Last owners wanting back items they left behind.

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

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.

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."

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sorry! My guess is they thought I know we have work to do but let's get drunk instead. The house was also filthy. We rang them and said their belongings were on the lawn and if they didnt pick them up they would go to the tip. Sorry GSM I am sure this wasnt within legal advice

When we moved in to my current house we found that the owners appeared to have forgotten they were moving. Clothes and belongings all over the place, plus an empty bottle of wine, my guess is they though

M0nica

RosiesMaw Did they get Listed Building Consent to rip up the oak flooring, because if they didn't, and I cannot see they would they aregoing to have lots of fun and games when they sell the house.

We live in a listed house and preparatory to selling we are carefully gathering all the documents that show we had consent for everything we have done

There are a LOT of changes done to listed buildings done without permission, if they are internal may go for decades before being revealed, by then nothing can be done.

RosiesMaw Did they get Listed Building Consent to rip up the oak flooring, because if they didn't, and I cannot see they would they aregoing to have lots of fun and games when they sell the house.

We live in a listed house and preparatory to selling we are carefully gathering all the documents that show we had consent for everything we have done

We bought a house from an elderly lady; she moved about five hundred miles away. On day shortly after a man knocked, looking most apologetic, said his aunt had sent him, and would we let him have the 'yellow rug' from the kitchen that she had forgotten to take? This was mysterious, until we suddenly realised that she meant a small, plastic doormat, about eighteen inches by twelve, that must have cost about £1.50 in those days. He was apoplectic; the petrol must have cost him about ten times the price of buying a replacement mat.

Where did you get that understanding?

My understanding is that any items left behind becomes the property of the new owners. Therefore there would be no legal repercussions should you sell or dispose of them,

If I didn’t want the item requested, I’d happily hand it over.

RosiesMaw said ^ The same (new) owners also ripped out a beautiful blue Aga and sold it for scrap and replaced lovely wide oak floorboards with modern pine and chipboard.^

My Dh was lucky enough to be able to visit the old house his grandparents had lived in from between the wars. Much to his astonishment, the old green Aga was still in the kitchen! It must now be one of the oldest in the UK, as they weren’t sold here until the 1920’s.

It depends, if they had left a load of rubbish to be disposed of then hard luck. If it was a smooth purchase and the place was tidy then no problem

Primrose53

RosiesMaw

All I can add is to ask where on earth they must live in the UK if they are in need of a hose pipe !

Funny you should say that. About 20 years ago on New Years Day my husband let our dogs in the garden. The man in the house behind came out of his shed with a hosepipe and put it in his car.

My husband called Morning to him and he replied and put his hand up. We didn’t think anymore about it but a few days later we heard he was missing and after a few more days he was found dead in his car several miles away having gassed himself.

OMG 😟😟😟

RosiesMaw

All I can add is to ask where on earth they must live in the UK if they are in need of a hose pipe !

Funny you should say that. About 20 years ago on New Years Day my husband let our dogs in the garden. The man in the house behind came out of his shed with a hosepipe and put it in his car.

My husband called Morning to him and he replied and put his hand up. We didn’t think anymore about it but a few days later we heard he was missing and after a few more days he was found dead in his car several miles away having gassed himself.

I think that as a gesture of good will -tell them that you are happy if they collect it and suggest a time suitable to you .

Having moved many times, we have had lots of things left behind; 150 jam jars without lids, a cat called mog, one couple turned up 3 months after we had moved in and started digging up rose bushes, a vice and best of all an agreement with a neighbour that we would take phone calls for them!

Until I was 11 my family owned and lived over a bookshop. In my 30s I revisited the village and called into the shop telling them that I used to live there. The owner asked my name then said he had something that belonged to my family. It was a box that had been forgotten in a cupboard when we moved and contained the letters that my dad wrote to mum when he was in Egypt during the war. I’m so glad they weren’t thrown out.

It is the sellers responsibility to take everything but as they asked so nicely why on earth wouldn't you return it.. you could have refused but happily you didn't..

Friends who sold a lovely old 18th C listed house several years ago left (deliberately) a stash of “old” roof tiles in an outhouse in case future owners needed to do repairs so that they would match the existing clay tiles.
The new owners rang them and asked them to be removed.
So they went to the tip.
Part of the roof had to be replaced some years later and they had no end of trouble sourcing “old” tiles and ended up removing them from the back roof to put on the front, using modern tiles for the back where they didn’t show.
The same (new) owners also ripped out a beautiful blue Aga and sold it for scrap and replaced lovely wide oak floorboards with modern pine and chipboard.
Each to their own.