Last owners wanting back items they left behind.

DD2 bought her bungalow from a strange woman (according to the neighbours). She left 2 huge blue pottery planters, which were mysteriously stolen a year later, when DD2 was on holiday. They were so heavy, it would’ve taken 2 chaps and a van. We can’t help thinking they were taken for/by the previous owner. Had she asked, they’d have been given.

About a week after we moved in the previous owner asked to come over and get the contents of the safe ..... safe? .... what safe? We let him come round and it was under the carpet in the concrete floor! We watched as he took out a lot of jewels .... honestly! I guess we could have claimed them! ... we didn't.

Our old house was built by the person who sold it to us. He left an old car in the garage and after a couple of years he still hadn’t removed it. He was living next door so we didn’t want to fall out with him. Eventually he towed it out but he was one of those people who kept turning up on the doorstep for a ‘chat’. He couldn’t ‘let go’ of his old house.

I had been in my house for a few weeks when the previous owners popped round to ask if they could dig up a rose bush in the garden. They had left the garden in a complete mess - no plants at all except for the rose bush, no flowerbeds and weeds a foot high.

I said they could have it because frankly it made no difference.

There is no time limit on enforcement where failure to get listed building consent is concerned Katie. A good solicitor acting for a buyer will want to know exactly what works have been done and to see the relevant consents.

When DH’s parents, in their eighties, were moving from a house to a flat they had worked very hard to get rid of surplus furniture etc. I went over on the morning of the move to help and discovered that the kitchen and pantry had been left out of the sorting out and had to pack and sort very fast plus a trip to the tip with several dozen jam jars and baking ware so old that even MiL couldn’t remember where it came from!

When I bought my retirement apartment last year I pointed out to the complex manager that the previous resident had left behind miscellaneous items - 3 kitchen stools and a couple of rugs. The manager told me "well they became yours on the day of completion. If the seller asks for them it's up to you, but legally they belong to you."

Thank you for all your replies. As the hose pipe and reel is not something we need, we are happy to give it back to them. The estate agent, I think was a bit surprised, as they forwarded the email from the previous owners with the words,
' Please let me know your thoughts so I can get back to them.'

The hose pipe and reel is quite large and is just outside the backdoor, so would be difficult to miss.

Rather pathetic to get an estate agent involved over a garden hose!!
I think most people would just buy another one!

Some years ago when DH was working away from home Mon-Friday and renting a flat on the South coast (which I had had to blitz from top to bottom when he took it on) he had his deposit withheld at the end of his tenancy ostensibly because 1) he had left some items in the freezer- frozen peas I believe- and 2) because of the “state” it was in (!) Oh and 3) they accused him of moving the electricity meter.
(How anybody does the last is beyond me.)
We apologised for the peas, suggested they chuck them , or indeed enjoy them, but contested the “state of the flat” as DH had instructed the letting agent to arrange for a contract cleaner after he had vacated it and they had sent us a bill for same!
It took me back to our children’s student days when we advised the kids to photograph everything in the flat/shared house when they moved in and again on leaving - things like the state of the cooker, bathroom, walls, floor surfaces with the date and time on each photo

Philippa111

Rather pathetic to get an estate agent involved over a garden hose!!
I think most people would just buy another one!

Exactly what we thought. We also paid the full asking price for the house.

Katie59 It must be soe years aince you had anything to do with lisred buildings. Ww are currently getting our ducks in a row to sell our listed building and we have to account for everything we have done to the house since we moved in and we have to pruduce all the consents.

Not only that, if it is discovered that previous owners did something without consent, we could be held responsible for reinstating the house back to what it was, if that was required.

I can never under stand why people buy listed buildings when all they want to do once they have acquired it is to make it look like any other modern house inside.

Germanshepherdsmum

There is no time limit on enforcement where failure to get listed building consent is concerned Katie. A good solicitor acting for a buyer will want to know exactly what works have been done and to see the relevant consents.

There is a lot of unauthorized work on listed buildings been done in the past, some still being done now, if any new work is not recorded it might be decades before it’s revealed and proving who did it is futile, when that person has likely died.

It shouldn’t happen but it is done to save money.

I agree, it can be difficult to know who did unauthorised work when a property has changed hands several times, but the person on the end of an enforcement notice will be the current owner.

My daughter and her husband bought a wreck/ doer upper from the family following the death of the owner - a hoarder and well known drunk - about- town. The cousin cleared much of it but a lot was left, including a full loft, garage, garden etc. The relative said that she wanted one piece of furniture ( right at the back of the garage behind a mountain of stuff) She contacted them over a year later to collect it. Fortunately DD is a patient woman. Most of us would have dumped it some time before.

Visgir1

Loads of things get left behind normally rubbish previous owners don't want.
They were lucky you didn't take it up to the tip.

I strongly suspected that a former owner would leave a load of junk for us to get rid of, so I specified that the place must be cleared completely.

He still left a lot of junk, inc. a manky old sofa, but I’d arranged with the EA for us to check just before completion, so it was delayed by 24 hours. He wasn’t at all happy, but tough - zero sympathy here. We’d have had to pay someone to take his junk away.

If someone leaves rubbish or possessions behind without prior agreement the law deems that they have not given vacant possession of the property and are thus in breach of contract. They can be pursued for damages including the cost of removing what they have left. Best to refer it to your solicitor.

When we bought our current house the owners asked if we wanted to buy a particular light fitting in the dining room and as it wasn’t to our liking at all we said no thank you.
They then said well when you get a new one fitted will you let us us have the old one back.
In other words will we pay for their property to be dismantled as they didn’t want to pay.
We said ok.
They then got in touch regularly to ask if it was ready for collection.
After a while the just stopped asking and we didn’t hear from them again.
The whole house needed modernisation and the dining room was way down our list of priorities.
It is so long ago I can’t remember what we did with it now.

Germanshepherdsmum

If someone leaves rubbish or possessions behind without prior agreement the law deems that they have not given vacant possession of the property and are thus in breach of contract. They can be pursued for damages including the cost of removing what they have left. Best to refer it to your solicitor.

In our case we knew that the chap was planning to return to his country of origin once he’d got the money, so it was the only way.
He left a lot of debt and unpaid bills behind!

The previous owners of our house came round a few weeks after we had moved in asking if they could dig up the carrots they had grown in the garden!

True story. Years ago in my 20s I'd moved into a house. A few months later the previous owner came to my door asking if they'd left their cat there and ''could I have a look around the house to make sure we've not left anything else behind''.!

They had! He was called Spud! According to the neighbours who I spoke too, he wasn't very well looked after so I told him no, he's not having Spud back, he's mine now and he can't come in to look around, then I slammed the door in his face!

Spud was very well loved and looked after with me!

Gilly1952
🥕 unbelievably cheeky ! It really made me laugh .

Enjoyed reading these comments. We’re planning to move this year & have been perusing properties online. Quite a few appear to be empty but with various items of furniture dotted around them. Nothing I’d want to be lumbered with. I shall make sure to insist our next home contains nothing we don’t want. It’s not easy getting rid of a load of someone else’s old junk.

Never discovered anything left behind but have always left spare kitchen tiles or floor tiles that I thought might be of use to the buyers in case of accidents or damage.
Did once move to a house and had police and bailiffs visit several times because the sellers apparently owed money and had also done something to the electricity meter and were in effect stealing electricity - not a good way of introducing ourselves to the new neighbours. They also took some convincing that we weren't the people they were looking for in spite of referring them to our solicitor, showing ID etc.

When we moved into our previous home before this one, the sellers removed everything they possibly could, including soap and toilet rolls, all electric light bulbs- we moved in in November, early afternoon and had to rush to the local shops to buy bulbs etc as it was already getting dark, before we could start to unpack! - door mats and even the dustbin! We were amazed as we had left all such items behind in our old house!