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

This is making me feel better about the house we're about to sell. The only real issue is the large decking which is rotten on one side and won't be a secret. If we were staying we'd rip half off (other half is perfect and fits a corner sofa with room to spare), then cover the patch in gravel. We don't want to do that in case the new owners would rather put down paving or use it for planting.

My parents exchanged houses with a family as they are social housing tenants;my parents took everything they no longer needed to the dump,piled everything into the moving van on moving day and put everything else in the garage that wouldn't fit into van (for a second trip that day) and cleaned the house to make sure it was clean for the new tenants.

My parents turned up at the house at midday as agreed to find the people they were exchanging with still in their pyjamas and hadn't even hired a van.

My family had to empty the van onto the driveway,help them load it,drive it to my family's old house,help them unpack it into the house and then do a second trip to get the rest of their stuff;my family unpacked the new tenants stuff onto the driveway and then emptied the garage so my family could go.

Apparently one of the new tenants grumbled to my grandad that the second load wasn't taken inside to which my grandad turned around and told her they were lucky their stuff wasn't sitting on the driveway of their old house whilst they organised a van.

My parents new house was disgustingly filthy and had crap scattered the garden,the lean to,the shed,the attic and on top of the lean to including a canoe (?).They never did come back for their stuff and my parents had to hire a skip to get rid of all the left behind crap.

Lastly the former tenants tried to abandon their pet rabbit and leave it behind but my mum told them to get stuffed and come get their pet.They did.Personally I think my mum should have signed it over to an animal rescue and let them rehome it someone who gave a toss about the poor thing.

I'll tell you what didn't await me, and that was loo roll.

Why… would you expect loo roll as part of a house sale?! It’s a kind touch if it’s left but surely you pack some in the “moving day box” along with kettle, mugs, tea, milk, biscuits, tea towels, cleaning stuff, hand towel, soap. And bug spray and a flamethrower, judging by this thread.

I don’t know where to start:
On completion, no keys, Mr Vendor had taken them with him to his work, offshore.
Scrap vehicles left behind and a full skip, but still rubble strewn all over the garden.
The house was spotless inside (Mrs Vendor was lovely), but on plumbing in our dishwasher it exploded as the drainage pipe was completely blocked - possibly due to it being 10 ft long and therefore on a very, very gentle slope.
On taking out the cooker to get to the dishwasher pipe, (yes, the pipe went behind the cooker), we found it was plugged into 2 extension leads to reach the socket.
Log burner was cracked along the back so smoke came belching out everywhere.
I can go on and on. We’ve had workmen in tears trying to fix all the faults we’ve discovered and it’s cost an absolute fortune that we didn’t have.
And yes, we did have a full structural survey!

The vendor’s adult son came ‘home’ drunk late the following night, complete with pizza. Fortunately we had changed the locks. Took us ages to convince him that he didn’t live here any more.

Anyway, after my obviously highly entitled expectation of a small amount of loo roll being left, we found a brand new fridge / freezer in the garage, we were very confused until we found out that the freezer compartment door had broken on the existing one (it is an integrated fridge freezer but the freezer is just a small compartment at the top) so they had paid for a new one for us.

The rest is just very questionable decor, and blue flowered border tiles in the bathroom, that we are still living with 4 years on.

• flea infestation discovered after a few weeks.
• rat infestation that a pest controller said ‘was one of the worst he’s ever seen’. We spent thousands trying to get rid of them only for it to turn out to be the thing they checked first but not properly!

I am agog reading this thread. I’ll never again complain about the handful of slightly dodgy DIY jobs we found in our house. I haven’t got high standards myself by any means but really! How can people live like this?

Loo roll?! I've never taken it with us and happy to say always had some left in new house.
Had some surprises when moved into one house eg bath leaked into kitchen first morning, shed full of junk but never go full steam on problems with that house because......yes, didn't have a survey. Probably wouldn't have bought it if we had.

Bloomin hell! I get my keys for new house next week. I shouldn't have read this thread!

My first flat back in the 80s which I bought off a relatively well known TV sport and newscaster (he's still on TV, but for a cable channel now).
I was a FTB and did have a survey done.
After I moved in the first time I turned on the heat it made a horrendous noise and the upstairs neighbours came running down and told me the boiler didn't work and that the seller knew this. So I had a £500 bill right off the bat (this was the 1980s and that was a lot of money to me then). They also told me he tried to get the gas fire removed, and he had succeeded in removing several display units that were fixed to the wall in the dining area.
I hiss at the TV now if he ever comes on!

We have just been gazundered a couple of hours before exchange for £40,000. Buyer planned it all along. You have all given me great ideas if we end up selling to this man, thank you!

A sofa/bed/mattress that had burnt on a bonfire in the garden destroying the grass.
A garage full of shit.

Paid a fortune to get rid

We just moved into a new (very old, but new to us) farmhouse in a very rural area the sellers left LOADS of lamps. About 10 in total. They are the creepiest things ever, gave me the shivers... and very unusual. I was ready to dump them and my mum had a feeling they were collectable, she looked a couple of them up online and its worth between £700-1000.
Turns out they're all antiques and worth a fortune... or they would be if I had any idea where to sell them!

The previous owners painted the walls around the furniture. Nice.

We took out the 80s-style fitted bedroom and found a whole lovely good-sized built in wardrobe that had been built over!

In order to spruce the property up for selling, they’d painted round the furniture. Their bright spirally, floral garish wallpapers showed where EVERY item of furniture had been placed against a wall in every room.

I sat in the middle of the lounge and cried. Only when it was empty did it truly show what an awful paint job it was. They were smokers too which I hadn’t spotted when I viewed, they left a floor standing ash tray full of ends by the loo! The smoked fan light glass on the front door was actually clear. Urghh. Moved again a year later for my job and made sure to peek behind furniture on viewings!

That is quite a list!

Can you explain what this means? About to put ours on the market and this sounds like behaviour to watch out for!

So many vermin issues! From the name you can probably tell that I’ve suffered to - a rental where they did disclose a historic infestation which was very live. Thankfully a managed property and pest control have been out regularly but there’s been structural damage caused by nibbling through pipes. I am going to make sure the next time I buy that the additional enquiries as a LOT of pest questions so they’re on the hook if we move in and find an infestation.

boilers have been my problem- three bloody times. One so old that British Gas condemned it when they came to service it (as well, since sparks were jumping out of the plug socket opposite- DIY electrics). Next one - needed replacing but not urgent. Final one - a 5 year old house so we stupidly assumed 5 year old boiler. They’d put a 10 year old boiler in so although serviced, it was on last legs (flux in the system had eaten holes in some major component). Bastard boilers.

Jesus Christ, @Deguster. How much did he knock them down to piss them off that much?

Mine is quite minor in comparison to others, I knew the oven top looked a bit grubby and so did the extractor fan above it when viewing, however, the day I moved in and opened the oven door. Bleugh!! 😱

I rushed out and bought an Oven Pride kit and left it on the interior for ages, when I opened the door to clean it out I thought I was going to throw up. It was absolutely swimming in grease. I shut the door, cleaned up the hob top so I could use it that night and next day as soon as a local appliance shop opened rushed down, ordered the cheapest free standing gas oven to fit 50cm gap, I was really limited to what I could have due to the cupboard layout.

They delivered it two hours later, took away the minging one that was left and I recently replaced the gas oven with an all singing all dancing Neff built in electric oven when I had my kitchen totally redone. Hoorah!😆

A couple of doors had holes in the back. We had tried to light the gas fire for ages, whilst being unsuccessful. Gas man condemned it and said there was gas escaping in-between the walls!

We now have a lovely fireplace (done by professionals) and new doors.

We found the remains of a weed growing operation in our house.

A couple of skips full of waste just in the garden (old hoovers, bathroom suite etc)

One toilet wouldn't flush, the bath leaked, the door handle on one external door fell off if you opened it.

We've had to replace joists, fix electrics etc. Luckily we knew it was a fixer upper.