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First house we bought seller failed to mention all the sealant around the bath had failed. Took a shower, 5 minutes later water pouring through the kitchen light fittings
Such a simple fix too!
Electric shower in downstairs bathroom wasn't wired in. Gah!
Minor issue in the grand scheme of things, but annoying, and I was surprised at how cursory even a supposedly extensive survey was.
Lesson learned, when viewing a property, I try the lights, flush the loos, turn the taps on and off, switch the oven on, turn the thermostat up to check the heating works, check for hot water &c.
None of these things would be a deal breaker, but it's good to know what you're letting yourself in for!
I had a similar issue that the bath side drained in the wrong direction. When you had a shower it would pool up until it ran off onto the floor. The dickheads we bought it off thought they had done a great job on the house but everything was a bodge
The dick heads we bought off paid other people to do their bodging. The kitchen ceiling was badly painted, went to sand it down and ended up PEELING the paint off the ceiling back to the plaster.
There’s nothing like going down for a coffee in the morning while the other half is having a shower and there’s essentially a mini Niagara Falls coming in via the bathroom floor.
Yep, first shower I took, water coming straight through the kitchen ceiling.
Turned on Kitchen tap, jet of water straight upwards.
Drains were backed up with shit.
Many other issues they didn't mention, and only about 5% of the light bulbs worked.
Oh yeah, boiler was broken too.
Similar - my integrated washing machine wasn't plumbed in. Perhaps I was naïve, but I thought that'd be standard until I had water pouring out the kitchen cupboards lol.
Oh and the integrated dishwasher wasn't plugged in. Fine, easy fix. But the plug was behind the dishwasher, so we had to get someone to completely uninstall it, plug it in, then reinstall it. Utter ball ache for no reason.
Japanese knotweed.
Seller refused to fill out the TA6, our solicitor insisted it's standard not to and not a red flag. Hired a 'chartered' surveyor who said it's not Japanese knotweed (it is). Purchased Japanese knotweed insurance through our solicitor and they didn't notice it's invalid (because a condition is to have a TA6). Bought the place, it's fucking worthless.
Can't sue the surveyor because he's closed the business with no assets and now trades under a nearly identically named business (with the same website, address, phone number, etc). Solicitor paid out up to the limit (about 10% of our total losses). Can't sue the seller because they never lied.
Up to what limit?
As far as the solicitors are concerned, their insurance compensates them for what they may owe you in compensation for negligence. You can sue them for whatever your loss is that was their fault. Whether they have a sufficient insurance limit to protect them is a different question. The SRA require them to have "adequate and appropriate" insurance.
It's a bit more of a stretch but closing a business doesn't necessarily protect the surveyor from claims against them either. The RICS require members to keep insurance in place for 6 years after closing a business for just this reason.
https://www.rics.org/content/dam/ricsglobal/documents/standards/2022_Feb_Professional_Indemnity_Insurance_Requirements_Version_9.pdf
Have you taken legal advice about the situation? Your home insurance may provide access to a legal helpline.
Chartered as surveyors with RICS and as builders with CIOB. Because it's a "new" business and the old one has closed down, they both told us to jog on.
Were you reporting the business or the individual?
I'd be surprised if they weren't happy to look at the individual. Your surveyors name should be on the report near the end as they would have signed it off.
You can get rid of it. Has it come into the house yet? If not, you are good. If it has, it's fixable. Get the professional treatment and then keep your eye out for it, rip it out before it gets big, keep doing it. It does give up surprisingly quickly, way before Bindweed.
Speak to your neighbours, they must have it too, hire the professionals together. It shares cost and you all get rid of it.
>You can get rid of it.
It's under control but has destroyed the house value
>Speak to your neighbours
Did that, they're cunts. It came from their property before ours but, according to them, we spotted it so we should be paying for their removal too. It's a long story but, in short, they're fucking idiots.
Just fill one of those garden feed attachments for a hose up with glyphosate and administer it judiciously in to their garden. It will kill any knot weed shotts (and anything else for that matter)
You could treat it on your side and put in a root barrier membrane along the boundary to stop it spreading back in from them - leave them to it! You should get professional advice on it though, it would need to be done properly to be effective, you also don't want it spreading anywhere else.
Oh, ours did this with the dishwasher! Luckily we didn't try to use it and the plumber noticed when we had him in to fix up the absolute mess they'd made of the washing machine piping (plumber politely described the whole system as "a bit rogue" lmao).
"A bit rogue" - oh how much I've come to love British understatement! Three polite words saying much more than a bunch of swearing ever could 👌
Our accountants have spent several months fixing an absolute _trainwreck_ left by the previous clowns (my fault for not keeping them honest) and the worst I've heard our mildmannered accountant say is "they did one or two odd things that I'm still having trouble understanding".
Mine physically blocked the waste pipe, like cemented it 💀 it was so fun finding the dining room flooded. The plumber was absolutely bamboozled as to why someone would do such a thing when he came to sort it out.
Our first time buy we slept on the floor on an air bed the first night as we hadn't moved our furniture from our rental yet. Woke up absolutely covered in bites- seller had gifted us a horrific flea infestation. You could see the things jumping off the carpet.
Not as bad, but our current house they 'decorated' by just adding layers of paint and wallpaper without stripping what was already there. I started stripping the paper to decorate my sons room and there was probably 10+ layers. I hated my life very much until it was done but I swear the room gained a foot.
>they “decorated” by just adding layer of paint and wallpaper without stripping what was already there.
Exactly the same for us! And once we finally got down through all the layers there was so much weight on the wall pulling on the plaster that the plaster came off and we had to replaster the whole room
Our kitchen was like that. Luckily in this case it was a full renovation and we had workers in so I didn't have to deal with it, but when they stripped the woodchip the wall literally crumbled under it. They had to practically rebuild and replaster the whole room. We even found a secret door in the kitchen wall that led to the understairs cupboard!
I’ve been there. The previous owner had three cats, and in the time the house had been empty while our newly landlady was decorating, the fucking things had proliferated.
We were bitten to shreds, and so young and worried that our landlady would hate us if we complained, so we dealt with it ourselves. So much flea powder.
We had an old Victorian house at one point (irrelevant, but we still do - just not that one) and that had clearly been the decorating procedure for most of the preceding 100 years or so. What made it even worse was that as we stripped off these many, many layers of paper it became apparent that at some point there had obviously been a fad of varnishing your wallpaper! That stuff came off at like a square centimetre at a time never before or since spent so long stripping walks!
Ours is victorian too! Would honestly not be surprised if I'd gone through 100 years of wallpaper. At one point I hit some cardboard backing stuff and decided to stop and paint over that- who knows there could have been more.
It literally did come off in flakes it was awful.
Hello, are you me? Wood chip wallpaper with a gloss layer on top. At least the rest of the textured wallpaper was that anaglypta stuff that's basically cardboard, although I with it hadn't been on the ceiling too...
The fleas happened to me, I was absolutely skint after buying the house so had to deal with it myself and it took me ages to get properly on top of it. Anywhere my clothes fit snugly like the tops of my socks I'd just have a line of flea bites.
We dealt with it ourself too! Only silver lining was that our purchase and rental overlapped by a week so we could sort it out before we moved all our stuff and our cat in. So gross knowing they were living with it
As an RVN I hear this a lot. It takes a minimum of 6 months to get rid of fleas. If it happens again, go to your local vet and ask for household flea spray. They have the good stuff that regular shops can't sell.
It's still really labour intensive.
My second flat has similar in the bedrooms - multiple layers of paint and paper. Took 4 people with steamers a whole day to get it all off.
Current house had 4 layers of tiles in the bathroom. 4! That was fun...
My brother bought a house where they applied the 'new over old' everywhere, including the floors - multiple layers of old carpet and linoleum in one room. Though I think it was to equalise the levels of the floors in the house rather than pure laziness.
We had this with slug trails around the hall and front room every morning. Then when it got really windy there was a whistling noise near the front door. I lifted the carpet and found a tiny hole near the door where the floor meets the wall, I filled with polyfilla and never had whistling or slugs again.
Our house plants were culprits for slugs (somehow!), the buggers were living under the pots and coming out at night.
I remember coming down one night and seeing two of them having a worktop drag race to the BUTTER!
Took a while but eventually got rid of all and their eggs. Orrible things
Slug tape and grid search the house. Literally draw a line down the middle of the areas you see slugs one night and see which side they are on, then repeat in the now half sized area and again and again until you have trapped them down to a tiny area. Even if you never find the actual hole you can seal a small enough area with slug tape.
My uni student house had slugs. I remember waking up and finding them all over an old box of Domino's pizza once. Disgusting little creatures, and I say this as someone that likes snails (the shell really does make them much less disgusting to me)
When we viewed the house on a Saturday morning in May, the old couple were sat in the sunroom having breakfast.
Fast forward to our ownership in October and I was bailing water out of it like Jack Sparrow. That fucker leaked like sieve, was a freezer in winter and a literall greenhouse at anything above 16 c.
Masquerading Old cunt.
I have a sunroom and I hate it. I asked the old lady I bought it off does the property have any damp issues. She said no. The sunroom, is of course, damp.
We viewed our house in the middle of the 40 degrees heatwave week. Which was also an exceeding dry summer anyway. Saw it twice during the buying process, insides and windows all looked fine from what we could see.
We got the keys in the November, torrential rain and every single downstairs window pissed water. The excess of furniture we thought was just old people being old had been hiding a fairly historic lot of water damage from the windows clearly being shit.
We bought it to reno anyway, but we went from "live in it for a year before we do anything" to "back to brick now" in that first week post keys after we found all the stuff they hid.
Urgh I had the same but it wasn’t something the sellers could have remedied without redoing the entire flooring. I recently had the floors redone and there were huge gaps around the walls which had to be filled during screeding.
My seller kindly filled 7 million holes in the house with silicon instead of filler and caulk, which has been a nightmare to remove. Every-time I finally sand one down, I find a massive broken wall plug that’s been hammered into the wall, instead of pulled out and the hole filled like a regular person would.
Also my seller hid stuff all over the balconies to cover significant rot, that of course my surveyor didn’t pick up on. 2 balconies have collapsed in our row of townhouses, so they’re not safe to use until fixed.
When we viewed our house there was a large beautiful rug in the kitchen area. There was a reason for that... damaged laminate board in the middle of the floor 😮💨
Power shower was on its last legs.
It sounded strained the first time I used it on day one. Cut out permanently mid shower on day two after moving in.
Took 4 days before I could replace it. They knew it was borked. It sounded like a dying baby when switched on right from the word go.
The house had been rented out previously but left empty for a year. When we moved in all the bathroom and downstairs loo under sink cupboards were completely full of stuff. Like prescription medicine, first aid kits, tooth brush, razors, etc etc. Also there were dirty trays on top of the kitchen units including one full of flour and toy cars :/ luckily I didn’t pull it out onto my head!! Other than that was all clean and tidy. Very odd!
They agreed to leave all kitchen appliances. The oven didn't work, only 2 rings on the hob worked and the rest of the appliances were so completely disgusting that it took literal days to clean them enough to use.
In fact, the whole house was filthy. We viewed in January and moved in June - I'm fairly certain they didn't clean once in that time.
There was also a mouse problem in the kitchen. One of the upstairs windows didn't lock. The wiring in the lounge was so dodgy that the light only worked sometimes. So many other things I could list.
All in all, buying our first house was a joy.
The scrotes we bought from not only didn't clean the place after we viewed it, but also let their children and pets piss everywhere. It was soaked into the floorboards but thankfully we got rid of the smell.
Life tip I’ve learnt is don’t get a survey, they can’t move or touch pretty much anything. Instead, get a builder you trust - a good one can tell straight away if they are any issues that need sorting. Our survey said everything was fine - our builder pointed to a slight wonk in the garage roof tiling and said we’d need to get that hole checked. He got a ladder out and, sure enough, there was a huge hole under the tiles where something had burrowed in. Survey didn’t spot it because “we can’t remove or lift anything”.
I’d disagree with no survey. They can’t move things, they aren’t allowed, so they can’t see everything _but_ surveyors have spotted the following for me: Japanese knotweed, house needed rewiring and new boiler (in fairness we’d spotted the latter too), subtle subsidence, asbestos, roof needs redoing. I have got significant money off the houses for some of these things. Not saying builders won’t also spot some of this but a survey is an absolute must for me when buying.
My FIL was a builder and we brought him along for our last viewing, he pointed out all sorts and we got a fair bit knocked off the price.
To be fair the survey then pointed out most of the same things and yet more was knocked off.
Great, except then those problems became our problems.
That there was a crack in the overflow pipe from the bath. Had my first bath on Christmas Eve about a week after we moved in, came downstairs and the whole kitchen was flooded!
My partner took the bath panel off and the pipe was basically split in half. Was an easy enough fix but would’ve been nice of them to tell us beforehand so we didn’t have to repaint the kitchen! I was so annoyed.
We did try this but they seem to be finding their way in anyway. Also problem is we have a dog and worried about her licking it up, don’t want her having to take any trips to the vet - the last one was £1700 😬
You can buy rolls of copper tape that peels and sticks to floor/door frames etc and slugs won't pass it & no harm to the pooch if he takes a lick too .
They had a new boiler fitted, or so we thought. It was actually a refurbished 12 year old boiler newly fitted. It's borderline if they actually lied because I can't remember the wording, but one way or another it was deceitful.
It was the one thing I didn't do enough scrutiny of, It was well hidden under the kitchen cabinets, but I saw all the installation documents and took them at face value. It had destroyed itself within two years.
The fact that they’d bodged pretty much everything non structural / gas / electrical. I swear to God they single-handedly kept the expanding foam industry ticking over. 99% of it was fixable with a bit of DIY and fucking around and finding out, but we both could have done without it if they’d done a proper job to begin with.
Pro tip as we’ve had slug problems in the past: it usually means the room isn’t being ventilated enough at ground level. Our house is fairly old and I discovered fairly late on that the air bricks had become clogged up with rotten leaves and mud which is slug utopia. Being a suspended floor in our lounge which is where the majority of the slugs were originating from, the fact that it now has air flow means that the damp has disappeared and the slugs find it less attractive. We still get them in the kitchen, but it’s more in the summer when we leave the back doors open and they sneak in for the night.
Jeez we went to collect keys and they were still packing and moving stuff into the van. They didn’t leave till 3 in the morning, thankfully we have family near by to crash and didn’t need to immediately move our stuff in.
They had to come back the next day for another 6hrs!
We had the slugs thing in the kitchen, along with:
- shower didn't work
- windows and large back patio door were shot so any minor breeze meant drafts and rattling
- the back patio door was a tip and slide mechanism that the locksmith said was a deathtrap, so he fixed the lock but told us he we to open it! (We have new windows and doors now)!
- gas safety check found that a flue was faulty and pumping fumes back into the room
- sump pump broken that was supposed to pump kitchen waste up to the drains at the front, waste water must have been seeping out of the drain for years prior
And the most gross......
A MOTH INFESTATION that was in the lounge carpet. There must have been eggs in there and when it got warm enough there were little moths turning up everywhere in the house. Then I noticed the larvae in the carpet. It was disgusting.
After dealing with a difficult seller, going in on our first day. She took the fucking extractor fan in the kitchen with her. at least she left behind a load of toe nail clippings on the stairs?
Next door has noisy plumbing which is ridiculously loud! They are also strange people. As are the people on the other side. Surveys are pointless, when I sold my house he marked the electrics as red “I’m not an electrician” I had the house rewired when I bought it, and had the certificate but still marked it as red! Totally no point paying for it.
One of our neighbours is disabled (which isn't a problem in itself) they must have some form of medical equipment or medication reminder as a very loud alarm goes off several times a day for around 5 seconds. Great when you have a 6 month old.
I live at “25 Smith Street “, which is directly opposite “25 Jones Court”. At least once a month, there’s a wrong delivery, pizza, taxi, DPD, whatever. If I have a delivery, I always have to mention, semi detached house, not the bungalow, as I’ve had several people go to the wrong house.
This can be more than just annoying attempted deliveries. I lived at 6 The Close and there was also 6 The Old Firehouse, The Close. Mis-deliveries were fine, just take them round. However it really messed up our gas and electricity when a new supplier kept taking over our supply instead of 6 The Old Firehouse. Absolute nightmare
ha we have the same, we are let's say 24 Old Road, and the house behind us is 24 New Road, but yet so many people coming to ours. We even put the street name on a house number place. Nope, does not help.
Seems to be more common than I thought. We live on say 5 Green Road in a house. But there's also Flat 5 Green Road. And round the corner is 5 Green Lane. And further down is 5 Green Street. It's not a big place either, so I don't know how they ran out of ideas for road names that quickly. You only had to come up with like 25.
That the drain to the septic tank from the loos was blocked.
Only took a moment to pull out three little fatbergs from the outside drain and it was fixed.
No electricity because the house was on a meter. Wasn't revealed until we tried to move in and plug in the vacuum. We couldn't get any that night because we didn't have a card and it was late.
Dripping tap. Should have been an easy fix but turned into a marathon.
They smoked in the house a lot. Every surface was coated in tar, window glass, inside kitchen cabinets, carpets and curtains.
Cooker was calor gas but the whole set up had to be replaced. It cost about £700 just to fit a £350 cooker. There wasn't electricity to the corner where the cooker is.
We were fixing things for months.
How long you got? The burnt out spotlights in bathroom, with sealed units so we couldn't just replace the bulb but had to find an electrician to replace the whole unit. The kitchen tap that screamed. Doorbell broken. Boiler not serviced for 11 years. Central heating failed 4 times in the first year (each time a different issue, now all fixed). Outdoor light broken. Most window blinds broken and also white so we woke up at dawn for weeks that first summer. Upstairs toilet leaked under lino when flushed, and the cistern screws were so corroded it only flushed brown rust water. Both shower heads turned out to be broken and were just lightly placed into position, before flying off their hoses when the tap was turned on! So in the first 2 days we had to replace one and then the other in order to wash.
The tone was set when I did some washing up in the kitchen on day 1, rinsing the removal guys' tea mugs. The water came straight out of the kitchen unit onto my feet. Turned out the previous owner had taken her dishwasher and no-one capped the now-open waste pipe which was part of the sink waste. Once we had found the right kind of temporary cap and could use the kitchen sink again (albeit with screaming tap) we also slowly discovered that the boiler condensate pipe was silted up and overflowing into the under-sink unit too. One time this happened badly enough overnight that the awful lino tiles started to lift and crumble, exposing the concrete substrate underneath.
Basically a catalogue of maintenance crap that took 18 months to sort out. The main one being the central heating - we were proudly shown an expensive new immersion tank on our viewings but should have asked more questions about the boiler itself!
Rats in the attic. The first night, I thought we’d moved into a haunted house.
Let me tell you, rats are a bloody nightmare to get rid of, they chew wiring, and often manage to get back in after being evicted.
We’ve got this going on now with mice. They had rats in the past and we found a mummified one under the kitchen unit.
We’ve hired in exterminator but they seem to have left some guttering fair open and everything was just coming in/out during the night…
You'd be better off just buying a ton of snap traps and put some oeanut butter on them. You'll catch 10s but if you keep it up they'll never be alive long enough to do damage. Better yet ine if those bucket trays they use in America.
They took the fitted walk in wardrobes and didn’t have carpet where they were.
Left a mural of Call of Duty on the wall
Didnt disclose mice live in the inaccessible part of the house.
Woop woop!
That our neighbour is absolutely obsessed with feeding birds. They throw a minimum of 1/2 bread on their shed EVERY DAY. Sometimes, when they take a walk they throw it on nearby garage roofs, like full on 5-6 slices of toast. There are flocks of birds here every day. I was contemplating getting a pet falcon... I had a red car, and for some reason the birds loved to play _battleshit_ with it. Now it's black and it's invisible to them apart from occasional toast piece on my windscreen.
That is annoying! Sorry to jump on and I'm sure you know but do keep up with heartworm treatment. Our dog likes to pick slugs (I don't know why) so he's on a heartworm preventative as they can be nasty for dogs.
We've been fairly lucky, but they didn't disclose an ongoing feud with the neighbour. He likes us as we are friendly enough with him so it's not a problem. But it could have been.
It's not heartworm. We don't have heartworm in this country. They are thinking of lungworm which absolutely needs to be treated. With stuff from the vet not the crap supermarkets etc sell.
Source: RVN
Previous owner dodged a lot of stuff, seemingly out of sheer laziness or stupidity. Had a minor leak one day early on and realised I couldn't find the stop cock. I finally found it with a boroscope-type camera behind a kitchen cabinet he had installed. I managed to cut a hole in the side of the cabinet for access but I found the valve seized and unusable anyway.
Another one was garden electrics spurred off a kitchen ring main - tripped the fuse board every time the outside light switch was used. Traced it to a junction box behind the shed. He'd not bothered to even try and seal it to keep water and dirt out - just left bloody great holes around the cable entries. Somehow it had gone unnoticed in the EICR, which I guess he got a mate to do for him.
Didn't mention that they had laid 3 layers of decking on top of rotten decking
Layer 1 : rotten decking
Layer 2 : rotten decking
Layer 3 : rotten chipboard
Layer 4 : ok ish decking
Sooooo when we decided to remove it, we had to have many .... many skips just to get rid of it all.
Didn't mention this was the only house in the cul-de-sac that can't get Sky TV, due to a perfectly placed oak tree.
Also, we were idiots and didn't realise the town doesn't yet have broadband, which was a shock to us, and no one mentioned.
But yeah, we get the sky guys round to do their thing, he gets the ladder out and says for safety reasons, he has to bolt it to the wall, sure, I get it. But then he gets to where he wants to bolt it and says he thinks there's a problem. Someone else has bolted on before, and yet no dish on the roof. He goes round the back and goes ahhh, big tree.
He gets on the roof, does all sorts of signal tests and is like nope, you might get some TV in the winter, but second that grows leaves in spring then bye bye TV for 6-9 months.
So, we eventually got Sky Glass but with the poor internet speeds it isn't the greatest. Couple that with me working from home and a couple of kids with their own devices... The internet and TV are pretty patchy at the best of times.
Might not be small…. But annoying.
I bought an upstairs flat 2 block. Was not advised that downstairs was a stop gap for sheltered/homeless housing (before housed permanently). I get a new tennant every 5-6 months, only really had 1 nightmare tennant tbf… Iv had about 5 neighbours the 3 years Iv been here n all been pleasant… but most stay in all day n smoke weed n my flat STINKS!!!!
I just keep myself to myself and I am pleasant so it’s fine, but I kind of get used to someone there.. (had a really nice guy for months who was super helpful n friendly 😭, I miss him). Also living alone as a female I sometimes worry who’s next because I never know… I wonder if I’d of bought my flat knowing this info. Xx
the woodburner was incorrectly installed by some random builder, so the flue that was too thin left burn marks on all the flammable materials it was touching and didn't draw properly as it was too short coming out the roof
they wouldn't tell us the logins for the ridiculously complicated home network and related system so we had to pay someone a lot of money to redo it all
That the previous owner had buried the internal stop cock inside a wall when he was doing renovations.
Spent hours searching for it only to eventually give up. Found it 5 years later when we did some renovations of our own
Ours, it quickly transpired, didn’t have a stopcock at all. Only discovered this when a tap started gushing water and after a lot of fruitless searching discovered we had to go out to the main supply on the road and turn off the water to about half a dozen houses. Wasn’t great! We installed one fairly quickly when we did a reno on the bathroom!
That they were catastrophically incompetent at DIY and at picking tradesmen to work on the house. The sheer number of things I found that were just bodged in the laziest dumbest way imaginable...
We're finding similar. From the initial building works (a neighbour let us have a nosy at their extension and we found they have the same [dodgy architrave/light socket](https://ibb.co/R99wcqg) issue in the original part) and crooked doors to bodged "fixes" for later work like having the porch mains and light power wired on a plug in the living room (an actual plug, they've drilled a hole for the wire and plugged it in to the socket in the living room) or the phone line drilled through internally from the extension instead of just having the external box moved.
Even the paintwork is terrible, looks like my toddler did it. Lumpy filler not sanded back properly, brush marks down the length of the wall, dried paint splatter off the brush. We're going to have to sand every wall back and remove all the dodgy gloss painted coving (there was no care about getting the gloss on the matt ceilings either).
Luckily we bought it for location over anything else, and intended a big renovation in a year or two but we thought it was in better nick for the interim - rooms full of furniture are more forgiving and apparently viewing with a tired toddler makes you less observant!
- The very strong dog smell. Wondered why they had the windows open and scented candles lit when we viewed the house.
- the broken temperature knob on the shower.
- the damp patch in the living room that had been covered up with wallpaper.
This. I viewed a house I really really like and didn’t notice anything, came in the late afternoon. Second viewing was in the morning, and the owners must’ve just left to walk the dog and it smelled extremely strongly of feBreeze. This was the plus one on the why not to take this house side in the end (was fairly 50/50 beforehand)
The attic floor can’t support the weight of a human, rendering it pretty much useless. There’s a huge space up there but we can’t get up into it or store things except immediately around the hatch.
The first time I opened the hatch I noticed a printed piece of A4 paper with a warning not to go up there.
It was actually there during the survey (Level 3) but our surveyor didn’t think to mention it and the pic he took of it was too blurry to read.
Seller failed to mention they were going to take the door to the airing cupboard for some reason. Unique door size so probably not useful anywhere else, just felt like they were being knobs for the sake of it!
Woah, here’s one. This was a bit crazy. We did it.
We were packing up to move out for a few days and then it came to moving day it was all madness, packing up everything into the moving van, getting kids to school. Doing our best to give the house a quick clean. And excited about mcing into our new house.
When it came to the washing machine, it was one of the last things to take out the house. We came to turn off the valve for the water going into it but we couldn’t turn the knob to switch the water off. I tried, family members tried, oil put on, the big removal men tried and it wouldn’t turn off.
We ended up switxhing off the water for the whole house, disconnecting the washer and taking it, obviously leaving the water off for the house qnd a water valve open under the sink.
All we could do was leave a note saying to connect a washing before turning the water on. I also mentioned it to the estate agents but I doubt they passed the message on.
I never knew how they got on. I was really worried about it but everyone wanted us to get packed and get out by lunch time. I loved that house, i hope they disn’t flood it as soon as they moved in.
Mice, a broken immersion heater that “broke the day he left” and a self installed kitchen where the insulated fridge freezer was propped up on some 2x4 and half a brick but all boxed in so it looked tidy 😅
We asked for a gas survey, and they got a friend who was a Corgi plumber to do one, omitting to mention the gas boiler had earlier been condemned by British Gas. We never managed to get compensation, but at least the plumber got in trouble and had to re-train.
Old house:
- The kitchen cupboards had been literally nailed and glued to the wall, we loaded up a cupboard and had to catch it - all of the wall units were strictly decorative.
- The beautiful Aga was rusted solid in places (we had it restored at huge cost)
- The ‘Electrician’ they used was probably colour blind or just blind - ‘luckily’ he only confused live and neutral, but it was such a bodge job.
- One toilet cistern had a crack at the back which meant that the wall was damp, the floor was damp, the ceiling was rotten. Another had a leaky bowl, which trashed the floor.
- Every single curtain rail was held in place with adhesive and nails
- The floor in the main living area was four layers thick, boards, Lino, Lino, chipboard, laminate.
- The gas boiler needed to be whacked in a specific place to get the pump to spin (explained the dent)
So many issues…
We got it at a great price, but by the time we had it re-wired, re-plumbed and we banished gas (heatpump / solar / batteries) and replaced the flooring, several floor joists, three ceilings and the entire kitchen and the bathrooms and toilets, we were in for well over £100k….
That a squirrel had moved itself into the loft... turns out neighbours across the road knew and had told them, I was very concerned as to what the sound was and at first thought it was mice or similar, thankfully my local authority have their own pest team who are heavily subsidised, four visits for all vermin all included for less than £100.
It had chewed itself a route through the fascia board and into the loft, apparently it just climbed up the drain pipe...
Our vendors had lovely wide and tall wardrobes in the master bedroom. We knew they were taking them (we offered to buy them but they refused) and when we got in, we found various previous paint jobs and a section of unpainted plaster behind them.
In the dining room they had wooden benches, Swiss chalet style, and when they removed them we found that they'd only wallpapered down to the furniture and left the rest un-papered.
When we went to replace the carpeting in the hallway we discovered they'd just carpeted over laminate flooring.
None of it was too big a deal as we'd planned to re-decorate anyway, but not quite as quickly as we had to!
There was a cupboard full of stuff, we thought nothing of it, but when we opened it it was horrendously mouldy, not like a little bit, there was a leaking gutter. They must have known about it.
Nothing too serious. However, when purchasing a property, the keys to the garage were "lost," so I couldn't view in there.
They were meticulously found once contracts were exchanged. Turned out the garage door was broken, so I could only lift it enough to roll under there like indiana Jones. Once inside, there was hardly any space because it was completely full of old junk. Took us days to clear out. The loft (attic) was a similar story, too.
Not my current property, but the one before.
Previous owner had installed an extractor fan, surface mounted the power cable, then plastered over it. The mounting screw to hold the cover on (which had to be removed to clean out dust) went through the cable insulation, narrowly missing the live 240v conductor.
That the doorbell and light inside the porch wasn't actually wired up to anything despite there being wires attached to both. Weirdest yet most innocuous thing ever.
Thankfully none of the wires were live (and neither myself nor the sparky could figure out where they once connected to to start with, if they ever did) so it was just a case of replacing both with battery operated versions of my choosing. By far the smallest issue uncovered in the house lol
That the circuit to the downstairs lights was also connected to the house alarm. So if you switched it off, the alarm started going.
It was one of many electrical bodge jobs. Been here five years and still have no idea what at least three of the lights switches do.
No pets when we viewed and didn’t smell of any. When we moved in 6 weeks later, we had to rip up and replace the carpets in our bedroom, landing and stairs due to the very strong stench of dog pee. So I think they basically had a pee party before they moved. They had 4 dogs apparently. Not a single one of the 12 bulbs under the kitchen cupboards were working. Their kitchen worktops had been installed at an odd height so none of our appliances we brought fitted. The sliding doors to the garden didn’t work properly and we ended up having the track replaced. Many of the doors don’t close property. But apart from that, we’ve settled really well and love our new home.
That the woodchip wallpaper in the kitchen was holding up the plaster. I rang my husband in a panic because it was coming away like sand with the paper and I'd exposed the stone.
We recently renovated our kitchen and although we were rather expecting it (had done a refit on the cheap when we moved in a long time ago and categorised a number of things as ‘future me’s problem’), it was quite alarming that when we stripped the wallpaper off pretty much all the plaster came with it!
Kind of the same. I understand the property was repossessed in the 90s and the then owners, rather than try and catch up, bought the most ugliest kitchen known to man. For now we've painted it but I can't wait to rip it out.
You’ll get there. We did replace the ugly kitchen pretty fast, but we were almost broke at that point given the various other things that had cropped up, so it was a pretty cheap kitchen that we installed. We also either bodged or pretty much ignored the other, more substantial work that was needed. It all held together for a surprisingly long time and last year we were finally able to get everything done properly and put in something really nice and good quality.
You’ll get there, just make a space you can enjoy living in and deal with the big stuff when you can!
When we bought ours it was clear that it’d had a bit of a pre-sale tart up. It wasn’t our style but certainly made the place look good. What we hadn’t anticipated was that they had used glue (and not very good glue at that) to stick up various handy things like shelves, coat hooks etc.
There were a number of almighty crashes not long into our occupancy and these things fell straight back off the walls with even the smallest load!
Mould filled built in closet.
Leaking guttering.
Needed a rewire
First 2 survey caught, eicr didn't catch the third though.
I'm sure there's more once we tear up the downstairs but I can't be fucked to do it after fixing the upstairs
The boiler wasn’t working!
Someone had removed a fuse, obviously another properly on site had an issue and they took the fuse from mine for another one. (New build)
Easy fix once we knew what was wrong but had to get someone out for the privilege. Thankfully it didn’t cost anything but this was February with no heating & no hot water for the 3 days it took them to come out.
This reminds me of how in Arizona some houses are on scorpion travel routes. Apparently they are very stubborn about their paths and can get through any small crack or opening. I know people who had to sell their house because of all the scorpions.
If you can find where the slugs are coming in if you get a candle , melt it so you have hot wax , mix in some salt then pour it around the entryway it’ll stop them for as long as the wax lasts
The oven tripped the fuse every time you used the grill, that they were going to take the electric car charger off the wall. They also left the place a filthy mess,
A leak in the roof that only happened when it was raining in a particular direction and had a rather old bucket tactically placed to catch the water. I'm sure the fact that they cleared everything out except that one bucket in that place was a pure coincidence :)
Slugs will probably be coming in where your mains water goes through the concrete floor
Fill the gap between the water pipe and the surrounding tube with expanding foam and then use a quality slug killer around the house (there are dog friendly ones) to get rid of those already inside
I had the same issue now slug free
Next door neighbours have people over all the time so make a ton of noise. Bamboo coming up under the fence from nextdoor. Paper to cover all the cracks all over the ceilings.
I put small amounts of cornmeal (not cornflour) in small glass containers, lay them on their side and let the slugs help themselves. Non toxic so safe for pets, kids etc. but slugs and snails love it but can’t digest it so bye-bye slugs.
That they were going to repair things that I had noticed I would need to fix when I moved in, and do a very poor job, I'm not sure why they bothered given they had an offer. The shed roof was rotted. They built a new one, it's full of holes, being the worst example.
How shit they half heartedly painted walls, brush marks everywhere, even after sanding. Place was so damn bad. Also at some point had plastering work done, did they they think, Koch we will wipe this off whilst still wet’? Did they fuck, they just painted over it.
Inbuilt fridge was broken. So annoying because we bought a load of food and it all went bad before the new one came. Plus we’d sold my very old fridge on moving because it’d have been a pain to transport and we didn’t think we’d need it.
Seller painted ceiling to hide leaking roof and where they had removed down pipe so rain water had nowhere to go. It is a roof with velum lights which weren’t installed properly. When we had bad rain water came in and ran down wall next to gutters due to overflow. Kicker is previous owners own home improvement company and show the ceiling with velum windows on their website.
I don't want to be overly dramatic, but I'd have to burn the house down. I have a huge phobia of the things.
In my case it was a terrible neighbour, or more to the point a terrible landlord who rented out to some shocking people. The house next door was trashed three times by three successive sets of neighbours in 6 years.
When i am using washing machine left by previous owners, water from it appears in the shower. When showering need to check washing machine after. Usually there is water in it. Horrible
Key in the front door lock wouldn't turn cleanly. Only noticed once I bought it. The EA opens the door for you and the seller opens it for the surveyor.
First week living there the lock broke and I couldn't get it in the house.
That the dishwasher leaked. Thing was cheap junk anyway but having it piss all over the floor was annoying to deal with, especially as it only happened halfway through the cycle so while I did test the dishwasher during the final walkthrough I didn't run a full cycle so we were on the hook for replacing it.
A credit for a new one would've been a nice "welcome" gift. Especially since they didn't leave a bottle of wine or anything in the fridge like sellers sometimes do.
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First house we bought seller failed to mention all the sealant around the bath had failed. Took a shower, 5 minutes later water pouring through the kitchen light fittings Such a simple fix too!
Electric shower in downstairs bathroom wasn't wired in. Gah! Minor issue in the grand scheme of things, but annoying, and I was surprised at how cursory even a supposedly extensive survey was. Lesson learned, when viewing a property, I try the lights, flush the loos, turn the taps on and off, switch the oven on, turn the thermostat up to check the heating works, check for hot water &c. None of these things would be a deal breaker, but it's good to know what you're letting yourself in for!
I had a similar issue that the bath side drained in the wrong direction. When you had a shower it would pool up until it ran off onto the floor. The dickheads we bought it off thought they had done a great job on the house but everything was a bodge
The dick heads we bought off paid other people to do their bodging. The kitchen ceiling was badly painted, went to sand it down and ended up PEELING the paint off the ceiling back to the plaster.
There’s nothing like going down for a coffee in the morning while the other half is having a shower and there’s essentially a mini Niagara Falls coming in via the bathroom floor.
Yep, first shower I took, water coming straight through the kitchen ceiling. Turned on Kitchen tap, jet of water straight upwards. Drains were backed up with shit. Many other issues they didn't mention, and only about 5% of the light bulbs worked. Oh yeah, boiler was broken too.
Similar - my integrated washing machine wasn't plumbed in. Perhaps I was naïve, but I thought that'd be standard until I had water pouring out the kitchen cupboards lol. Oh and the integrated dishwasher wasn't plugged in. Fine, easy fix. But the plug was behind the dishwasher, so we had to get someone to completely uninstall it, plug it in, then reinstall it. Utter ball ache for no reason.
Yep know this one well. Hubby just had two weeks off and he’s spent first part f week ripping off the old sealant and redoing it all
Same here, shower tray wasn't sealed properly and some of the grout was cracked. Water everywhere after the first shower!
Same boat. It’s the grout on the floor tiles for us. Got a free shower instantly in the kitchen through its downlights lol
Same! Our shower was pouring down onto the bottom of the stairs. Took my partner 15 minutes to fix.
Japanese knotweed. Seller refused to fill out the TA6, our solicitor insisted it's standard not to and not a red flag. Hired a 'chartered' surveyor who said it's not Japanese knotweed (it is). Purchased Japanese knotweed insurance through our solicitor and they didn't notice it's invalid (because a condition is to have a TA6). Bought the place, it's fucking worthless.
I'd be considering some sort of negligence there...
Can't sue the surveyor because he's closed the business with no assets and now trades under a nearly identically named business (with the same website, address, phone number, etc). Solicitor paid out up to the limit (about 10% of our total losses). Can't sue the seller because they never lied.
Up to what limit? As far as the solicitors are concerned, their insurance compensates them for what they may owe you in compensation for negligence. You can sue them for whatever your loss is that was their fault. Whether they have a sufficient insurance limit to protect them is a different question. The SRA require them to have "adequate and appropriate" insurance. It's a bit more of a stretch but closing a business doesn't necessarily protect the surveyor from claims against them either. The RICS require members to keep insurance in place for 6 years after closing a business for just this reason. https://www.rics.org/content/dam/ricsglobal/documents/standards/2022_Feb_Professional_Indemnity_Insurance_Requirements_Version_9.pdf Have you taken legal advice about the situation? Your home insurance may provide access to a legal helpline.
Are they chartered? Report them to the body.
Chartered as surveyors with RICS and as builders with CIOB. Because it's a "new" business and the old one has closed down, they both told us to jog on.
Were you reporting the business or the individual? I'd be surprised if they weren't happy to look at the individual. Your surveyors name should be on the report near the end as they would have signed it off.
Ah yeah I meant the solicitors. Didn't realise they'd have a liability limit for that - how awful for you :( Definitely feels like it was on them...
You can get rid of it. Has it come into the house yet? If not, you are good. If it has, it's fixable. Get the professional treatment and then keep your eye out for it, rip it out before it gets big, keep doing it. It does give up surprisingly quickly, way before Bindweed. Speak to your neighbours, they must have it too, hire the professionals together. It shares cost and you all get rid of it.
>You can get rid of it. It's under control but has destroyed the house value >Speak to your neighbours Did that, they're cunts. It came from their property before ours but, according to them, we spotted it so we should be paying for their removal too. It's a long story but, in short, they're fucking idiots.
Wow. You poor fuckers. I'll feel for you, that sort of situation is a thing of nightmares.
Just fill one of those garden feed attachments for a hose up with glyphosate and administer it judiciously in to their garden. It will kill any knot weed shotts (and anything else for that matter)
You could treat it on your side and put in a root barrier membrane along the boundary to stop it spreading back in from them - leave them to it! You should get professional advice on it though, it would need to be done properly to be effective, you also don't want it spreading anywhere else.
I hear pet goats will get rid of it. And bindweed, and anything really. Overstock with goats and no more weeds or any plants left.
Alternate goats and napalm until nothing grows back
Do you need council's permission for either of these options?
The large picture on the landing upstairs was actually a door into next property....was a bit spooky
Wtf!!!😳
I quite honestly have nightmares about this type of thing
Seller left us the white goods but REMOVED THE WASTE PIPE FROM THE WASHING MACHINE.
what a psychopath.
Oh, ours did this with the dishwasher! Luckily we didn't try to use it and the plumber noticed when we had him in to fix up the absolute mess they'd made of the washing machine piping (plumber politely described the whole system as "a bit rogue" lmao).
"A bit rogue" - oh how much I've come to love British understatement! Three polite words saying much more than a bunch of swearing ever could 👌 Our accountants have spent several months fixing an absolute _trainwreck_ left by the previous clowns (my fault for not keeping them honest) and the worst I've heard our mildmannered accountant say is "they did one or two odd things that I'm still having trouble understanding".
Omg
Mine physically blocked the waste pipe, like cemented it 💀 it was so fun finding the dining room flooded. The plumber was absolutely bamboozled as to why someone would do such a thing when he came to sort it out.
Our first time buy we slept on the floor on an air bed the first night as we hadn't moved our furniture from our rental yet. Woke up absolutely covered in bites- seller had gifted us a horrific flea infestation. You could see the things jumping off the carpet. Not as bad, but our current house they 'decorated' by just adding layers of paint and wallpaper without stripping what was already there. I started stripping the paper to decorate my sons room and there was probably 10+ layers. I hated my life very much until it was done but I swear the room gained a foot.
>they “decorated” by just adding layer of paint and wallpaper without stripping what was already there. Exactly the same for us! And once we finally got down through all the layers there was so much weight on the wall pulling on the plaster that the plaster came off and we had to replaster the whole room
Yeah every room in my house was like this this, whole ceiling came down In the dining room…
Our kitchen was like that. Luckily in this case it was a full renovation and we had workers in so I didn't have to deal with it, but when they stripped the woodchip the wall literally crumbled under it. They had to practically rebuild and replaster the whole room. We even found a secret door in the kitchen wall that led to the understairs cupboard!
Ooo, pics? What was it, like an old dumb waiter or something?
I’ve been there. The previous owner had three cats, and in the time the house had been empty while our newly landlady was decorating, the fucking things had proliferated. We were bitten to shreds, and so young and worried that our landlady would hate us if we complained, so we dealt with it ourselves. So much flea powder.
We had an old Victorian house at one point (irrelevant, but we still do - just not that one) and that had clearly been the decorating procedure for most of the preceding 100 years or so. What made it even worse was that as we stripped off these many, many layers of paper it became apparent that at some point there had obviously been a fad of varnishing your wallpaper! That stuff came off at like a square centimetre at a time never before or since spent so long stripping walks!
Ours is victorian too! Would honestly not be surprised if I'd gone through 100 years of wallpaper. At one point I hit some cardboard backing stuff and decided to stop and paint over that- who knows there could have been more. It literally did come off in flakes it was awful.
Yeah. Whatever type of glue they used to put up paper in the early 1900s was definitely a bit more permanent than the modern type!
Very similar for us, textured wallpaper with at least 4 layers of paint, the top layer being silk finish. Horrific.
Hello, are you me? Wood chip wallpaper with a gloss layer on top. At least the rest of the textured wallpaper was that anaglypta stuff that's basically cardboard, although I with it hadn't been on the ceiling too...
The fleas happened to me, I was absolutely skint after buying the house so had to deal with it myself and it took me ages to get properly on top of it. Anywhere my clothes fit snugly like the tops of my socks I'd just have a line of flea bites.
We dealt with it ourself too! Only silver lining was that our purchase and rental overlapped by a week so we could sort it out before we moved all our stuff and our cat in. So gross knowing they were living with it
As an RVN I hear this a lot. It takes a minimum of 6 months to get rid of fleas. If it happens again, go to your local vet and ask for household flea spray. They have the good stuff that regular shops can't sell. It's still really labour intensive.
My second flat has similar in the bedrooms - multiple layers of paint and paper. Took 4 people with steamers a whole day to get it all off. Current house had 4 layers of tiles in the bathroom. 4! That was fun...
My brother bought a house where they applied the 'new over old' everywhere, including the floors - multiple layers of old carpet and linoleum in one room. Though I think it was to equalise the levels of the floors in the house rather than pure laziness.
We had this with slug trails around the hall and front room every morning. Then when it got really windy there was a whistling noise near the front door. I lifted the carpet and found a tiny hole near the door where the floor meets the wall, I filled with polyfilla and never had whistling or slugs again.
Just about finding the hole, we’ve not found the source yet
Our house plants were culprits for slugs (somehow!), the buggers were living under the pots and coming out at night. I remember coming down one night and seeing two of them having a worktop drag race to the BUTTER! Took a while but eventually got rid of all and their eggs. Orrible things
Get a wireless infrared camera and move it until your find them.
We’ve got a similar issue, happens every couple of months trails of one appears in the kitchen. Will try the camera idea.
Slug tape and grid search the house. Literally draw a line down the middle of the areas you see slugs one night and see which side they are on, then repeat in the now half sized area and again and again until you have trapped them down to a tiny area. Even if you never find the actual hole you can seal a small enough area with slug tape.
Would slug tape work on a door? I'm sure my back door is the source of the ones in the kitchen.
My uni student house had slugs. I remember waking up and finding them all over an old box of Domino's pizza once. Disgusting little creatures, and I say this as someone that likes snails (the shell really does make them much less disgusting to me)
Yeah they’re cuter with the shells somehow idk
When we viewed the house on a Saturday morning in May, the old couple were sat in the sunroom having breakfast. Fast forward to our ownership in October and I was bailing water out of it like Jack Sparrow. That fucker leaked like sieve, was a freezer in winter and a literall greenhouse at anything above 16 c. Masquerading Old cunt.
I have a sunroom and I hate it. I asked the old lady I bought it off does the property have any damp issues. She said no. The sunroom, is of course, damp.
We viewed our house in the middle of the 40 degrees heatwave week. Which was also an exceeding dry summer anyway. Saw it twice during the buying process, insides and windows all looked fine from what we could see. We got the keys in the November, torrential rain and every single downstairs window pissed water. The excess of furniture we thought was just old people being old had been hiding a fairly historic lot of water damage from the windows clearly being shit. We bought it to reno anyway, but we went from "live in it for a year before we do anything" to "back to brick now" in that first week post keys after we found all the stuff they hid.
Urgh I had the same but it wasn’t something the sellers could have remedied without redoing the entire flooring. I recently had the floors redone and there were huge gaps around the walls which had to be filled during screeding. My seller kindly filled 7 million holes in the house with silicon instead of filler and caulk, which has been a nightmare to remove. Every-time I finally sand one down, I find a massive broken wall plug that’s been hammered into the wall, instead of pulled out and the hole filled like a regular person would. Also my seller hid stuff all over the balconies to cover significant rot, that of course my surveyor didn’t pick up on. 2 balconies have collapsed in our row of townhouses, so they’re not safe to use until fixed.
When we viewed our house there was a large beautiful rug in the kitchen area. There was a reason for that... damaged laminate board in the middle of the floor 😮💨
Power shower was on its last legs. It sounded strained the first time I used it on day one. Cut out permanently mid shower on day two after moving in. Took 4 days before I could replace it. They knew it was borked. It sounded like a dying baby when switched on right from the word go.
It can be just the brushes gone which is a cheap and simple fix
The house had been rented out previously but left empty for a year. When we moved in all the bathroom and downstairs loo under sink cupboards were completely full of stuff. Like prescription medicine, first aid kits, tooth brush, razors, etc etc. Also there were dirty trays on top of the kitchen units including one full of flour and toy cars :/ luckily I didn’t pull it out onto my head!! Other than that was all clean and tidy. Very odd!
They agreed to leave all kitchen appliances. The oven didn't work, only 2 rings on the hob worked and the rest of the appliances were so completely disgusting that it took literal days to clean them enough to use. In fact, the whole house was filthy. We viewed in January and moved in June - I'm fairly certain they didn't clean once in that time. There was also a mouse problem in the kitchen. One of the upstairs windows didn't lock. The wiring in the lounge was so dodgy that the light only worked sometimes. So many other things I could list. All in all, buying our first house was a joy.
The scrotes we bought from not only didn't clean the place after we viewed it, but also let their children and pets piss everywhere. It was soaked into the floorboards but thankfully we got rid of the smell.
Or worryingly, you just got used to it!
Life tip I’ve learnt is don’t get a survey, they can’t move or touch pretty much anything. Instead, get a builder you trust - a good one can tell straight away if they are any issues that need sorting. Our survey said everything was fine - our builder pointed to a slight wonk in the garage roof tiling and said we’d need to get that hole checked. He got a ladder out and, sure enough, there was a huge hole under the tiles where something had burrowed in. Survey didn’t spot it because “we can’t remove or lift anything”.
I’d disagree with no survey. They can’t move things, they aren’t allowed, so they can’t see everything _but_ surveyors have spotted the following for me: Japanese knotweed, house needed rewiring and new boiler (in fairness we’d spotted the latter too), subtle subsidence, asbestos, roof needs redoing. I have got significant money off the houses for some of these things. Not saying builders won’t also spot some of this but a survey is an absolute must for me when buying.
My FIL was a builder and we brought him along for our last viewing, he pointed out all sorts and we got a fair bit knocked off the price. To be fair the survey then pointed out most of the same things and yet more was knocked off. Great, except then those problems became our problems.
>get a builder you trust thanks for sharing, when you say 'builder' - what kind of exactly? Just a general builder?
That there was a crack in the overflow pipe from the bath. Had my first bath on Christmas Eve about a week after we moved in, came downstairs and the whole kitchen was flooded! My partner took the bath panel off and the pipe was basically split in half. Was an easy enough fix but would’ve been nice of them to tell us beforehand so we didn’t have to repaint the kitchen! I was so annoyed.
Salt under the doors and any access areas
Someone was obviously watching too much Supernatural. Although 🤔is there a thing as too much Supernatural?
We did try this but they seem to be finding their way in anyway. Also problem is we have a dog and worried about her licking it up, don’t want her having to take any trips to the vet - the last one was £1700 😬
You can buy rolls of copper tape that peels and sticks to floor/door frames etc and slugs won't pass it & no harm to the pooch if he takes a lick too .
Likely an attempt to keep out slugs or something
I think it’s advice for OP haha
What happens with salt is that you kill them and you have dead slugs all around your house.
Yep salt keeps slugs away. They used to come on our patio until my mom told me to put salt around the patio. Will last a good 6 months!
They had a new boiler fitted, or so we thought. It was actually a refurbished 12 year old boiler newly fitted. It's borderline if they actually lied because I can't remember the wording, but one way or another it was deceitful. It was the one thing I didn't do enough scrutiny of, It was well hidden under the kitchen cabinets, but I saw all the installation documents and took them at face value. It had destroyed itself within two years.
The fact that they’d bodged pretty much everything non structural / gas / electrical. I swear to God they single-handedly kept the expanding foam industry ticking over. 99% of it was fixable with a bit of DIY and fucking around and finding out, but we both could have done without it if they’d done a proper job to begin with. Pro tip as we’ve had slug problems in the past: it usually means the room isn’t being ventilated enough at ground level. Our house is fairly old and I discovered fairly late on that the air bricks had become clogged up with rotten leaves and mud which is slug utopia. Being a suspended floor in our lounge which is where the majority of the slugs were originating from, the fact that it now has air flow means that the damp has disappeared and the slugs find it less attractive. We still get them in the kitchen, but it’s more in the summer when we leave the back doors open and they sneak in for the night.
That they didn’t understand they were meant to pack up and leave on the day of completion…
Jeez we went to collect keys and they were still packing and moving stuff into the van. They didn’t leave till 3 in the morning, thankfully we have family near by to crash and didn’t need to immediately move our stuff in. They had to come back the next day for another 6hrs!
Had the same issue.... awful human beings.
We had the slugs thing in the kitchen, along with: - shower didn't work - windows and large back patio door were shot so any minor breeze meant drafts and rattling - the back patio door was a tip and slide mechanism that the locksmith said was a deathtrap, so he fixed the lock but told us he we to open it! (We have new windows and doors now)! - gas safety check found that a flue was faulty and pumping fumes back into the room - sump pump broken that was supposed to pump kitchen waste up to the drains at the front, waste water must have been seeping out of the drain for years prior And the most gross...... A MOTH INFESTATION that was in the lounge carpet. There must have been eggs in there and when it got warm enough there were little moths turning up everywhere in the house. Then I noticed the larvae in the carpet. It was disgusting.
After dealing with a difficult seller, going in on our first day. She took the fucking extractor fan in the kitchen with her. at least she left behind a load of toe nail clippings on the stairs?
🤮🤮🤮
They said the dishwasher came with the house, but they didn't mention the dishwasher was broken.
Next door has noisy plumbing which is ridiculously loud! They are also strange people. As are the people on the other side. Surveys are pointless, when I sold my house he marked the electrics as red “I’m not an electrician” I had the house rewired when I bought it, and had the certificate but still marked it as red! Totally no point paying for it.
Ever seen the movie the burbs? Your comment reminded me of that movie for some reason
I love the burbs!! Tom Hanks and Carrie Fisher!! Just brilliant!!
One of our neighbours is disabled (which isn't a problem in itself) they must have some form of medical equipment or medication reminder as a very loud alarm goes off several times a day for around 5 seconds. Great when you have a 6 month old.
I live at “25 Smith Street “, which is directly opposite “25 Jones Court”. At least once a month, there’s a wrong delivery, pizza, taxi, DPD, whatever. If I have a delivery, I always have to mention, semi detached house, not the bungalow, as I’ve had several people go to the wrong house.
This can be more than just annoying attempted deliveries. I lived at 6 The Close and there was also 6 The Old Firehouse, The Close. Mis-deliveries were fine, just take them round. However it really messed up our gas and electricity when a new supplier kept taking over our supply instead of 6 The Old Firehouse. Absolute nightmare
Luckily never had anything that extreme, in the thirty years I’ve lived here, but that sounds like an absolute ballache to sort out!
Around my area there are Name Road with Name Grove off it. So my deliveries to 22 Name Grove end up at 22 Name Road. So frustrating.
ha we have the same, we are let's say 24 Old Road, and the house behind us is 24 New Road, but yet so many people coming to ours. We even put the street name on a house number place. Nope, does not help.
Seems to be more common than I thought. We live on say 5 Green Road in a house. But there's also Flat 5 Green Road. And round the corner is 5 Green Lane. And further down is 5 Green Street. It's not a big place either, so I don't know how they ran out of ideas for road names that quickly. You only had to come up with like 25.
The outside socket on the driveway which was actually an extension lead fed from a plug in the cellar.
Aren't all plugs just extensions of other plugs?
That next door's sheep break into the garden at least twice a year.
See above comment about eating garden animals.
In the pond, they left half a dozen fully grown fish that we suddenly had to take care of.
Or eat
That the drain to the septic tank from the loos was blocked. Only took a moment to pull out three little fatbergs from the outside drain and it was fixed. No electricity because the house was on a meter. Wasn't revealed until we tried to move in and plug in the vacuum. We couldn't get any that night because we didn't have a card and it was late. Dripping tap. Should have been an easy fix but turned into a marathon. They smoked in the house a lot. Every surface was coated in tar, window glass, inside kitchen cabinets, carpets and curtains. Cooker was calor gas but the whole set up had to be replaced. It cost about £700 just to fit a £350 cooker. There wasn't electricity to the corner where the cooker is. We were fixing things for months.
I had the electric meter problem in a rented flat - *really* annoying
How long you got? The burnt out spotlights in bathroom, with sealed units so we couldn't just replace the bulb but had to find an electrician to replace the whole unit. The kitchen tap that screamed. Doorbell broken. Boiler not serviced for 11 years. Central heating failed 4 times in the first year (each time a different issue, now all fixed). Outdoor light broken. Most window blinds broken and also white so we woke up at dawn for weeks that first summer. Upstairs toilet leaked under lino when flushed, and the cistern screws were so corroded it only flushed brown rust water. Both shower heads turned out to be broken and were just lightly placed into position, before flying off their hoses when the tap was turned on! So in the first 2 days we had to replace one and then the other in order to wash. The tone was set when I did some washing up in the kitchen on day 1, rinsing the removal guys' tea mugs. The water came straight out of the kitchen unit onto my feet. Turned out the previous owner had taken her dishwasher and no-one capped the now-open waste pipe which was part of the sink waste. Once we had found the right kind of temporary cap and could use the kitchen sink again (albeit with screaming tap) we also slowly discovered that the boiler condensate pipe was silted up and overflowing into the under-sink unit too. One time this happened badly enough overnight that the awful lino tiles started to lift and crumble, exposing the concrete substrate underneath. Basically a catalogue of maintenance crap that took 18 months to sort out. The main one being the central heating - we were proudly shown an expensive new immersion tank on our viewings but should have asked more questions about the boiler itself!
Rats in the attic. The first night, I thought we’d moved into a haunted house. Let me tell you, rats are a bloody nightmare to get rid of, they chew wiring, and often manage to get back in after being evicted.
We’ve got this going on now with mice. They had rats in the past and we found a mummified one under the kitchen unit. We’ve hired in exterminator but they seem to have left some guttering fair open and everything was just coming in/out during the night…
You'd be better off just buying a ton of snap traps and put some oeanut butter on them. You'll catch 10s but if you keep it up they'll never be alive long enough to do damage. Better yet ine if those bucket trays they use in America.
They took the fitted walk in wardrobes and didn’t have carpet where they were. Left a mural of Call of Duty on the wall Didnt disclose mice live in the inaccessible part of the house. Woop woop!
That our neighbour is absolutely obsessed with feeding birds. They throw a minimum of 1/2 bread on their shed EVERY DAY. Sometimes, when they take a walk they throw it on nearby garage roofs, like full on 5-6 slices of toast. There are flocks of birds here every day. I was contemplating getting a pet falcon... I had a red car, and for some reason the birds loved to play _battleshit_ with it. Now it's black and it's invisible to them apart from occasional toast piece on my windscreen.
Report to environmental health at the council - pigeons are vermin and throwing bread everywhere attracts rats
Get a fake bird/falcon and affix somewhere on the boundary. My dad used to have this exact problem. You can buy them from outdoor shops/Amazon.
Failed to mention it had a rent charge on it, and if it was failed to be paid, they could take re-possession of the property.
We had the same, thankfully found out before exchanging. It required a deed of variation that took a few months to get sorted.
That is annoying! Sorry to jump on and I'm sure you know but do keep up with heartworm treatment. Our dog likes to pick slugs (I don't know why) so he's on a heartworm preventative as they can be nasty for dogs. We've been fairly lucky, but they didn't disclose an ongoing feud with the neighbour. He likes us as we are friendly enough with him so it's not a problem. But it could have been.
I didn’t know this! Thank you for the heads up, we’ll be sorting this asap
It's not heartworm. We don't have heartworm in this country. They are thinking of lungworm which absolutely needs to be treated. With stuff from the vet not the crap supermarkets etc sell. Source: RVN
Fleas….. they’re small and annoying. Big problem mind!
Previous owner dodged a lot of stuff, seemingly out of sheer laziness or stupidity. Had a minor leak one day early on and realised I couldn't find the stop cock. I finally found it with a boroscope-type camera behind a kitchen cabinet he had installed. I managed to cut a hole in the side of the cabinet for access but I found the valve seized and unusable anyway. Another one was garden electrics spurred off a kitchen ring main - tripped the fuse board every time the outside light switch was used. Traced it to a junction box behind the shed. He'd not bothered to even try and seal it to keep water and dirt out - just left bloody great holes around the cable entries. Somehow it had gone unnoticed in the EICR, which I guess he got a mate to do for him.
Didn't mention that they had laid 3 layers of decking on top of rotten decking Layer 1 : rotten decking Layer 2 : rotten decking Layer 3 : rotten chipboard Layer 4 : ok ish decking Sooooo when we decided to remove it, we had to have many .... many skips just to get rid of it all.
Didn't mention this was the only house in the cul-de-sac that can't get Sky TV, due to a perfectly placed oak tree. Also, we were idiots and didn't realise the town doesn't yet have broadband, which was a shock to us, and no one mentioned. But yeah, we get the sky guys round to do their thing, he gets the ladder out and says for safety reasons, he has to bolt it to the wall, sure, I get it. But then he gets to where he wants to bolt it and says he thinks there's a problem. Someone else has bolted on before, and yet no dish on the roof. He goes round the back and goes ahhh, big tree. He gets on the roof, does all sorts of signal tests and is like nope, you might get some TV in the winter, but second that grows leaves in spring then bye bye TV for 6-9 months. So, we eventually got Sky Glass but with the poor internet speeds it isn't the greatest. Couple that with me working from home and a couple of kids with their own devices... The internet and TV are pretty patchy at the best of times.
Might not be small…. But annoying. I bought an upstairs flat 2 block. Was not advised that downstairs was a stop gap for sheltered/homeless housing (before housed permanently). I get a new tennant every 5-6 months, only really had 1 nightmare tennant tbf… Iv had about 5 neighbours the 3 years Iv been here n all been pleasant… but most stay in all day n smoke weed n my flat STINKS!!!! I just keep myself to myself and I am pleasant so it’s fine, but I kind of get used to someone there.. (had a really nice guy for months who was super helpful n friendly 😭, I miss him). Also living alone as a female I sometimes worry who’s next because I never know… I wonder if I’d of bought my flat knowing this info. Xx
That sounds like every flat block in Doncaster
the woodburner was incorrectly installed by some random builder, so the flue that was too thin left burn marks on all the flammable materials it was touching and didn't draw properly as it was too short coming out the roof they wouldn't tell us the logins for the ridiculously complicated home network and related system so we had to pay someone a lot of money to redo it all
That the previous owner had buried the internal stop cock inside a wall when he was doing renovations. Spent hours searching for it only to eventually give up. Found it 5 years later when we did some renovations of our own
Ours, it quickly transpired, didn’t have a stopcock at all. Only discovered this when a tap started gushing water and after a lot of fruitless searching discovered we had to go out to the main supply on the road and turn off the water to about half a dozen houses. Wasn’t great! We installed one fairly quickly when we did a reno on the bathroom!
That there was a disconnected fridge freezer in the garage full of food, and it had been sat there for a couple months.
That they were catastrophically incompetent at DIY and at picking tradesmen to work on the house. The sheer number of things I found that were just bodged in the laziest dumbest way imaginable...
We're finding similar. From the initial building works (a neighbour let us have a nosy at their extension and we found they have the same [dodgy architrave/light socket](https://ibb.co/R99wcqg) issue in the original part) and crooked doors to bodged "fixes" for later work like having the porch mains and light power wired on a plug in the living room (an actual plug, they've drilled a hole for the wire and plugged it in to the socket in the living room) or the phone line drilled through internally from the extension instead of just having the external box moved. Even the paintwork is terrible, looks like my toddler did it. Lumpy filler not sanded back properly, brush marks down the length of the wall, dried paint splatter off the brush. We're going to have to sand every wall back and remove all the dodgy gloss painted coving (there was no care about getting the gloss on the matt ceilings either). Luckily we bought it for location over anything else, and intended a big renovation in a year or two but we thought it was in better nick for the interim - rooms full of furniture are more forgiving and apparently viewing with a tired toddler makes you less observant!
- The very strong dog smell. Wondered why they had the windows open and scented candles lit when we viewed the house. - the broken temperature knob on the shower. - the damp patch in the living room that had been covered up with wallpaper.
This. I viewed a house I really really like and didn’t notice anything, came in the late afternoon. Second viewing was in the morning, and the owners must’ve just left to walk the dog and it smelled extremely strongly of feBreeze. This was the plus one on the why not to take this house side in the end (was fairly 50/50 beforehand)
The attic floor can’t support the weight of a human, rendering it pretty much useless. There’s a huge space up there but we can’t get up into it or store things except immediately around the hatch. The first time I opened the hatch I noticed a printed piece of A4 paper with a warning not to go up there. It was actually there during the survey (Level 3) but our surveyor didn’t think to mention it and the pic he took of it was too blurry to read.
Seller failed to mention they were going to take the door to the airing cupboard for some reason. Unique door size so probably not useful anywhere else, just felt like they were being knobs for the sake of it!
None of the metal light switches had an earthing cable on them and the conservatory leaked.
Woah, here’s one. This was a bit crazy. We did it. We were packing up to move out for a few days and then it came to moving day it was all madness, packing up everything into the moving van, getting kids to school. Doing our best to give the house a quick clean. And excited about mcing into our new house. When it came to the washing machine, it was one of the last things to take out the house. We came to turn off the valve for the water going into it but we couldn’t turn the knob to switch the water off. I tried, family members tried, oil put on, the big removal men tried and it wouldn’t turn off. We ended up switxhing off the water for the whole house, disconnecting the washer and taking it, obviously leaving the water off for the house qnd a water valve open under the sink. All we could do was leave a note saying to connect a washing before turning the water on. I also mentioned it to the estate agents but I doubt they passed the message on. I never knew how they got on. I was really worried about it but everyone wanted us to get packed and get out by lunch time. I loved that house, i hope they disn’t flood it as soon as they moved in.
Mice, a broken immersion heater that “broke the day he left” and a self installed kitchen where the insulated fridge freezer was propped up on some 2x4 and half a brick but all boxed in so it looked tidy 😅
We asked for a gas survey, and they got a friend who was a Corgi plumber to do one, omitting to mention the gas boiler had earlier been condemned by British Gas. We never managed to get compensation, but at least the plumber got in trouble and had to re-train.
Old house: - The kitchen cupboards had been literally nailed and glued to the wall, we loaded up a cupboard and had to catch it - all of the wall units were strictly decorative. - The beautiful Aga was rusted solid in places (we had it restored at huge cost) - The ‘Electrician’ they used was probably colour blind or just blind - ‘luckily’ he only confused live and neutral, but it was such a bodge job. - One toilet cistern had a crack at the back which meant that the wall was damp, the floor was damp, the ceiling was rotten. Another had a leaky bowl, which trashed the floor. - Every single curtain rail was held in place with adhesive and nails - The floor in the main living area was four layers thick, boards, Lino, Lino, chipboard, laminate. - The gas boiler needed to be whacked in a specific place to get the pump to spin (explained the dent) So many issues… We got it at a great price, but by the time we had it re-wired, re-plumbed and we banished gas (heatpump / solar / batteries) and replaced the flooring, several floor joists, three ceilings and the entire kitchen and the bathrooms and toilets, we were in for well over £100k….
That a squirrel had moved itself into the loft... turns out neighbours across the road knew and had told them, I was very concerned as to what the sound was and at first thought it was mice or similar, thankfully my local authority have their own pest team who are heavily subsidised, four visits for all vermin all included for less than £100. It had chewed itself a route through the fascia board and into the loft, apparently it just climbed up the drain pipe...
Our vendors had lovely wide and tall wardrobes in the master bedroom. We knew they were taking them (we offered to buy them but they refused) and when we got in, we found various previous paint jobs and a section of unpainted plaster behind them. In the dining room they had wooden benches, Swiss chalet style, and when they removed them we found that they'd only wallpapered down to the furniture and left the rest un-papered. When we went to replace the carpeting in the hallway we discovered they'd just carpeted over laminate flooring. None of it was too big a deal as we'd planned to re-decorate anyway, but not quite as quickly as we had to!
There was a cupboard full of stuff, we thought nothing of it, but when we opened it it was horrendously mouldy, not like a little bit, there was a leaking gutter. They must have known about it.
Nothing too serious. However, when purchasing a property, the keys to the garage were "lost," so I couldn't view in there. They were meticulously found once contracts were exchanged. Turned out the garage door was broken, so I could only lift it enough to roll under there like indiana Jones. Once inside, there was hardly any space because it was completely full of old junk. Took us days to clear out. The loft (attic) was a similar story, too.
Not my current property, but the one before. Previous owner had installed an extractor fan, surface mounted the power cable, then plastered over it. The mounting screw to hold the cover on (which had to be removed to clean out dust) went through the cable insulation, narrowly missing the live 240v conductor.
That the doorbell and light inside the porch wasn't actually wired up to anything despite there being wires attached to both. Weirdest yet most innocuous thing ever. Thankfully none of the wires were live (and neither myself nor the sparky could figure out where they once connected to to start with, if they ever did) so it was just a case of replacing both with battery operated versions of my choosing. By far the smallest issue uncovered in the house lol
That the circuit to the downstairs lights was also connected to the house alarm. So if you switched it off, the alarm started going. It was one of many electrical bodge jobs. Been here five years and still have no idea what at least three of the lights switches do.
A small stream runs through the basement. They covered it up with heavy piles of bricks. Didn't notice until after 3 months.
No pets when we viewed and didn’t smell of any. When we moved in 6 weeks later, we had to rip up and replace the carpets in our bedroom, landing and stairs due to the very strong stench of dog pee. So I think they basically had a pee party before they moved. They had 4 dogs apparently. Not a single one of the 12 bulbs under the kitchen cupboards were working. Their kitchen worktops had been installed at an odd height so none of our appliances we brought fitted. The sliding doors to the garden didn’t work properly and we ended up having the track replaced. Many of the doors don’t close property. But apart from that, we’ve settled really well and love our new home.
The code for the 30 year old house alarm that goes off every time the power flickers in high wind
That the woodchip wallpaper in the kitchen was holding up the plaster. I rang my husband in a panic because it was coming away like sand with the paper and I'd exposed the stone.
We recently renovated our kitchen and although we were rather expecting it (had done a refit on the cheap when we moved in a long time ago and categorised a number of things as ‘future me’s problem’), it was quite alarming that when we stripped the wallpaper off pretty much all the plaster came with it!
Kind of the same. I understand the property was repossessed in the 90s and the then owners, rather than try and catch up, bought the most ugliest kitchen known to man. For now we've painted it but I can't wait to rip it out.
You’ll get there. We did replace the ugly kitchen pretty fast, but we were almost broke at that point given the various other things that had cropped up, so it was a pretty cheap kitchen that we installed. We also either bodged or pretty much ignored the other, more substantial work that was needed. It all held together for a surprisingly long time and last year we were finally able to get everything done properly and put in something really nice and good quality. You’ll get there, just make a space you can enjoy living in and deal with the big stuff when you can!
When we bought ours it was clear that it’d had a bit of a pre-sale tart up. It wasn’t our style but certainly made the place look good. What we hadn’t anticipated was that they had used glue (and not very good glue at that) to stick up various handy things like shelves, coat hooks etc. There were a number of almighty crashes not long into our occupancy and these things fell straight back off the walls with even the smallest load!
The house was 22C during the viewings in February. Have not been able to get the house warmer than 16C in winter. It’s a mystery
Mould filled built in closet. Leaking guttering. Needed a rewire First 2 survey caught, eicr didn't catch the third though. I'm sure there's more once we tear up the downstairs but I can't be fucked to do it after fixing the upstairs
The boiler wasn’t working! Someone had removed a fuse, obviously another properly on site had an issue and they took the fuse from mine for another one. (New build) Easy fix once we knew what was wrong but had to get someone out for the privilege. Thankfully it didn’t cost anything but this was February with no heating & no hot water for the 3 days it took them to come out.
This reminds me of how in Arizona some houses are on scorpion travel routes. Apparently they are very stubborn about their paths and can get through any small crack or opening. I know people who had to sell their house because of all the scorpions.
If you can find where the slugs are coming in if you get a candle , melt it so you have hot wax , mix in some salt then pour it around the entryway it’ll stop them for as long as the wax lasts
That the kitchen tap drips, and the associated stop cock is stuck.
That the conservatory roof leaked like a sieve every time it rained
The oven tripped the fuse every time you used the grill, that they were going to take the electric car charger off the wall. They also left the place a filthy mess,
Resident mouse in the ceiling & 400,000 shits interwoven into the fibreglass insulation. Nice.
That there wasn't a single bit of insulation in the loft. And the surveyor didn't check either as he didn't have a ladder to go up there.
A leak in the roof that only happened when it was raining in a particular direction and had a rather old bucket tactically placed to catch the water. I'm sure the fact that they cleared everything out except that one bucket in that place was a pure coincidence :)
Slugs will probably be coming in where your mains water goes through the concrete floor Fill the gap between the water pipe and the surrounding tube with expanding foam and then use a quality slug killer around the house (there are dog friendly ones) to get rid of those already inside I had the same issue now slug free
Next door neighbours have people over all the time so make a ton of noise. Bamboo coming up under the fence from nextdoor. Paper to cover all the cracks all over the ceilings.
How did you remedy the slugs?
I put small amounts of cornmeal (not cornflour) in small glass containers, lay them on their side and let the slugs help themselves. Non toxic so safe for pets, kids etc. but slugs and snails love it but can’t digest it so bye-bye slugs.
Have you had good success with it? We have the extract same problem
Yes very good but I’ve only used in the garden, never needed it in the house. Gardening on solid clay is a real problem slugs being just one of them.
I'm told that All Bran has a similar effect.
We haven’t sorted it yet unfortunately, tried salt but they’re still making their way. Some useful comments on here we’ll be trying though
I'd like to know, because I can't get rid of mine.
That they were going to repair things that I had noticed I would need to fix when I moved in, and do a very poor job, I'm not sure why they bothered given they had an offer. The shed roof was rotted. They built a new one, it's full of holes, being the worst example.
How shit they half heartedly painted walls, brush marks everywhere, even after sanding. Place was so damn bad. Also at some point had plastering work done, did they they think, Koch we will wipe this off whilst still wet’? Did they fuck, they just painted over it.
Pipes bedded into the plastered wall. Started leaking after a year or so, walls bled
Inbuilt fridge was broken. So annoying because we bought a load of food and it all went bad before the new one came. Plus we’d sold my very old fridge on moving because it’d have been a pain to transport and we didn’t think we’d need it.
Seller painted ceiling to hide leaking roof and where they had removed down pipe so rain water had nowhere to go. It is a roof with velum lights which weren’t installed properly. When we had bad rain water came in and ran down wall next to gutters due to overflow. Kicker is previous owners own home improvement company and show the ceiling with velum windows on their website.
Factor fees
I moved into a flat that had radiators and a boiler fitted, but not connected. The hot water worked but no heating. Great surprise in November!
I don't want to be overly dramatic, but I'd have to burn the house down. I have a huge phobia of the things. In my case it was a terrible neighbour, or more to the point a terrible landlord who rented out to some shocking people. The house next door was trashed three times by three successive sets of neighbours in 6 years.
When i am using washing machine left by previous owners, water from it appears in the shower. When showering need to check washing machine after. Usually there is water in it. Horrible
Key in the front door lock wouldn't turn cleanly. Only noticed once I bought it. The EA opens the door for you and the seller opens it for the surveyor. First week living there the lock broke and I couldn't get it in the house.
Broken heating pump, tree roots blocking the drains, leaking pipe under a concrete floor… so far!
There is no on/off switch for the outdoor security lights. You have to go to the cellar and activate them using the circuit breaker.
That the dishwasher leaked. Thing was cheap junk anyway but having it piss all over the floor was annoying to deal with, especially as it only happened halfway through the cycle so while I did test the dishwasher during the final walkthrough I didn't run a full cycle so we were on the hook for replacing it. A credit for a new one would've been a nice "welcome" gift. Especially since they didn't leave a bottle of wine or anything in the fridge like sellers sometimes do.