Why would someone take the toilet roll holder? And what do you have to leave behind?

[IlanaK]

We are hopefully exchanging on the flat we are buying next week. We have been looking through the paperwork where the vendor ticks the boxes about what they are taking and leaving behind. Our vendor is taking the bathroom mirrors, the toilet roll holders, the curtain rails, and the light fittings in most rooms.

We have sold our flat recently and would not even have considered doing this! And we had really expensive ceiling fans in all rooms and lovely bathroom lighted mirrored cabinets!

Anyway, what I want to know is what are the rules of what they leave behind when they take this type of stuff. So, if they are taking the light fittings, do they have to leave a working light? And if they take the bathroom mirrors, do they have to fill the wholes and re-tile where they took it off?

We are doing an inspection on the day of completion before releasing the money (and this has been written into the contracts) so I would like to know what I am looking for.

[chelseamorning]

The vendor of a previous house took the toilet seat!!!

[displayuntilbestbefore]

chelsea - maybe that was a good thing. It could have been one of those perspex ones with barbed wire inside it that are oh so trendy

[MarkVick]

We have a toilet roll holder, very practic!

[BakewellStart]

We are in the process of moving and the paperwork we have says if you are removing light fittings you are expected to leave minimal damage and replace the fitting with a standard rose and flex- another words bog standard light fitting. Cannot recall if bulbs were mentioned too.

I can understand someone taking a favourite chic light fitting such as a fancy chandalier or similar but to leave nothing in its place would be a bit mean.

We did remove gates from one property but it stated on the estate agent particulars from the outset the gates were never staying. We had literally just had them put on and the very next day told we had to move with jobs! They cost us over a thousand pounds. They fitted the next house well.

Things like loo roll holders and toothbrush holders baffle me! Thats almost vandalism. Its very difficult to get stuff to fit the same drilled holes in tiles! I struggle to think how a loo roll holder can be so precious it needs to be moved!

[jevoudrais]

They can leave rather big holes in the wall and it is very hard to do much about it.

Our seller basically ripped his TV stand off the wall. Could claim, but would cost enough that there is no point. Will just replaster it myself.

We also got left lots of junk including a (grotty) cooker that was meant to be taken. Makes life easier to suck it up, deal with it and move on.

[BlackGirlAndRobin]

I never really considered this until we moved to a new build conversion which literally had nothing in it. We've put in curtain poles, loo roll holders, mirrored bathroom cabinets, towel rails, huge suspended light fittings the lot. And by god it's been more expensive that I'd anticipated. When we come to sell in 4/5 years, I will be taking the larger expensive items, if the buyer doesn't want to pay extra for them.

Having said that I think it would be really mean of someone to strip the house of bog standard, run of the mill fixtures.

[RaphaellaTheSpanishWaterDog]

At our last house - a complete unmortgageable wreck when we purchased - we fitted quite expensive high end loo roll holders, soap dispensers etc in the three bathrooms (Keuco, Hansgrohe Montreux etc - £50+ for some bits!), but we happily (OK, not happily, but readily as we were pleased to have secured a buyer so quickly ) left these for our buyers at no additional charge - they're a bugger to remove once in the wall too apparently as the fixings expand - yet we took a rather sweet vintage Art Nouveau style loo roll holder as this couldn't easily be replaced......

We also took majority of the (expensive) curtain poles and two of the bathroom cabinets, although the latter were antiques. We did replace all the poles having got the go ahead from our buyers first though.