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

[flashbac]

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!

As the removal men carried in our furniture the vendor handed over the keys in person and his parting remark was, 'the bath is a bit funny sometimes' .
The next day we realised what he really meant is the waste is not connected anymore and all the leaky baths Mr vendor has taken have drained directly into the kitchen ceiling, making a waterfall feature down the walls and rotting the joists and floor

We bought a house from a Mr and Mrs Bodge-it, who seemingly did a lot of the plumbing and electrics themselves.

Some electrical gems included unearthed (metal) lights and light switches everywhere, and running electrics diagonally up the stairs to fit some lights - very grateful we decided to redecorate before hanging those pictures....

Yes we bought from a bodge it too. The live wires dangling from the ceiling over the bed were a particular highlight!

Our first house they had moved the electric cooker across the other side of the room by fashioning an extension that ran behind the units and the washing machine. Unfortunately the section behind the washing machine was bare wire and touching the metal. Had we touched the washer when the cooker was turned on we'd have been blown across the room.

They also painted the entire hall stairs and landing from it's nice clean white to cadbury purple before we moved in. Quite why I'll never understand but it was white again the morning after we moved.

In this house we had a joiner friend come and replace the kitchen worktops and straighten a few of the cupboard doors. Imagine our surprise to discover the eye level built in oven and the floor to ceiling bank of units it sat in, wasn't actually attached back to the wall. One overzealous pull on the oven door would have brought the lot over.

My parents moved in and thought everything was ok until they realised that the panelling and wallpaper had been put in to cover the subsidence cracks 1-2 inches wide. Vendors had clearly known about it and covered up and surveyor hadn't picked up on it.
After lots of investigations it turned out their house on the hill had no foundations at all.
It was an absolute nightmare and they managed to get some of the costs for fixing it back from the surveyor but the stress & inconvenience of the 12 months whilst the foundations were put in were horrible and not compensated.

Some of your stories are scary!

my sister viewed only in the evenings...house was dark with dim light bulbs...she said the carpets felt plush....never went in daytime....duh....turned out to be about 8 layers of old carpets and all infested with dog and cat fleas.....and thick brown grease all over the kitchen !!

That’s terrible wonkylegs!

Vendor had not given notice to his tenants despite telling us he had.

Day we completed, we went and found the entire place full of furniture and the vendor tried to claim we had agreed to it being left (we hadn't).

I had a brief spell working in a conveyancers when I moved area
We had so many usually selling land/garages that belonged to someone else. Vendors were often annoyed when we found out?!

Our house had bodge jobs all over. Nothing too serious except an unearthed light fitting in one of the bedrooms. The family we bought from still live in the local area. What does concern me though, is that the husband seems to have changed career and now advertises services as an odd job man on the local Facebook page! Considering what we moved into, there's no way I'd wanting him tackling any odd jobs in my property!

He made a point of incredibly open about some minor issues. He didn't mention the giant hole in the downpipe from the upstairs bathroom. Or that the downstairs shower was superglued in place. Or that they hadn't plumbed the washing machine pipe into a drain and it just soaked into the garden.

More amusing was the house we bought where we didn't notice there were no doors on any of the rooms upstairs. Or our first house where it was two girls selling their dads home. They left behind a huge box of photos which turned out to be his homemade porn from the 70s.

I've just found out the 25 year 'timber' guarantee is worthless, the company went bust three years ago :(