a new house.

I dread selling ours because the buyers we bought it from left it in a right state and we’ve not been able to sort it all but we want to move as we have two small children and we want to have bought in a nicer area ready for school applications.

They left all their dog muck in the back garden, they left the bins full of incorrect rubbish, the pluming under the sink is shot and would need completely replumbing.

The electrics are so old.. the boiler must not have been in the cupboard it is in now because there is a wire running along the ceiling in the hallway from the fuse box to the boiler. We were hoping to cut it out to tidy the walls up and now we can’t

I swear I regret buying it in the first place. There are no major faults but we have stripped all the walls and the the flooring underneath all the carpets could do with nailing back down as the creak. Would that be a major issue with putting the house on the market?

We didn't leave much as the house was only three years old when we sold it though it wasn't particularly well built. The house we moved into however has been a catalogue of bad workmanship and many, many leaks. We had a full survey which didn't show any problems at all though when we moved in you could see where the roof had been/still was leaking in the lounge. We thought it would be well built as it was built by a local surveyor for himself and his family. Turns out they used the cheapest of cheap materials (2mm plasterboard on the walls) and it leaked from the roof and the bathrooms. The kitchen window the tiles were literally hanging off the top (covered by a blind) and you could catch a glass full of water from the drips every time it rained. Turns out the en suite window was badly fitted and was causing a leak to drip down the inside of the walls and come out above the kitchen window. We have had to have a new roof to finally stop the leaks in the lounge. Also all the windows at the back of the house were different. Different colours (some brown some white), materials (some aluminium, some wood, some PVC) and none had fensa certificates. The ceiling came down under the bathroom shortly after we moved in due to a leak so we had to redo all that.

We are now hopefully slowly getting on top of all the jobs! Luckily our neighours are great and we love living here.

We have never hidden a thing when selling.

Me neither @ShowOfHands. I'm a bit gobsmacked by some of these. Having said that, the people we bought this house from left us with shit loads of issues. We've been here 15 years and practically taken it apart and put it back together properly.

God, i had been feeling guilty that when we moved out of our flat the oven wasn't working.

It had blown 'something' 3 days before we completed. We'd had someone out to fix it but a part needed ordering. We paid for the part and the work then let the buyers know that they could get it fixed when it worked for them (the trademan agreed to this in writing). Nothing else we could have possibly done (other than get a totally new oven I suppose but the part was only £25!) but I still did feel a little bit guilty....until I read this thread

the flooring underneath all the carpets could do with nailing back down as the creak. Would that be a major issue with putting the house on the market?

Not for me. Our house is 17th century and the creaking floorboards are part of its charm. We’ve had to put right various diy bodges but the worst was the wall light wire held together with gaffer tape resting on a 400 year old oak beam.

Honestly, nothing. If the new owner of our old house had any nasty surprises, we didn't know about it either!

Our new house on the other hand - the seller made a big song and dance about a particular costly repair he'd had done (this added value to the house which otherwise needed lots of work). Later I got talking to one of the tradesmen who did the work and I found out it wasn't a repair, it was more of a "hide the damage and buy a few more years of ignoring it" job.