Surely everyone cleans the house they're moving out from?

[MyVisionsComeFromSoup]

Bought a house last week, the sellers faffed around so much on their moving out day and didnt get out for 6 hours after completion, which annoyed me to start off with.

But then I realised that they hadn't done any cleaning whatsoever, it's taken us the best part of three days just to de-grease the kitchen!

Surely you'd leave a house at least vaguely presentable?

I'm slightly worried about this as we;re completing in January and I'm not sure how new-house-clean I can get it with all our stuff in it, but obviously I can't get our stuff out of it until we complete on the house we're moving into on the same day! I'm sure i'll do my best but hope the new owners won't think we're scabby. I'm certainly not one of these Mumsnetters who is cleaning the windows every week or whatnot so it may be less than perfect.

Because she knew you'd turn up and tell her to leave it, thereby relieving her of her moral responsibilities. If she'd cleaned it before completion, well, she would have had to clean it 😅
My parents left a house in a total panic 20 years ago, I can only imagine the filth they left behind - they lived there for 30 years and never did a deep clean. Some people should just never move.

Previous house had a greasy kitchen; I felt I needed shoulder-length rubber gauntlets to touch anything. This house it was the kitchen again. Dishwasher filter full of crap, cupboards with oily rings, tomato stains and spilt lentils. The sink was clean though. I left my house immaculate and it bugged me to have to start again.

Our sellers packed most things up (just to put in storage as they were moving in with family while their newbuild was completed) and then went on holiday, leaving their 19yo son to finish it. You can imagine the level of cleaning we came into 🙄

As a couple of others have mentioned, I think a lot of it is down to the process and the mad scramble to get out within hours of completion. Removing items of furniture ALWAYS leads to muck and dust and there’s not a great deal of time to remedy it.

Also, if you’ve had boxes packed around the house normal cleaning routines aren’t as easy to stick to.

Agree though that there’s no excuse to leave bathrooms and kitchens etc filthy.

In my experience rented properties have been cleaner than ones I’ve bought and moved in to!

I just wiped inside the cupboards etc when I was decluttering and then when we had the packers there I went around behind them and (with some help) made sure everything was clean. I hated our buys so I didn’t clean the oven but it was pretty clean anyway.

The house we bought was absolutely packed with stuff when we viewed it and was really quite grubby so I was prepared for yet. Ore cleaning. However our lovely sellers had a squad of professionals in and left the house immaculate. I was so, so grateful.

I bought a house from someone who turned out to be a compulsive liar! She assured me the carpets were new…….they weren’t! She promised she’d have the oven professionally cleaned……..she didn’t! She claimed the garage would be totally cleared……..it wasn’t and was full of car parts, paving slabs, broken furniture, tools etc. It was only after countless phone calls and me finally stating that I had found her sons stash of dope in an old tool box that she went 8th panic mode and decided to show up and clear her crap from my home!

What I did was deep clean as I packed up, then did a final vacuum and wipe down on the day.

I would always assume the house will need to be cleaned rather than expect those moving out to clean it. I never move in on completion day for that very reason.

They do not! The sellers of my current house left it absolutely filthy, they also left a massive plumbing issue, which ended up with the solicitors involved and also took a whole bunch of stuff, lightbulbs, taps, gates in the garden, very ridiculous!

Everyone claims to leave the property pristine, but people complain they're filthy, go figure 😂

I think people don't SEE dirt and mess in the house they are in as much as people who look for the first time.

There's no time for deep clean when the new owner wants the keys immediately - which is completely fair, but when movers empty the house in the morning, there's no time at all to clean by midday -which is the usual time.

With furniture and piles of boxes the house will be dirty once empty.

Also if you put the price down too much, or were an annoying buyer. people are not ready to make an effort either.

In theory, people would THINK to be organised and empty one room and clean immediately, but in practice they are completely disorganised, faff around and run around like headless chicken and are completely useless.

Plus people KNOW they will have to deep clean the new house, so they can't gather the energy to do it twice. I book cleaners for my new properties, always, that helps.

Our seller left the place really clean and was generally very considerate. We did find masses of junk in the attic though, dating back several owners to the 90s.

I viewed a house years ago and there was carpet in the kitchen with newspaper on a particular area. They had a dog and I initially assumed the dog had done a wee, but no I was told by the owner he had come home drunk and tipped the deep fryer over - so the newspaper was covering the oil. The door to the oven was also propped up against the kitchen units as it had fallen off. Needless to say I didn’t make an offer on that house

Ours was pretty bad and manky. The seller was an extremely grand nightmare woman proving that being extremely posh does not equal clean!

It happened to us too, I wasn't expecting show home levels of cleanliness but the skirting boards and the picture rails were thick with grime, everything in the kitchen was sticky, there were coffee stains on the wall by the stairs where someone must have tripped and spilt it once and it was never cleaned, pet hairs in the carpet, and fleas - although we didn't find that out until the weather got warmer. I had an eight month old and a two year old so it was particularly difficult to clean and unpack at the same time, ,I just had to do little bits as we went along.

Oh, also, they left us money to get a new oven because they said it was broken, it wasn't it was just filthy, we cleaned it, it was fine for about five more years.

I've always cleaned the place I'm moving out of. Reasonable people do, which is why they often have to do two big house-cleans in one house-moving day.

Moving into my first flat, my two adult nephews (early 20s) were helping me. The place was so filthy I overheard one of them in the kitchen make a "bleugh" sound, and the other one say "Don't show Auntie Leftie, I'm just going to throw these out". I never found out what horrors they had uncovered that were bad enough to make a young fellow feel sick! I didn't want to know 😱

We got professional cleaners in to do our mum's house when she moved out a few months ago, it looked amazing. I would definitely do the same if/when I move again. Annoyingly, my sibs dragged their heels on sorting a cleaner for her new house despite me offering to find a company and now all her furniture is sitting on manky, dusty carpets 😬

Fortunately we weren't moving in straight away but it was very disheartening to get the keys on this house we bought to find the place hadn't been cleaned. The bath was full of scum and body hair! The house had been empty for a while but apparently a relative was kind of camping out there occasionally. They'd had months to get the place cleared and clean but only completed when threatened with us withdrawing so I expect they were (a) disorganised and lackadaisical (b) annoyed we'd pushed them to get their act together so that was their response.

We need a horrified emoji react button for threads like these!

Where do you put your furniture in the meantime?

Removals company store it overnight

Nope. We prepared and agreed with removal firm they would hold all our stuff in lorry overnight so cleaning form could come in and do clean from top to bottom

Interesting, that is handy. Do they charge extra for it? I presume it is only overnight i.e. gives you half a day to clean.

We had a strange situation on our last move where the family who's house we bought, were downsizing and ended up buying our house. So it was basically a swap. The house i left was immaculate you could have ate your dinner off every surface, whereas the house we moved into hadn't been cleaned since we viewed it, the oven was disgusting and the kids feet were black after running around the wooden floor for a few hours.
Its really not that difficult to leave a clean house, move all the furniture boxes etc into one or 2 rooms leaving all the other rooms empty and easy to clean, once the moving vans are loaded clean the rooms you had stored everything in.

On of the advantages of moving into a rental property, it’s in the contract an end of tenancy clean is carried out.
I’ve bought four houses. All but this one were really not very clean at all. I wonder if it should be in the contract it’s professionally cleaned.

Bottom line is, if they don’t clean it for themselves, they’re not going to do it for you 😣