What did the vendor of your house NOT tell you (that they should have) when you came viewing?

One house was grubby, ok we can clean, then we got to the airing cupboard. Every slat making up the shelves was covered in black grease. Why or how we never did find out.

A family member bought a house with a raised pond in the garden. It had been filled with gravel on top. Eventually they wanted to flatten it. Off came the gravel. Underneath they found several black bags of rotting rubbing, a microwave, a cycle, plastic containers, shoes, old clothes, duvets and the occasional cushion. It was fascinating in its way if somewhat smelly. The brick surround was demolished and re-purposed, a skip dealt with the rest. The house had been very grubby bordering filthy, it sort of all went together.

It was many years ago - our first house, end of terrace Victorian,
Back in the early 60's no central htg to worry about, but we did note an electric power point in every room, two in main bedroom, etc. etc. Day after wedding we got back late to discover none of downstairs light worked, evidently my Dad had (helpfully) put up a shade on one light and this had blown the lot. Had to get electrician in following day. This led to complete check on electrics on house and to discover that just two of those power points actually came of power circuit. All the remainder, DIY carried out and off lighting circuit.

Had to have whole house rewired and I can still remember that electrician, showing us various bits of wires which had been there, which could have led to a serious fire any time. Fortunate, in a way, for us that we had it rewired immediately, but devastating to our finances.

The 'multi-boiler' in the bathroom above the kitchenette, gave the hot water for both rooms. It had been turned off and when we got gas engineers in the start it up (was October), they refused and condemned it!!!

Second day there, hubbies foot went through hall-way floor - turned out whole ground floor had serious wet rot and needed treatment.

We were in our v. early twenties, came both from council flats, no-one to advice us -first step into owning our own home. Steep and expensive learning curve for us.

In the decades since, have always tried to play fair when selling a property and have never had anything really bad when moving into new one.

strangely enough, the worst of subsequent moves was from that house, seven years later, to a new build. Raft of problems, most doable, but main one was that builders had installed c.htg by warm air which entered each room via a grill high up in the wall. Warm air rarely managed to get lower down, house was always cold. One of seven houses we all joined together eventually to try to get this changed with agents, but not successful. Due to twins arriving we had to move out within four years, for a larger house, but visited those neighbours as they were friends for several years, and all those house eventually had to have normal gas c.htg via radiators installed.

That the boiler was regularly serviced……..the vendor had obtained a gas certificate and signed it HERSELF as the inspecting gas engineer!
That the electrical wiring was perfect……..and absolute lie as it kept tripping for some odd reason, we had a total rewire within weeks!
That they had no pets……..they had 5 cats who had marked territory in each corner of the lounge - I didn’t wonder why there was so many air fresheners dotted about when we viewed!
Wish I had never set eyes on this place or met the lying excuse for a human being!

Astitchintime

That the boiler was regularly serviced……..the vendor had obtained a gas certificate and signed it HERSELF as the inspecting gas engineer!
That the electrical wiring was perfect……..and absolute lie as it kept tripping for some odd reason, we had a total rewire within weeks!
That they had no pets……..they had 5 cats who had marked territory in each corner of the lounge - I didn’t wonder why there was so many air fresheners dotted about when we viewed!
Wish I had never set eyes on this place or met the lying excuse for a human being!

I always groan when I spot air fresheners anywhere in the photos of a house for sale - you just come to know there's a reason for that.

My own vendor (of current house) had all windows wide open both times I came viewing the house and I just assumed it was a personal choice thing. Duh! Until the day I moved in (windows shut for weeks by then) and the house reeked to high heaven of stale cigarette smoke (ie because his mother had obviously been a chain smoker).

I don't recall expecting to have to replaster the house before I could redecorate it - but that's what I had to do and so there was even more hassle and expense than I'd expected - as I'd soon gathered that one just can't ever get the smell of fag smoke out of the walls literally - unless one replasters those walls before painting them. Fag smoke defo gets into absolutely everything - and absolutely everything had to go (I'd expected to decorate and new floor coverings and curtains throughout - but got those curtains sooner than I expected to in the event).

There's also the aspect of knowing something has got to be done - but it needs doing sooner than expected. I'd seen the house had a great long wooden fence on one boundary and mentally noted it as "To do sometime - replace that fence with a wall instead". I wasn't used to the winds we have here - and they brought some of it down that first winter. Cue for I had to get someone in to remove the rest of the fence and put that wall up pronto (and I'm from the West Country - and that meant my taste dictated "Walls are red brick or stone - red brick it is then". Whereas if my tastes had been West Wales (where I am now) it would have been a sight cheaper to do a concrete block wall. But no - West Country me knew exactly how I'd react to looking at that ("Yuk...ugly...ugly...hate it") - so brick it had to be (you don't want to know how much a long 6' tall brick wall costs....eek!) and I was still in the "pension gap" between my retirement age of 60 and my "Revised State Pension Age" of around 63 - as I'd retired at 60 as per plan anyway. That did not do my savings any favours having to pay for that, and what I'd planned on and subsidising my low job pension until that Revised SPA. Every last bit of my savings vanished between subsidising my income and renovating the house and I had to take out a loan when I couldnt stand the kitchen any longer (yep.....very typical in poor use of space that so many people do) - and I still needed a lot more for renovation work.

From which - another point I've noticed happening is a woman who bought a house and she and her husband moved in to live there and I learnt at secondhand that if a house has been gutted after they had lived there and is done in very currently fashionable style = it needs inspecting carefully. Reason being they've bought it deliberately as a way of making income for themselves - bought cheap, done up cheap and as easily as they can manage themselves = they've deliberately bought it to "flip" (ie live in for a while and make a deliberate profit from it). I'm watching the result now it's been sold to someone else - new central heating not working, a bathroom not working, a fence coming further apart each time we get a strong wind here. It looked nice and modern on the surface - but certainly a lot of it was clearly "surface level work" and not done properly.

Where I am now too it's an area of the country where some of the builders are prone to buying a cheap wreck of a house that doesn't even function properly and do it up basically and flog on for a profit. I can tell by now - because there's gaps on kitchen walls where they could/should have put more wall cupboards and they didn't and so the new buyer is going to think "Why are 2 or 3 of the wall cupboards missing? They didn't buy them in the first place" and struggle to find matching ones. The other giveaway is counting the number of powerpoints in a room and, if there's only one or two on the one hand that's a giveaway the house hasn't been rewired and you're in for having to redecorate it all over again (after you've done that missing rewiring). Also modern era power points are put that bit higher up the wall - and so, if the powerpoints are down near the top of the skirting board = it hasnt been rewired yet.

That the victorian brick shed at the bottom of the garden (half in our garden and half in next doors) had been "claimed" largely by next door. They had moved the internal wall to take over half of our half so ours is very small inside.

We had just popped our head in, seen lots of tools etc but no room for bikes!

Because one of the bedrooms had an ensuite bathroom and a little kitchenette attached our house attracted two council taxes as it counted as two properties! After eighteen months we removed all the kitchen fittings and made it into a store room. It was then regarded as one property!

I don't think there was any deliberate attempt on the part of the vendors to withhold information, we viewed the house a couple of times, at the height of Covid, not a good time to be buying or selling. Because of the circumstances there was a reticence about touching door handles and all that over caution foisted upon us at the time. So as we went along the landing, a floor to ceiling door was pointed out as "the airing cupboard" oh nice and big! was my assumption not bothering to open it. Then when we moved in, opening it for the first time only to find a huge water tank and not a lot of space for anything else, I can get a few things in, but unlike where we left,
behind a door half the size there was twice the room.

NotSpaghetti

That the victorian brick shed at the bottom of the garden (half in our garden and half in next doors) had been "claimed" largely by next door. They had moved the internal wall to take over half of our half so ours is very small inside.

We had just popped our head in, seen lots of tools etc but no room for bikes!

Dying to know if you decided on a bit of extra DIY......ie taking down that joint internal wall and rebuilding it back where it should be....

Yep....I've duly done some strategic changing - where it's clear a neighbour has definitely nicked some of "mine" (ie in the garden).

Yep....I've also dis-attached something that got illicitly attached to my new garden wall. The neighbour concerned had lied to me and said their fence would be just beside my wall - so when I found it fixed to my wall (and having seen very clearly they're bodgers already and this is a windy area) = cue for I removed their fence from being fixed to my wall. I did not want their bodgy fence to damage my wall. They didn't dare re-attach it....

Not sure that a vendor is obliged to tell you anything. It's up to you to have a survey and ask questions via a solicitor. That's in England. I believe it's different in Scotland. You might berate me for saying this but I would not disclose a problem if trying to sell.

They didn't tell us that a landmine had dropped in the front garden an blown all the window out. It was only when I noticed that the handles on the front and back windows didn't match. When we moved to our present house we weren't told that a V2 had fallen in the back garden causing the roof to lift and there's a crack across the house. Fortunately we had a full building survey done and the surveyor said it hadn't moved in 40 years so it should be good for at least another 40. We did have the roof replaced.

We were very lucky to get a brand new 3 bedroom house with gardens back and front and a garage across the street just 3 weeks after we got married ,a council house
We lived there for 8 years and then bought a flat near our work and the school for our almost 5 year old.
It was a great flat and we loved it but 18 months later we had the chance of a new detached house at a good price so we decided to move
Seems the previous owner of the flat had built upwards without the necessary paperwork.It should have been found by our solicitor but sadly not and when he was asked about it he shrugged his shoulders and said Sue me!
Being young and silly we didn’t but we did pay for the new owners bridging loan and compensation on top of.
We learned from it It was a lot of money we could ill afford .
We e had great neighbours in all 4 houses we,ve lived in in our 50 years together ,all within a radius of about 3 miles .

Nothing of that kind.
However the vendor was so pissed off with dh for striking a hard bargain - ‘You are not in an Arab marketplace now!’ - he was working in Oman at the time, and pls imagine her very sniffy German accent.

So although I’d allowed her to stay for 4 days after the official completion, since her new (bigger) house wasn’t ready - my solicitor had a fit! - and although she knew I’d be moving in on my own with a small baby, she took all the curtain rails down, and removed all the light bulbs.

Witzend

Nothing of that kind.
However the vendor was so pissed off with dh for striking a hard bargain - ‘You are not in an Arab marketplace now!’ - he was working in Oman at the time, and pls imagine her very sniffy German accent.

So although I’d allowed her to stay for 4 days after the official completion, since her new (bigger) house wasn’t ready - my solicitor had a fit! - and although she knew I’d be moving in on my own with a small baby, she took all the curtain rails down, and removed all the light bulbs.

Whew - she had got lucky with you allowing her 4 days free stay like that. I can imagine why your solicitor had a fit!!

I was on the other end of a solicitor having a hissy fit re my first house. It was sitting there empty for several weeks before I was allowed to move in and it was very frustrating to peer through into my empty house knowing I couldnt get into it. We'd even got as far as "exchange of contracts" as I recall - but they would not let me move in until it had all been completed - even though they knew I was going to have to waste a few weeks more rent staying put in a flat I was renting because of that and was single (so every penny mattered).

The way I got my deposit was rather long and convoluted - and hence it wasnt going to be in my bank account to hand over until literally the day fixed. So, if anything had gone wrong and there'd been a bit of "British inefficiency" and my solicitor saying "It's not been put there yet - so I can't hand it over yet" I had made mental notes that I could manage to get into the back yard and the kitchen window was single-glazed at the time and I was sure I could locate a brick or something somewhere to manage to get into my house anyway (as it wouldnt be my choice or fault if the deposit hadnt been there on the day it was due to be). I would have moved in anyway - rather than have my removal van full of goods sitting outside unable to do so and my mother duly sitting up in it enjoying herself at having flirted the removal men into giving her a lift with them.

Fortunately all went according to plan - albeit only because someone got sent on an errand from the solicitors to "kick up the appropriate backside of appropriate person" to get the money out of them on time - as it hadnt turned up in the post so to say. She went, administered kick up backside in appropriate direction and I was able to move in in the official normal way. Think she must have put on her best "bovver boots" to do said kicking to get that deposit in the relevant account in time...or she was as good at flirting as my mother was if she put her mind to it LOL.

CariadAgain, no we did nothing, the wall had obviously been rebuilt some time ago. Nothing to do with the current neighbours.
Annoying but not the end of the world.
6ft of a narrow shed isn't worth falling out over.

One of the upsides of being a house renovator, is that every house you buy is full of surprises. Jobs you thought you would have to do that turn out to ne unnecessary nd jobs you hadn't expected.

Currently we are relieved to find that we do not have to take the roof off our 'new' home to install insulation. But, while we knew the CH boiler was defunct, we hadn't expected to need to replace the whole system because it is such a Heath Robinson jumble of randomly situated radiators on a system re using partly bigger pipes from 2 previous heating systems.

M0nica

One of the upsides of being a house renovator, is that every house you buy is full of surprises. Jobs you thought you would have to do that turn out to ne unnecessary nd jobs you hadn't expected.

Currently we are relieved to find that we do not have to take the roof off our 'new' home to install insulation. But, while we knew the CH boiler was defunct, we hadn't expected to need to replace the whole system because it is such a Heath Robinson jumble of randomly situated radiators on a system re using partly bigger pipes from 2 previous heating systems.

We once bought a house from a plumber. Every item of plumbing was ‘Heath Robinson’. Later the neighbours told us that if they were replacing their boilers he’d take the old one, apparently to use the bits to keep his going!
Like you were serial renovators, even when we don’t expect to replace things!

Didn't tell us about a serious roof leak.

Good to know you don't need to remove your roof MOnica.
It's looking like I'll exchange contracts Friday 24th and complete on 31st October. I'm as packed as I can be at the moment.
I doubt there will be any nasty surprises at my 'new' home.....but as they say....the proof of the pudding....

Aldom

Good to know you don't need to remove your roof MOnica.
It's looking like I'll exchange contracts Friday 24th and complete on 31st October. I'm as packed as I can be at the moment.
I doubt there will be any nasty surprises at my 'new' home.....but as they say....the proof of the pudding....

Do come back and tell us if there are any surprises - nasty or nice.

I think the very least most of us get is the house is filthy - yep...I was one that moved into my first house in total ignorance some people didn't clean their houses before selling them on. Cue for my parents had turned up with cleaning materials and shortly afterwards I spotted my then boyfriends parents emerging from their car with buckets and scrubbing brushes.

Good job someone had realised that would be the case...

Stating the obvious, it is the buyer’s responsibility to get a full structural survey and a surveyors report. Too many people rely on n the cheaper option of the Building Society’s survey which is basically just to say is the house worth what we’re lending?
A detailed survey should flag up structural, electrical, plumbing potential flooding or any other relevant issues and if it is at fault your claim is with the surveyor for failing to spot or mention potential issues. Doesn’t come cheap and for many people it is seen as a corner to be cut.
As for a dirty house…well you might have an idea of what you might expect from viewings. I have always paid my cleaner to come in as soon as the removal van drives away, but most of us will (blushngly) recognise that even a house we thought clean, can look pretty dire when the appliances are moved out and the pictures taken down.

Caveat emptor though

We bought a Victorian townhouse in Gosforth, we were 23 and 30 and naive, it was only our second house purchase.

The vendors left behind everything they didn’t want…..
enough to fill a skip.

Their cats had sprayed everywhere so when the heating came on the smell made you gag.

We had to lift every carpet and have the floorboards treated professionally before we could lay new carpet.

By some miracle John Lewis had cut and started to lay carpet for an identical property the householder said it wasn’t the colour he ordered, it was pure wool and more than we could afford but they offered it to us at a 60% discount!

We put in a new kitchen and bathroom, redecorated etc.
18 months after moving in we got another company move, we sold at a very healthy profit within 1 hour of signing the EA’s agreement.

We soon forgot the pain of moving in!

Mt61

Sarnia

The vendors had a long-standing feud with the neighbour on one side. The roots from their bedraggled but extremely tall pine tree which was right against the boundary fence had lifted the bricks on his drive. They kept saying they would repair his driveway and never did. We later found out that when he had been on a month's holiday the vendors had faithfully promised to relay his drive when in reality they were moving out and we were moving in. We sorted it amicably by paying £1000 to remove the tree and roots and he agreed to foot the bill for his drive. The vendors did not mention this on the paperwork which asks if there are any disputes with the neighbours. Very annoying!

Can you sue for something like this?

It would be very difficult to pursue it as nothing was ever in writing. It would be a case of 'he said' 'they said'. An expense we could have done without.

Yep....re neighbours and my own personal take is that there are some really drastic things you do not want to find unexpectedly in the house itself - dry rot, subsidence, woodworm, any damp you hadnt bargained on, roof needing instant replacement you'd not been able to spot - but you hadnt spotted any sign of that.

But bad neighbours is something that is not even under one's own control to fix and sometimes the best you can do is calculate what sort of reason they might move for/age they are/etc to try and calculate when they might move and that problem will hopefully be over.

I could give a list a mile long of what the worst offenders here were like - but calculated that as they were in a large/visibly crumbling house, with 3 stories height and there was only the two of them and they were about my age and I could see he obviously had arthritis or something similar = I figured out pretty much to the month when they'd put the house on the market to get one that wasnt 3 stories high and someone else had at least done basic work on and I was right. Only shame is they still live near enough that they can (and do) "stir it" at any chance they see - but at least it's a blessed relief not to have them in the same road any longer and their wreck of a house is no longer sitting there literally looking abandoned (people used to ask me disbelievingly if there was actually anyone living there it was that neglected). I could have told one of those urban explorer channels on YouTube that there was an abandoned wreck nearby they might like to explore - and they would have believed me...

That her husband was taking a bath when we viewed.

On a previous house move we had bailiffs and police calling on a quite regular basis - goodness knows what our new neighbours thought! Turned out the gas/electric meters had been bypassed and being used illegally, lots of debt etc. Bailiffs especially did not seem to believe us when we told them we weren't the people they were looking for even though we showed ID and told them we'd only been in the house a matter of weeks. We got really frustrated with giving out our solicitors details etc and being treated as liars and thieves.