What “surprises” awaited you after moving in?

[BlessedKingfisher]

Feeling a bit down atm so just wanted to see if anyone else had a stressful time after moving in to their new place?

We are FTBs, because of many different reasons (the market earlier this year, pregnancy, low salaries etc) we didn’t really have a lot of choice and kept getting outbid on properties in our price range. We finally settled on a flat and moved in recently - we knew that some decorating needed to be done (painting, new carpets) but since then found out that the boiler needs servicing, we probably have a small leak in the pipes (but not sure where..), the electrics need testing and now it looks like we also have a silverfish infestation!! thank goodness we have money left over but it’s not going to last long at this rate…

So if you have a story to share about the weird/expensive/nasty surprises that you had after moving in, please do so - misery loves company

😂

Oven door dropped off when I opened it.

in another house, it was empty when we looked arou nd, owned had arrived early and opened all the Windows and sprayed air freshener 'as it smelt a bit stuffy ', naively we never questioned it. W hen we moved it we found out one of the rooms stank of cat per and we ended up pulling up the carpet, removing the skirting boards and pouring bottles of bleach on the concept floor to get rid of the small

What was i meant to do...? tell her and show her all the faults that she should have checked out herself. She got the flat at under market value and wasn't great to deal with.

we all have lessons to learn and i am a very good person ;)

fouble sink in the kitchen, only 1 side was plumbed in! Luckily they’d left a note in the sink so we didn’t pour anything down it.

when our neighbours moved in not long after us they discovered a major leak in the wall in the ensuite and the boiler was condemned.

An actual cat. Left behind because they 'couldn't catch it'!

had a leak from our toilet so had to change our bathroom flooring, turns Our bathroom floor had 3 layers of flooring on top of each other. All different kinds. So previous owners would just add new vinyl flooring to previous one when they wanted a change!

suppose it was good thought as it didn’t leak into the lounge 🤣

We've been in 6 months and have had to fix or replace;
Fridge freezer
Washing machine
Washing line
Boiler and radiators
Rewire
Shower
Bathroom door, didn't close.
Insulate the eaves, so cold.
Leaking stop tap
Leaking kitchen tap

House still mostly furnished with ornaments everywhere, pictures still on walls, kitchen cupboards still full of stuff.

Oh and discovered house had an unsupported structural wall - whole thing could have collapsed on us!

@Deguster gosh that is so nasty!!!

Glass in the carpet and pubic hair on the bedroom curtains…. Boak !

Oh, so much to say. We moved in 3 weeks ago. We knew they were leaving a chair,a small sofa, a king sized bed and the white goods. In addition we got (amongst other things):
the entire contents of the kitchen cupboards including jars of spices/tins of food/pots & pans
The contents of the fridge (there was no room for own food)
The contents of the dishwasher (at least they turned it on before they left!)
Her wedding dress
his used razor on the bathroom sink
Loads of books
An ipad
An iPod table lamps hidden in cupboards
cheap shitty booze
dirty oven trays in the filthy oven
all of the big stuff they left behind (fridges, tumble dryer, bed etc) were all broken/faulty in some way.
they moved to a Spain and it looks like they got up on moving day, packed their clothes, stripped the bedding off (left us the duvet & pillows) and licked the door behind them.
we aren’t over it yet!

Air con units that sound like a triple 7 at take off (we live in a hot country where there's AC in every room)

A dishwasher wired into the mains by the removal team, as is the custom here rather than a plug in a socket because that would be WAY too easy, which turned out to be live, giving DH an electric shock when he opened the door. This was confirmed by the maintenance guy who came and optimistically stuck a screwdriver into the socket and agreed that it was live

Completion was delayed so long we ended up moving the day before our holiday. Came home to find the kitchen flooded out because the person moving out had disconnected something under the sink and left it dripping all over the floor. For a fornight. All the kitchen units had soaked the water up and were wrecked, so we had to have a new kitchen put in, and our insurers refused to pay out for the damage. Swines.

Its not something I could do personally, I just couldnt. When I bought this house the sellers were very honest so we knew what we were getting into, you couldnt see a lot of the problems but they did tell us about them. I think hiding them and deceiving someone is wrong when they are probably spending their life savings. But hey ho, each to their own.

the shower in a brand new new build which was not connected to water. No piping going to it in the loft either, just a shower cabinet and fixings. I have never bought a house again without turning on every tap to make sure they work ( one in France we were looking at came away in my hand, I stuck it back on. Didn’t buy the house).

the best one though was the couple who didn’t seem to realise you were supposed to move out once they had sold it. at 3pm on completion day they had cleared …a shed. My movers had to move their stuff out and leave it on the pavement so they could move ours in.

the bloke was a real price of work, though, his own solicitor suggested to us that we had a retention as he was ‘tricky’. So they couldn’t complete until they had cleared the house, as they needed all the money.

We nearly always kept a retention since then, obviously it doesn’t cover you for things you discover later but it does mean you will go into a clean and empty house with working services.

A pic of our surprise 😂

Was speaking to friend earlier who moved nearby recently and he told me he cleared a path to the old "coal bunker" in the garden which has turned out to be an actual bunker with an old generator and bunk beds in it.

What a lucky chappy!

@ZeroFuchsGiven Your own private well/swimming pool! Will add $$$ to the house price 😂

A non working cooker, years worth of grease build up on the INSIDES of kitchen cupboards, mouse droppings everywhere including in the fridge, and a shedload of mice sharing the living space.

The armchair the previous owner had died in. We saw it at viewing and thought they'd take it. They didn't.

DH scared of all things ghostly or linked to death. We put the armchair outside in the garden at the bottom. For a week I moved it a few metres closer to the house each night so it looked like it moved in its own 😙

Found out I had to replace the boiler as soon as I moved in to my first flat. Moved into my first house after that and had to replace that bloody boiler as soon as I moved in as well! Current house has way too many faults to list and I haven’t got any money to do any of them despite being here a number of years now.

Reading these is making me nervous about our house move!!!

we’ve been lucky in the previous houses we lived in but I remember my parents moving into the house they live in now. This was back in the 80’s

Issues they found.

A wobbly wall in between my parents and brothers bedroom - he had to sleep in my room whilst they got it fixed!

Polystyrene ceiling tiles that fell off in the middle of the night

dog piss stained carpets

holes in walls filled with newspaper

wallpaper which had been hung upside down

filth and grime everywhere

the guy that lived there before us was known from then on as “bodger job” as everything he’d done had been a cock up and my Dad had to fix. They were still uncovering his delights years later.

made it quite awkward that my dad worked at the same firm as Bodger job 🤣🤣🤣

When we moved to a veritable shithole, we bagged all their stuff that they had left and contacted them saying we had found some money left behind. They came round and made them put all their shit in their car then gave them an out of date cheque for £100. They were going to turf it out but I said we would follow them home

Every single lightbulb had been removed. (strange, as sellers had emigrated). Same house, in the loft, an old framed photo of Rennie Mackintosh. Turns out the house had belonged to his sister; when we sold it , we left the photo for future owners.

Rural cottage; A whole load of 150 yr old letters, bills, shopping lists etc which the previous owner had discovered hidden up a disused chimney by the first owner. Like him, we left them for future owners when we sold. But I kept photocopies.

Best ever:

Behind a mystery door in the kitchen, finding a huge walk in pantry (not mentioned in the DIY brochure or shown/mentioned during viewing) lined with floor to ceiling shelves. Total surprise, O frabjous joy.