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?

Well we got our keys on Monday and the sellers left the house in a state. Oven was disgusting, kit hen cupboards full of crumbs, fitted wardrobes full of cobwebs and dust. The house stunk of dog, boiler leaking and it's a brand new one too! Not happy but I believe karma will teach them their lesson later on.

...and people pay £100s of pounds for an 'army walkout clean' because I do them 😷

My cleaners which had been booked for their finish time to be a couple of hours to spare before completion turned up really late - I’d only been using them three years by that point - I was raging as I’d had to start myself with limited supplies! We got there in the end and it was far cleaner than the house we got!
Both us and the family we bought from had 2 similar aged small children.

But yes my expectation would be a good standard of clean so you can put stuff away but in reality - I think it’s very different!

The house I bought was not cleaned at all . Nada. There was even crumbs on kitchen counter ,tooth paste on sink . I had it cleaned 3 times and I scrubbed every touch point as I was so grossed out .
when I sold my flat you could have eaten your dinner off the floor . But that was Scotland so I think there is a bit of comeback for the buyer .

Yes I will be making sure it’s clean

No they don't.

I know that Housing Associations spend a small fortune on cleaning properties people have left filthy and on a mess.. They have their own of
team of permanent cleaners just for this.

When we moved into this house, they clearly hadn't cleaned anything since our viewing four months previous. Food debris, spills, stains, fluff. It was grim.

(Also still annoyed that we got the keys at 5:30pm in December and they had taken every lightbulb with them!)

I cleaned every house. Moved to one with flies in oven and every kitchen cupboard. And they'd asked for an extra day to clean so I was sbocked. It was utterly disgusting and my standards aren't even that high.

The last family home we moved into whe I was with mum parents was purchased from 2 GPs. It was so filthy that we stayed with family for 3 days whilst our parents cleaned it to be safe. The kitchen was covered in years old grease. Mold in the cupboards and the grossest smelliest sinkplug hols every . Bathrooms were unusable.

The hall floors were black with years of filth. When cleaned, the most beautiful parquet floor.

And we weren't a particularly clean obsessed family.

When we bought our house 12 years ago, we found half a chicken in the oven. I don't know how long it had been there.
One of the first things we did, was to pull up and remove all the upstairs carpets. It smelled musty and everything was dirty.
We left our old house spotless for the new people as well.

I fear this will be what’ll happen to us when we complete next week. The sellers seem completely incapable of getting their shit together and their estate agent indicated they may have just left when we end up picking up the keys. It isn’t a nice thing to do as it just adds yet another task on what is a busy day!

We left our old place immaculate (and our buyer thanked us via the estate agent).

I found newspaper on the top of the kitchen cupboards from 20 years ago, the house had changed ownership at least three times during that period. I was so sad how dirty the house had been left, like many had commented I think they just gave up cleaning.

Can I ask for ideas for how long would it take a cleaner to do a 3 bed house which is extremely grubby but not totally squalid? ( Not mine!). Rough idea of cost?

Well quite. Before we moved we’d had a cleaner for a few hours each week plus I did bits on top such as cleaning windows so it was never filthy. Moved out a day before completion, I went back to the house with hoover, mop etc cleaned bathrooms & skirting boards etc that had been behind furniture. Used one of those kit things on the oven. Left a bottle of wine plus a list of useful places & numbers as our buyers were new to the area.
They then ranted to the estate agent that it was dirty & disgusting, refused to pass on post & behaved like absolute arseholes after they’d got the keys. Turned out they had been absolute twats all along but we’d been shielded from it by our estate agents!
As an aside, I’ve always cleaned the house we’ve moved into regardless, it doesn’t feel right not to. I need to know I’m starting from it being spotless!

That is like mine was. It was beyond filthy. I'm very much a 'make do' kind of house cleaner so I'm definitely not picky. It was absolutely disgusting.
I would always do a full clean myself before I move in but I don't expect it to take 3 people several days to make it habitable.

How did these houses get in such a state between the offer being accepted and moving in? Was it months and months?

Especially for the houses with an infestation. That's my worst nightmare. 😱

Keep expectations low or at least below what you expect and then you won’t be disappointed. On moving day from my previous property I was hoovering when the new owners showed up the as the van left anyway they said “oh you shouldn’t have worried we booked a cleaner” so the next move I probably won’t bother.

I helped someone clean their house so it could listed for sale… the house was disgusting… bathrooms were vile… hadn’t been cleaned for years!! When she’d sold she waited for notification of completion - she then packed and left friends scrubbing walls, toilets etc.,, it was still pretty vile when I left…. I felt sorry for the family moving in… BUT christ it was so much better than it had been!
I moved in my first home to find the toilet disgusting… I sent someone to buy a new seat and I scrubbed the whole bathroom with bleach! Oven was gross too.. spent ages scrubbing it… threw away all trays & bought new…. My dad thankfully had a petrol mower because the garden clearly hadn’t been maintained since the last time we’d viewed it!

personally I think a bit dusting and cleaning is reasonable to expect to do… but no on should be having to scrub months of grime off surfaces before moving in

The day we received keys went into the property, cats had been locked in the bathroom .Excrement left on carpets and urine soaked carpet.When we removed floor boards for new piping the smell was horrendous,took months of bleaching and dettol to get rid of the smell.

We recently moved house... 11 days after giving birth to our second child via c-section.

In itself, that was a crazy enough idea, but given that we then spent most of the 11 days going back and forth to the hospital due to unforeseen problems, we barely had to time to pack our belongings before moving day, let alone clean it.

It's something I was/am deeply ashamed and embarrassed by, if I'm honest. But I couldn't know it would turn out like this and would prevent me or my husband from doing what we wanted to do.

Just to put it out there that not everyone doesn't clean the house out of laziness...

When I moved into the previous house I was pleased they had done at least the basics. Yes, there was some wiping down to do, but nothing major, or so I thought. The kitchen was furnished with cream coloured cabinets which looked quite nice, but not my favourite colour. I put the kettle on while I unpacked a box in the other room and when it boiled it hadn't automatically switched off. I went into a steam filled kitchen and noticed dirty water running down the cabinets, leaving white trails. A thorough clean later and I had lovely white cupboards. They didn't call the previous owner Fag Ash Lil for nothing!

We always clean the houses we've moved out of. We've lived in 4 and only 1 of those was clean for us moving in.

Current house was the worst. We had to deep clean the whole house. It was like they didn't clean anything again after we offered.
The kitchen was a couple of years old but thick with grease, fridge had black mould inside. Radiators full of fur (they had cats), downstairs toilet was carpeted and it was soaked with piss. Toilet upstairs had shit in the bowl and ON the seat.
I cried that day when I saw the state of it. Was a week before we could start moving stuff in.

We're never moving again.

We’ve been lucky, they’ve all been clean, one left us a card and a bottle of wine ….another detailed instructions on how to look after the large pond. We’ve always left them clean.