Tell me about your cheeky vendor lies, omissions, cock ups

flashbac · 2021-05-18T08:43:54+00:00

Thought I'd ask. Tell me your funny (or unfunny) tales of vendors lying, cheating or just being plain silly with their representations when selling their property. Land that didn't belong to them, dodgy work etc, I want to hear it!

EggysMom · 18/05/2021 09:46

It's only a driveway if you've got a dropped kerb. Otherwise (as our solicitor pointed out to their solicitor), it's a very expensive paved front garden.

Shannith · 18/05/2021 09:51

What's your story?

Because when I was a journalist that's the kind of question odd have asked.

Shannith · 18/05/2021 09:52

I'd

Andthenanothercupoftea · 18/05/2021 09:55

I can't see how our vendor could've not known about the leaky roof. Literally the first bit of rain after we moved in the drips started and the brown damp stain appeared pretty soon after that - I suspect they painted over it.

Also they didn't tell us the empty house next door had sqautters. Fortunately they left/were removed shortly after we moved in, but they left the house/back garden in a right state.

Original poster

flashbac · 18/05/2021 13:45

@Shannith

What's your story?

Because when I was a journalist that's the kind of question odd have asked.

Can I follow mumsnetter never ask a question like this anymore? Not everyone is from the papers!

OP posts:

Original poster

flashbac · 18/05/2021 13:46

@Andthenanothercupoftea

I can't see how our vendor could've not known about the leaky roof. Literally the first bit of rain after we moved in the drips started and the brown damp stain appeared pretty soon after that - I suspect they painted over it.

Also they didn't tell us the empty house next door had sqautters. Fortunately they left/were removed shortly after we moved in, but they left the house/back garden in a right state.

The stuff of nightmares! Didn't the surveyor spot it?

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BeastOfBODMAS · 18/05/2021 13:53

The holes in the roof. Vendors had left a piece of sheet plastic and old duvet underneath it to stop the water coming through the ceiling, which worked up until it didn’t.

One of the circuits on the fuse board is helpfully labelled “?”

Andthenanothercupoftea · 18/05/2021 17:10

@flashbac nope - though the surveyor missed plenty on the survey (we went with the full building survey as well). In fact we ended up getting some cash from the surveyor as one of the things they missed cost us ££ to resolve.

Zarene · 18/05/2021 17:19

Ours took two of the internal doors with them.

TobyHouseMan · 18/05/2021 17:49

When we moved into our new house the seller had left us with a medium-sized coffin-shaped hole in the middle of the garden which wasn't there when we viewed. Never worked out what they were playing at - maybe they took a pet with them?

umbel · 18/05/2021 18:12

@Zarene

Ours took two of the internal doors with them.

Ours left 3 internal doors unhung. They were not hung when we viewed, but were supposed to have been done by the time we moved in 4 months later! Nope. One of them was for the downstairs loo!

Original poster

flashbac · 18/05/2021 19:56

[quote Andthenanothercupoftea]@flashbac nope - though the surveyor missed plenty on the survey (we went with the full building survey as well). In fact we ended up getting some cash from the surveyor as one of the things they missed cost us ££ to resolve.[/quote]
@Andthenanothercupoftea
His name isn't John is it?

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Zancah · 18/05/2021 20:06

Ours left 3 internal doors unhung. They were not hung when we viewed, but were supposed to have been done by the time we moved in 4 months later! Nope. One of them was for the downstairs loo!

Sorry, can't get too excited about that one. It's only six screws to hang a door. Annoying, but it's not terrible.
I'd happily take that over the ridiculously dangerous (homemade) wiring that I was left with. It was a proper death-trap-waiting-to-happen that I actually lived with for about 7 months before it was found. It still gives me nightmares thinking about what could have happened.

umbel · 18/05/2021 20:14

@Zancah fair enough, it’s not up there with dodgy wiring, but I guess you’ve never hung a door?

Zancah · 18/05/2021 20:23

Well, I have actually. It's a two person job for sure, which I find irritating as I like to crack on with stuff instead of having to wait for help but like I said, I wouldn't be stamping my feet over it
Honestly, there was a thread exactly like this a few weeks ago and it was a real eye opener as to what some people think they can get away with. If Un-hung doors are the worst thing you've experienced in house moving, you should count yourself very lucky. And I really don't want that to come across as sounding arsey … but it's really honestly true.

Livingintheclouds · 18/05/2021 20:24

I was just left with a mess. Dog wee in carpets, food spills in the kitchen, cigarette butts in the toilets. Gross. Thing is the estate agent had made a big deal that the sellers were 'generously' leaving me a box of cleaning stuff. In reality it was an icky sticky mess that went sstraight in the bin.
They also left totally rotten wood French doors to the roof terrace, but to be fair my surveyor should have picked that up!

umbel · 18/05/2021 20:34

@Zancah you are coming across as arsey. The thread was about “cheeky vendor lies, omissions and cock-us”. Sounded pretty light hearted to me - only a smile and no stamping of feet, believe me. I didn’t realise I needed a near death experience before I was permitted to post.

I’m clearly not the only person who would find hanging doors a challenge either. www.mumsnet.com/Talk/property/4029801-How-hard-is-it-to-hang-internal-doors

HarrietSchulenberg · 18/05/2021 20:40

Mine helpfully left me (filthy, stained) curtains, some carpets (but not the good ones, they put those in the back garden and didn't collect until they were sodden and unrolling, 2 weeks later), and an anti-slip bathmat that made me throw up when I lifted it. The strings of snotty, black mold that came up with it were the stuff of nightmares.

Oh, and their cat refused to leave our dilapidated greenhouse so we had it as a lodger until it twigged that its owners had moved to the next street.

The shower without an earth was a nice little surprise too.

Zancah · 18/05/2021 20:48

I've just been trying to find the other thread about it. It was called something like "tell me what you hid from your buyer" That was meant as a "lighthearted" thread too but things take a bit of a turn when people started sharing the downright nasty and dangerous things they did to get top dollar for their houses.
There were lots of people on the receiving end of of thousands of pounds worth of damage and/or seriously distressing issues.
It cost me £12,000 to put right the problem in my house. I was a single mum of four on top of that, working flat out to afford the house itself and planned furnishings I needed, let alone an extra 12k that I hadn't accounted for.
So yeah, I fucking wish I only had a couple of doors to hang, even if you couldn't do them yourself - it's a half hour job for a handyman or handy relative.

WeatherwaxLives · 18/05/2021 20:51

We moved in during lockdown 1, to discover the bloody loft was rammed full and the tip was shut! Had to hire a skip, and before it arrived had piles of shite all over the garden. Marvellous.

When I was a kid we moved into a house where the previous owners had various cats and dogs that apparently had to be seperated / only certain ones could be together.

There was that much cat and dog piss soaked into the floors of 2 bedrooms where they had been kept that the floorboards were rotten and had to be replaced. And the fleas! Oh my god.

They'd tried to cover up the smell and dirt with shake and vac. Or rather with shake. They didn't bother with the vac part.

1stWorldProblems · 18/05/2021 20:57

On the upstairs carpet there was a big luminous pink stain. Couldn't work out how we hadn't spotted It on our two viewings - looking back at the pictures we took (as we did at every viewing as had a toddler & couldn't remember one house from another some days), they'd put a sports bag on top of it for viewings. They did fess up when we contacted them & explained it was an exploded fart pot and that there were offcuts in the loft.

sunlight81 · 18/05/2021 21:07

7ft deep fish pond heated by a gas boiler that by passed the gas meter - very close to blowing up the whole street.

Based on street view and Google pics of the property over the years we estimated that they stole about £8k of gas.

They also had a cannabis farm in the loft at some point too.

Oh and we live in what would be considered an "nice" middle class sleepy market town in the middle of England!

MerryAnton · 18/05/2021 21:21

@Zancah

I've just been trying to find the other thread about it. It was called something like "tell me what you hid from your buyer" That was meant as a "lighthearted" thread too but things take a bit of a turn when people started sharing the downright nasty and dangerous things they did to get top dollar for their houses. There were lots of people on the receiving end of of thousands of pounds worth of damage and/or seriously distressing issues. It cost me £12,000 to put right the problem in my house. I was a single mum of four on top of that, working flat out to afford the house itself and planned furnishings I needed, let alone an extra 12k that I hadn't accounted for. So yeah, I fucking wish I only had a couple of doors to hang, even if you couldn't do them yourself - it's a half hour job for a handyman or handy relative.

Playing top trumps and minimising someone else's experience isn't very nice.

@umbel I'd be pissed off with unhung doors - we were left with meters of skirting board unfitted (seller promised it would be fitted by the time we moved in).

I've had houses with expensive hidden issues but that skirting board really pissed me off!

Original poster

flashbac · 18/05/2021 21:42

@1stWorldProblems

On the upstairs carpet there was a big luminous pink stain. Couldn't work out how we hadn't spotted It on our two viewings - looking back at the pictures we took (as we did at every viewing as had a toddler & couldn't remember one house from another some days), they'd put a sports bag on top of it for viewings. They did fess up when we contacted them & explained it was an exploded fart pot and that there were offcuts in the loft.

Fart pot?

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user1471538283 · 18/05/2021 21:55

My vendor was so proud of the floors he laid. However, because of him covering the rotting joists in plastic he made them and the floorboards rot more. All had to be pulled up. The toilet leaked because it wasnt sealed to the floor. He left 3 skips full of rubbish but claimed he did not. All that coupled with other issues make me wish I had never set eyes on it.