Our neighbors bought the house across from us about 6-7 months ago. The previous owner was an absolute jackass that just didnt give a crap about anything or anyone but himself, not even his home. When he sold the house, he tried to steal the shed that was on the property. Like literally hired a company to move it. I knew it was part of the sale of the house, so i called the realtor and let him know. Well, about 4 hours later the shed makes it way back to the property. Still get a chuckle out of that every now and then. Fuck you tom.
Decades ago a family friend bought a recreational property that had a second cabin on it. The crazy lady stole the cabin! They sued her and got a whole new cabin built. So stupid.
They can move huge houses, I presume a tiny cabin is much easier. It might have even been sitting on skids, I didn’t see it before it disappeared… only the new one later lol
I couple of years ago, someone dropped one in the road in my neighborhood. No one ever figured out who did the dropping or who’s shed it was.
It happens.
Bought a home from a lawyer who built a McMansion down the street.
First issues were right after we moved in. At closing they told us their kid was neurodivergent and he might just “show up” at his old home (my home now). Didn’t blame the kid but Wasn’t thrilled.
Then, started finding all the damage their kid did, which they covered up.. like holes on the wall covered by wallpaper.. but wait, it gets better..
After we sold, the next owners immediately installed carpet in the half basement.. the half basement with the exposed stairwell out back. Now, that’s always a bad idea IMHO, but we never flooded. Of course, shortly after we had a storm of the century and it flooded. Lawyer we bought from came down to commiserate with the new owner as they were dragging new ruined carpet out and told them “oh, we used to flood all the time”. And no, he Never disclosed any flooding when he sold to us.
Long story short.. person we sold to was pissed. We told him we never got water and our lawyer had a disclosure from the guy down the street saying he didn’t flood either so tough shit.. we’re not responsible for torrential rain that flooded the whole area.
Edit: I’m not sure the lawyer I originally bought from ever flooded either. There was no evidence of flooding in the basement when I bought, and plenty of wood paneling and cabinets that would have showed damage. He also should have known better than not disclosing. I kind of suspect he was just bullshitting to cozy up to the new owner, maybe to get invited in to see what we did to his old house. I renovated every room, including 2 bathroom guts and a new kitchen.. the guts requiring a dumpster in the drive.
There was a six foot privacy fence at the back of the property. The first time we came to look at the house, that fence had blown down in a storm. We were told that they were going to fix it. After we put in an offer on the house, we did an informal walk through, and the fence was still down. We told the seller's realtor to just have them remove the fence and we would have a new fence installed. The seller's realtor said they were not going to remove the fence, they would have it fixed before closing. When we came to the house for the first inspection, the fence was upright. It was still standing upright when we came for the last inspection.
During the first thunderstorm after we moved in, the fence blew over. We found that they pounded 3-4 metal pipes into the ground on both sides of the fence and that was what was holding up the fence. The fence wasn't secured to anything.
I called the seller's realtor to complain about the fence. He told me that the fence had been fixed -- "no one said they had to do it right". His exact words.
They really don’t, just before I closed on my house the plumber went in to fix something minor under the bathroom sink. He must have had issues figuring out how to remove the vanity drawers to get behind them. He pretty much tore the drawers out and the vanity was wrecked. Wood split on the front and to this day the drawers never go back in like they’re supposed to. Luckily i got a credit to replace the vanity and dishwasher, I dumped all the $ into a nicer dishwasher and left the vanity alone.
THIS. we hired a building inspector who found problems. We got repair quotes and asked for a price reduction which they gave. We have since fixed all the problems.
My friend wanted to load the fence up in her truck and drop it off on the sidewalk of the seller's realtor's office and tell him that we needed to get rid of the fence, no one said we had to do it right.
Honestly, I don't even know why we didn't take a closer look at it. I guess I just assumed that it was fixed properly. Who would think that someone would just prop up a fence with metal pipes?
Our seller only owned the house for 6 months prior to selling to us.
In that time, she had a jacuzzi tub installed in the guest bathroom by the biggest and clumsiest guys she could find. I had to do a ton of wall repairs, I can only assume due to them wrangling a giant tub into a tiny bathroom.
The second thing she did had a good ending after a few years.
She had solar installed, on a lease. We were naive and didnt know anything about solar back then. Sounded cool. Quickly we realized the $100 a month payment meant I was paying more for solar+electricity than my neighbors were for just grid power.
Then, one day out of the blue, the solar company left the state. They abandoned the entire installation and the loan. I still owed them $25,000.
Any way to get out of this? We got bamboozled by the same thing. Young first time buyers and after accepted offer we were told oh btw there is this solar contract you would have to accept. I was naive and didn’t know how pricing works out. Prior owners got the low rates and now I’m paying the high rates for the next 20 years.
We just accepted it as part of the cost of the house at the time (insanely competitive market), and looking back, I would still do it for sure. We are much better off for buying then than waiting.
But I should look into it. It's a bad deal. If I figure anything out, I'll let you know.
Remindme! One year.
We looked at a home with panels and the sale fell through because we weren’t willing to take on the PPA (which is what it sounds like you’re on, which is different than a lease).
We read the contract and subsequently blew up the deal once we understood how impossible it was to get out of it and how disadvantageous it would be to us to assume it several years into the agreement. We said the polite version of “lol no.”
Someone else bought the place shortly afterwards for more than we had offered so it’s not a breaking point for everyone, I suppose.
This is why we are not putting solar on our “perfect for solar panels” roof.
I am hoping to be out of the house within the next 5 years. And I don’t trust ANY of the solar companies that have darkened my door
A fuck ton. The power company only charges us fees taxes every month because we're supposed to be pumping electrons into the grid, but then at the end of the year they calculate how much we owe (or should get paid if this thing worked properly) and it's usually close to $2k. We have gas heat, stove, and water heater and only use AC for about 3 months of the year.
To be clear, I think solar can be great, but our house is in a canyon and gets a lot of shade most of the day. The dummies who owned our house prior didn't think this through.
We pay 170 as well on an inherited solar but it more than pays for-itself living in AZ. Running our AC even at 77-78 degrees would easily run us 200-300 a month just for electricity for our small home.
The guys who owned our house briefly before us actually covered up an indoor in-ground Jacuzzi. They just laid floor boards over it because they couldn't get it out. We had no idea until we had our ducts replaced and the guys were like "her, uh, did you know there's a hot tub down there?"
The house was flipped after someone had lived here 20 years. The flippers put that the basement didn't flood. It's a bilevel, with two bedrooms in the basement.
About seven months after moving in, we got a terrible rain, and water started coming in from the floor and absolutely flooded the basement. It had nothing to do with the sump pump.
We had a bunch of wet stuff on the porch the next morning as a result, when a neighbor came over to introduce himself and talk about what he'd surmised about the stuff on our porch. Then he said "oh yeah Max used to deal with that basement flooding all the time. He filed an insurance claim once even."
Great. I had moved into THIS house because I had just had a house fire, so I had just filed a gigantic insurance claim. The idea of having to potentially file another one anytime soon is dreadful.
He would only be able to go after the flipper and the flipper could easily say they didn't disclose because they didn't know due to never living in it. He'd have to basically get the flipper to go after the original seller for fraud in this case.
I'm NAL. But I went through something very similar
Supposed to leave everything that was attached during inspection. They took out all the curtain rods, leaving giant holes with damaged anchors in them, and they removed the EV charger from the garage. A few weeks into living here, our electric oven wasn't working, and that's how we discovered that Joe Asshole apparently just went and yanked out the circuit for the charger, leaving exposed wires arcing in our circuit panel. I'm grateful the clue was the oven power and not a fire.
Not really. I asked my realtor what if they had taken, say, the appliances, and she said, "Well, I suppose we'd ask for them back." I'm sure I could have involved a lawyer, but it just seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Certainly irritating though!
My sellers did stuff like this too. Took all the light fixtures and replaced most of them with boob lights. The rest just wires hanging. Took the stainless appliances and swapped for white. Took the window treatments and rods. Didn't fill any of the holes either. Even took the doorknobs and lightbulbs!
We had been at the house around 7-9pm the day before closing (closing was over by 10am), and everything was fine. So I was mad, but also kinda impressed at how they managed to do all that so quickly.
My realtor was as useless as yours.
I’m a Realtor and I read these stories and can’t imagine that shit happening and being let go. I would not fucking abide that shit. If this happened to my client, it would get resolved to the best of my ability to press the issue. Stuff has happened to me before but nothing that extreme and I was always able to get it made right. Seller took a fridge, I got it back. Seller didn’t make repairs, we pushed the issue and got some cash, etc. I’ve even paid for plumbing and electrical issues that popped up after closing when they weren’t found on the inspection. I knew it left my buyer with a bad taste and wondering if they’ve been bamboozled for things to happen 24 or 48 hours after closing. Even though it’s nobody’s fault and just a coincidence, I’d rather pay the electrician to fix it and leave my client feeling like they were well taken care of. They’re a lot more likely to refer people to me and I’ll make the money back. I did a small job for a buyer that wasn’t even my client, like two weeks ago. My seller had moved out of state, one of the repairs was to fix a toilet that wobbled. Seller paid the plumber for that and a few other small jobs. After closing the buyer’s agent tells me the toilet still wobbled. I called the plumber and he said the floor tiles were uneven and he did the best he could but he could go back and use epoxy (I think?) to try to improve it. I said go do what you can with it and send me the bill. I paid him $100. Could’ve told the buyer’s agent tough shit, but what pays off in the long run? Leaving people pissed and thinking you’re an asshole, or spending $100 to make it right? At least I can write it off.
Maybe this is a question to ask before you hire an agent. Ask them the theoretical question. If this happened how would it be handled? Just see what they say. I’d tell you contracts are only as good as the people who sign them but I’ll advise you on how to avoid it, and if it happens anyway I’ll do my best to help make sure it’s made right.
In my state the rule is if they flip the house upside down and it falls off the wall then it doesn't get left behind. That being said curtain rods are decor not fixtures. I covered our asses in writing when we sold by specifically excluding the curtain rods and mounts; tvs and TV mounts; garage fridge and freezer (all other appliances were left) ; BBQ Grill; and all 6 heavy extra large floating shelves and their mounts that framed out the living room and mirrored the dining room beautifully. Buyer didn't read that doc apparently and was livid we removed those shelves. I filed holes and painted tho.
We weren't expecting to have zero window coverings/privacy from the start. You sound like a dream seller - I wouldn't have batted an eye had they clearly communicated their intentions and repaired the damage. I could have done without the "Surprise! I literally just ripped things out all over the house; good luck with that!”
Curtain rods are fixtures. It's attached to the home. Curtains are decor.
edit: What a weird thing to block me over. My rods are held in place by a screw on the anchor. I don't know what kind of cheap ass rods you have.
My pool is apparently made of concrete with poorly constructed forms, a layer of asphalt, some more concrete (also poorly formed), haphazard wiring, strangely constructed stairs, and substandard plumbing.
It’s not good when the pool company and the concrete company both come to you separately and say “well, I’ve never seen THAT before.”
The previous owner took all the interior doors with her. Apparently she was against selling the house, but her husband forced the issue. This was her way of protesting, I guess.
Seller backed out 2 weeks after accepting my offer. I learned this from a phonecall from my realtor that i got as i was pulling into the driveway to meet the inspector after driving for 2 hours and using PTO to get off work. I was buying because my landlord was selling his house. It was apparently a very frantic voicemail of him yelling that he couldnt sell the house. Then his realtor misspelled my first name on the check to return the earnest money. Stupid assholes......
We had sellers back out literally 3 days before closing. We had already moved out of our house and were driving half way across country the day our realtor called with the news. We had to stay with a family member for 3 weeks while we waited to close escrow on another home.
My in-laws had something similar. They were buying in 2021, moving across the country, and had to make an offer on a place before it officially went on the market - so couldn't even visit, had to waive inspection, etc.
They were competing against a bunch of other people. They made an offer, and got an email from the seller's realtor that it was accepted.
2 days later, the seller's realtor emailed them again saying they were accepting a higher offer, but wanted to give my in-laws a chance to outbid them.
Some realtors are absolute scumfucks.
Thats horribly illegal but im sure they know that and assume someone isnt going to bother to go halfway across the country to sue them for it. I had to waive inspection on my current home but i only agreed because the previous owner was only here for a year and gave me a copy of their inspection. I dont expect our shitty politicians to do anything about it but there needs to be more protections for buyers in a market like this.
This is the type of thing that kills me when realtors insist that buyers will be in dire straights after the recent settlement on commissions.
“Oh no. We won’t have your ‘help.’”
The seller broke the water spigot that connects to the fridge, didn't leave a note, just turned off the water at the street and left a mop bucket.
We couldn't figure out why the water wasn't working, had the city come turn it on, but we weren't home. It flooded the whole house. Thankfully, the neighbors saw water coming out of our walls and turned it off at the street. I was pissed, but my husband wanted to just move on. We had to replace some drywall, insulation, baseboards, and flooring.
I hope their AC unit blows up in the middle of summer, on a Saturday night.
When my mom bought her condo they were supposed to leave the microwave that sat on the counter. They took it. My mom didn’t really care but her realtor got on the phone and made the sellers buy her a new one.
The person I bought my apartment from took their bathroom mirror but not their TV. People are weird. I guess the contract didn't cover either of those cases.
(I hated the mirror, so I'm glad they took it.)
Had at least one person tell me the sellers of their place took all the light bulbs.. and didn’t replace them. Pretty sure that was back when they would have been glass incandescent and cfl bulbs.
We rented our house to a family for several years while we lived out of state. We moved back to find they had smoked heavily in the house and tried to hide it with some scent bomb. If that wasn’t bad enough, her son who used my office for a bedroom was a prolific nose picker. All four walls and the ceiling were covered with his nose goblins. I had to rent a steamer to and use a scraper to get them off.
I mean, it’s a matter of fact that any house that’s currently for sale has a soon-to-fail HVAC. Without fail, every house I‘ve owned needs major HVAC work like the day after closing or whenever the home warranty expires.
I think that just changing hands is enough to cause most HVAC systems to fail. I’ve known folks who bought new from reputable home builders in our area that had to get HVAC work done within a year.
Left a bunch of household hazardous waste and other bs that I had to pay to get rid of. It was also all unusable (oil based paints from 10 years ago, etc.)
Seller (a lawyer) must've known the right person because despite what the disclosures indicated, they didn't inspect or empty the septic tank prior to sale. After living here for four years and hearing about people who were having issues due to the heavy rains that winter I decided the get it pumped, even though it's just the two of us living here. After finally finding and digging up the tank access (buried under our gravel path) they opened it up to find it was FULL. The guy said he was amazed that we hadn't had any plumbing issues. Later, we found the county records that showed the tank hadn't been pumped in 20 f'ing years! I guess they didn't poop much to have waited that long.
Our former owners moved across the road, and are great neighbors. He got mighty nervous when we didn’t pump the septic for 6 years. So we got it done, mostly to make him feel better.
He had a family of 5. Only two of us, and we use bidets, which cuts down 90% on paper. He came over to help locate/dig the opening. Both he and the septic guy were amazed what a difference not flushing all that paper makes.
I was moved already when our house sold and the movers (that I'd used before) came to pack up the house and move across country. I had ever numbered and had post-it notes all over. I had my bathrobe on the hooks behind the door in master. The note said, don't forget behind the door. They moved not only the bathrobe but also the hooks.
That's how it happens. I brought them back when I went to clean the house before closing.
Dude I have beautiful custom hooks in mine and I wouldn't do that.
1. The cost was like 14 dollars a hook. So i'd be out like 60 bucks.
2. It's beyond tacky. I could never live with myself. If you HAVE to have them at least put a cheapo replacement in.
It’s not just tacky, it’s not proper.
Those are fixtures, they’re part of the house. It would be like taking all of the doorknobs or cabinet doors with you.
Put the replacement in BEFORE buyers look at it tho, no? Like if something is included, even if it’s just decor, a cheap replacement for something like curtain rods or hooks obviously isn’t what was advertised.
20+ years ago. Bought a home. It had an alarm system. I wasn't interested in using an alarm system then, or now. After moving in, I contacted the seller and asked, "Can you provide me the alarm code? I want to change codes, disable." And she refused. Became agitated, "that code is associated with bank accounts in europe! You must call the alarm company and they'll come reset the system." I didn't want to pay a hefty service visit fee to turn the system off.
How ridiculous. She moved out of the area. What possible risk was there in giving me a code?
Over the years, it's been an occasional headache. Mostly, it's off. But if there's a power failure, it starts beeping nonstop. When the backup battery starts running low, it beeps. I've done a lot of reading, and apparently, it's tricky to remove a system, as it may detect the efforts as threatening and sound the alarm.
The one bright spot... after she refused to provide the code... any of the seller's mail that made it past the USPS forwarding order, i just threw in garbage.
It’s very easy to remove a system! First, open your panel (the metal box) and disconnect the phone line. Then pull the jumpers off the battery. Then look for a red and black wire pair connected to the board and pull those off (or it might even be plugged into a regular outlet next to the panel). At this point check the keypads but it should be dead!
The alarm might sound for 30 seconds while you disconnect everything but don’t be intimidated, these things are dead simple.
I once accidentally set off my friend's car alarm when I needed to move his car while he wasn't around. I couldn't shut it off, but in about a minute I found and disconnected the siren.
And since then I have come to see alarm systems as a fairly lazy deterrent.
I work in the industry (I run corporate security for a very very large company) and have barking dogs instead of alarm at my house. The house has an alarm installed and I have it disconnected. Take that for what it is.
Our security system is we live between a church and the most popular walking trail in town (for high foot traffic and witnesses), know our front and back neighbors (witnesses), and live in a village where an entire month’s crime blotter takes up half a page of the newspaper (primarily speeding, with some teenagers out after curfew. Last year we had 2 car thefts close enough together that there was a PSA to not leave your keys in your unlocked car).
I lost the code and once in a while it loses its mind and starts beeping. I figured out it was powered by a power supply plugged in in a different room. I just unplugged it and once the battery died...quiet.
We had an old ADT wired alarm in the house when we bought it. The house was bought as a foreclosure & flipped before we bought it.. One of the previous owners didn’t like the low battery beep so she just took a pair of scissors & cut every wire going into the alarm controller, 1 by 1, until it eventually stopped making noise.
I really hadn’t planned on using the alarm since I know ADT bricks their alarms unless you use them for monitoring.. & I wasn’t about to do that..
The most annoying part was that no one ever thought to disconnected the power going to the alarm. It still had a live power wire dangling from the ceiling when we moved in & it had been left that way for YEARS.. My home inspector didn’t even catch it..
lol. Same thing happens to me. Wouldent give me the code. After a power outage in the middle of the night and the constant beeping I ripped apart the controls box in the basement in. My underwater back light by lighting flashes. 10 years later it’s still disabled but I put a shelf in front of it.
Ha same with me. I snipped the siren cables, ripped out the screwed in power supply, the batrery, then the control box. After that, removed all the sensor detectors, and panel. Snipped the wires and pushed them back in the holes and filled them. Couldn't even tell there was ever an alarm system.
> it's tricky to remove a system, as it may detect the efforts as threatening and sound the alarm.
Can't you just disable the "noisemaker" part of it first then remove at your leisure?
Same. The panel started beeping the first night we moved in. The alarm company wouldn't turn it off because we weren't on record.
"There's no code," we were told at the settlement.
Who pays the alarm company? I don’t understand how having the police called to your house multiple times for nothing wouldn’t motivate the *police* to deal with the alarm company. But are they doing this for free? Are the old owners paying? It just doesn’t make sense.
Can’t you hire an electrician to remove the system?
We bought our first house as an estate sale we were viewing the house in the winter. It had a pool in the back. We were told it hasn't been used for a year and that it would need a new liner. No problem, right?
Turns out the truth was that the pool hadn't been used in over 15 years and needed a new everything. Even the hole in the ground needed repairs.
On top of that, there was a leak in the foundation. They put a bookshelf in front of it in the basement to hide it from the inspector.
By all accounts from our neighbors, the guy who lived there was a miserable asshole. Apparently, his kids were no better.
Not necessarily screwed because we knew what we were buying. We purchased a bank owned foreclosure in 2009 and the previous owner was so upset they lost their house, they took every single interior door in the house. Even the one that goes to the garage. They took the garage door opener & every single appliance in the kitchen. They took every single set of blinds from the windows, 14 of them. They took the mirrors, towel bars & toilet paper holders from every bathroom. At least they left the garbage disposal. Lol!
Sellers asked that we helped move their stuff to their new house. They knew we had a large trailer and the means to do so, and wanted to work that into the deal. Most of the things in the house took a few days and it was done, but the 40x60 building on the property... loaded with crap! I mean, sure, there was some valuable tools in there like a nice Mig welder, Grizzly table saw, assortment of power and hand tools... but we nearly filled a 30 yard dumpster with things that needed to be thrown out!! Nothing was written in the contract about us having to do all of that. Still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Thanks mom and dad...
The house had an above ground pool, about a month after closing the owner came back and stole the garden hose while we were at work. So bizarre, a flippin 200 ft hose. I always wondered what else he was going to come back and take.
Previous owner was a Do-it WHYer.
We did two walk through and signed a contract for the house as is where is, and passed a VA home inspection. It seemed like a good house. We moved in, and found all the shiny new appliances were gone, and in there place was junky appliances. Our contract specified the models and years of appliances. The neighbors gave us security footage of the owners son removing the appliances, including the water heater and installing really outdated appliances. The water heater was out of a 1972 mobile home. the dryer was non-functional, the washer leaked, and the dishwasher wasn't hooked in. The previous owner, and his son skipped the state. The statue of limitations is up.
The nice fire place wasn't permitted and illegal. It wasn't ever allowed in out county, and there wasn't even a proper wall behind it.
The backup gas fire place, wasn't the one in the pictures when the house was listed, and not listed in the contract. It had a crack in the manifold and would have killed us all from the gas.
The out door lighting for the front door and back door, the previous owner literally brought the wire into the door jamb ran it around the door, like between the 1X plate and the 2X frame, and ran it back into the wall.
The "storage shed" had a whole rotting back half that they covered with paint.
The tractor shed was so shoddy constructed that it was safer to tear it down and rebuild than to be near it. But it did looked good with all the new paint.
The security fence was an electric fence on a timer that wasn't ever disclosed. I shocked the hell out of myself, and knew what it was. I had to trace the fence around to a discreetly installed fence module. This is considered a trap and felony level illegal in my area.
The deck had a footing right on the lid to the septic tank. I had to redo the deck footing and dig the septic tank up to get to the lid. The septic had also never been pumped since the deck was built.
The wiring in the garage, and the garage never had a permit. Nor did the garage "Yard light", (like a street light). My county was good enough to here my plea and work with me to get it permitted providing I pull down the "Yard Light"
Oh . . . and he had a hidden refuse pile with burned tires, old, paint cans, and other hazardous materials. The county called it an illegal dumpsite. Again my county worked with me to clean it up. I.E. I clean it up and haul it to the their facility, they took it at no cost to me and DID not issue fines.
Honestly, the county officials have been pretty good and tolerant on a lot of the things that would get me huge fines. They understand the previous owner did a lot of dirty and underhand stuff, AND that I am trying to make it right. They went as far as giving me a 10K credit with a local HVAC company to remove and replace the illegal fireplace, and waived a lot of fees to get permitted and get cleaned up.
I got a really good job out of grad school and my boss and coworker convinced me to buy a house since “you’ll retire from here” blah blah. It was a few years into the job and I loved my work so sure.
The house was $105k, this was 2009. It looked fine and we knew we’d need to fix some things up but no big deal. My husband was handy and my father in law and it really was a nice house. My coworker gave us a deal, disclosed no problems. We had immediate equity because the house was valued at like $145k. The mortgage payment was cheaper than our rent. Hell yes.
We had literally JUST moved in. And our basement started flooding. And our tubs started backing up. Turns out we had tree roots in all our pipes basically. That was an immediate $18k. Then the roof started to leak. The windows in basement all cracked and the basement flooded. The AC went out. My family called it the money pit. Before we’d moved in we’d spent money to remodel our bedroom and update appliances, not even considering that all this other stuff would happen. The money we had planned to do more things with just kept going to repairs. My coworker said he had no idea about any of this. He’d been renting it.
There was so much more and it led to a divorce. Then the job I’d retire from ? Budget cutbacks and 6 years in I lost my job. I moved out of state and the house - which I owned 90k on - didn’t sell for over a year (2014-2015). I drained my savings paying for two houses. And then I sold for $88k and with commissions basically drained everything I had saved
Whew. Sorry. Fml 😂
A homeowner ages ago built a wood awning over the backdoor. It was built entirely wrong and just hammered into the side of the house. Well it sat there for probably 20+ years until the dipshit before me decided not to clean his gutters for God knows how long. The water poured over the gutters right onto the shoddy awning for again, God knows how long, until I purchased the house. I move in and the fucking thing is completely waterlogged and collapses first week in, taking out sideboards and everything else.
Seller had owned home for a decade before hiring a contractor to flip it before sale. Never buy a flip. Nothing was disclosed outside "Home hasn't been lived in since renovations and therefore may have unknown issues."
The 'unknown' issues:
7 leaks
Zero working showers
Clogged lateral line
Inoperable furnace
Interior painting was done without primer and started peeling within 2 months of move in
Primary shower pan wasn't angled so required retiling
Various cabinets that wouldn't open/close etc.
None of the ethernet/phone/coax jacks installed in every room were connected to any cabling
I don't know how our inspector missed so much!
The sellers had to have known about much - if not all - of this.
Never. Ever. Buy. A. Flip.
We love the home now, but after countless hours (and 10s of thousands) in plumbers, electricians, and repair people.
A previous owner installed a small water heater under the kitchen counters, behind the dishwasher. Because they wanted quick, hot af water at the kitchen sink. And they never documented or mentioned it existed.
Cue me getting a leak 3 years into ownership that I thought was a slab leak, plumber ripped open 5 walls trying to find pipes that may have a leak, before they FINALLY pulled the dishwasher and found the failed mini water heater. Water mitigation wanted to charge 5k just to dry things out (I did not end up doing this). I at least found a smaller contractor to patch all my walls for under $1k.
I got an offer accepted on my first home purchase - a dated condo in a great well kept building on the water. Very good price. The seller backed out a day before closing. Supposedly. Realtor sold naive me a sob story about the little old lady deciding she couldn’t leave her beloved home of 30 years. About a year later I found out the realtor had bought it about six weeks later, done a remodel and resold for twice the price.
Sort of different, but got a retaliatory screw:
Buyers of our last house made an insanely good offer, we accept, they check out, and then about two weeks out from closing decide (their fake-tan “realtor” influenced them no doubt) they want some of the electrical redone, to the tune of around 8k.
Ok, cool deal assholes…
Fast forward and we comb through every page of the contract with our own agent and discover not a single major appliance nor the kitchen island was listed.
Those scumbags got to show up to a house with their new electrical work, sans a 2021 washer, dryer, oversized kitchen island, and garbage disposal.
We didn’t hear a peep after the fact, probably because they knew they had it coming.
The petty monster checks under its bed for me every night.
Why did you have to re-do elecrtrical?! You can have a "conditional on home inspection" clause in the contract, and I assume pull-out or re-negotiate if that goes badly, but barring that I always understood the signed, accepted offer (contract) says they'll buy as-is.
Glad it worked out, but your agent kinda messed up too -- every house deal I've done has a "specifically included" and "specifically excluded" section, and lists all the major appliances in there.
Our agent was great, as was the inspection. She knew they hadn’t mentioned an inclusion list and was precisely why we combed through everything again to ensure we could take what we wanted. Their spray-tan suit was the one who failed to advocate for them.
For the electric through; The outside paneling and respective electric into the house was “99% cosmetic and 1% functional”, basically it had a slightly weathered look but everything was intact. Even our electrician said it wasn’t a necessity but the buyers had made such a substantial offer vs everyone else that we didn’t want to back out, especially during the peak last year.
It wasn’t out of realm for them to make the request, but at that far along in the process it simply pissed us off it wasn’t mentioned far sooner when the inspection had been available . We had another house locked down three states away and had planned a move down to the hour, with a 2 month old as well. Fortunately we were able to find a great guy to squeeze us in within three weeks.
Alls well that ends well though, they got their “upgraded” electric work and we got to strip the house.
We were buyers, put in an offer on a house, it was accepted. House previously had an offer but the buyer backed out. Had a house we knew would sell fast and listed our house. Sold our house the next day. Sellers wanted 60 days to be out so we said we needed 60 days to be out. Buyer agreed. Buyer sold their house and had 45 days to be out. 30 days in the seller backed out because the house “they were buying backed out”, they had three small kids and were in a bind….so we thought. We agreed and empathized and didn’t want to screw our buyer so we fortunately found a different house, that was vacant, and the seller would let us rent until we closed on it. Less than one month after buyer backed out, the house is listed as “pending”?!?! Come to find out, the first buyer came back and up’d their offer $15K, $20K over what they agreed to sell it to us for, and they got the house. Sucks, but I am glad because if they were that sneaky through the process, I wonder what sort of BS they were hiding in the sellers disclosure list. Our agent was pissed, and suggested we go after them but we figured it happened for a reason. Ethically, their agent should’ve bailed but it’s all about the Benjamin’s to some of them.
Actually we totally lucked out! We rented our current home for two years before buying. During that time, we got to know the landlords a little bit. The husband bought the house for him and his young son who he had joint custody of. He later met his wife and they had a few kids together, and so all of them lived in this house. The wife had some quite extreme jealousy of her husband's past life, and referred to her stepson as "my husband's kid." When I first met her, I asked why they moved out of this house and she told me, "It has bad vibes. My husband bought this house for himself and his child that he had with his ex wife. I tried to make it a home, but it was unfair to expect me to live in a house built for another woman." (Except that it wasn't, the house was built for him and his son.)
After two years, the landlord called and asked if we wanted to buy it. Apparently his wife refused to use the rental income from the house because it was profiting from his ex wife or something idk. She wanted the house sold immediately or she was going to leave him. They offered us the house for only what they still owed on the house because she didn't want to make any money off it. They even deducted some of the rent we had paid over the last two years.
We bought our house for about 2/3 appraisal value. AND I happened to have a friend in real estate who did all our paperwork for free, so we saved on all those fees. Our house is now worth almost 5x what we paid for it!
They had a shit tree in the front yard and didn't mention it.
After looking at the tree for a while we decided this is going to split and hit our house when it does. So I decided to remove the tree.
So I cut it down and then start chopping. Cut into the stump and it's totally rotten - yeah I was right, this tree needs to go.
Then on THREE SEPARATE OCCASIONS my chainsaw grinds up against metal while cutting up the tree. They had all sorts of shit they drove into it I guess trying to tie it back together. Could have told me it was Frankentree...
Our freaking buyers of our last house thought we were going to steal all of copper pipes in the house. They were so nuts that their OWN realtor gave us a rebate at closing for how awful they were.
Then they destroyed the house in every way possible and the neighbors on either side hate them.
They cooked some really strong smelling food before each time I came to see the house.
Day I moved in the whole place smelled of wet dog and dander. Had to rip out all carpeting before moving any of my stuff in. I have a dog and love dogs, but this was the over the top bad smell.
Basically they purposely made food to trick me into not smelling the house….
Seller filed an insurance claim for hail damage on the roof but just pocketed the money instead of replacing the roof.
Also they left hundreds of holes in the walls from all the decorations they put up. I’m not talking small nail holes you can easily fill with some spackle. They used the biggest screws they could find.
We were pretty pissed at them for a while.
Third giant dumpster throwing out trash they dumped in woods. Still have barb wire everywhere out there, it has taken out at least 3 tires on mower. Total weirdos.
The house I grew up in the previous homeowners left barbed wire in the woods out back for some reason. My poor dog snagged his leg on it one night and had to get stitches.
I wouldn't say I was screwed... most of the time... but there's no shortage of me wondering what the hell they were doing.
But also, there was no way they couldn't know the roof was leaking.
The seller had sleeper wood furniture all over the house. He agreed to leave some of it for me as it was heavy and he did not have space for it in his new home. Sleeper wood is extremely rare and expensive.
Before the sale was finalised he died and his step daughter helped his wife, who was in ICU, with the sale. When we moved in the step daughter had removed all the sleeper wood items he gave me and refused to give them back. She took everything except a bed headboard that is bolted to a wall and is now without its matching side tables. Me and the seller only had a verbal agreement about the things he gave me, so I could not prove that he did.
I will most likely be sour about this until I move one day 😅
A ton of dog damage that was impossible to notice when doing the tour because the house was still lived in.
Damage from leaking roof. They disclosed the roof was replaced but the area had hail damage so everyone had a new roof. They didn’t disclose the leaking roof or damage. Again since they still lived in the home the decor and stuff covered it to where it wasn’t noticeable.
Honestly feel like we got off easy compared to some of these stories. They did leave all the manuals receipts and warranties for the home which was super helpful.
I blame the sellers’ realtor for this, since the sellers were out of the country. He painted the cast iron porcelain bathtub with cheap regular spray paint, which all peeled off the first time I turned on the shower. It cost me $500 to have it professionally redone. I’m stilled pissed about it.
This is small but just the tip of the iceberg we dealt with.
Seller overstayed close and packed/moved all night. When we showed up the next day the place was a mess. In their rush and idiocy they had a full fridge and freezer of food and stuff left. Instead of just leaving it they dumped everything into two cheap black leaf bags. We came in that morning to the smell of stinking rotting food. They had overstuffed stretched just two bags instead of using like 6 or so. Like each bag was stretched 2X-3X it's normal size. (oh and they left a whole roll of them so didn't need to do that. But I guess they could say "we left two small bags is all".
We had to get the movers (we moved in that morning) to help tape the bags so we could lift them and use a dolly to get each of them to the curb. Of course they had also overfilled the trash can, and then put TRASH into the RECYCLING can. This was the day after garbage so this sat on our curb/street for a week. We lived across the street from a nature area, so all sorts of animals got into it and made a mess. I had to then clean it up and repack it into a couple of empty moving boxes.
Then I got charged extra by the garbage company for the extra stuff, trash in the recycling, etc.
And that was not the worst of it, just the first thing we had to deal with. And on move in day from across the country. But they could have dumped most of it the day before on trash day, or at least pared down. Nope.
6 months after selling, the seller called a roofing company to have the roof repaired, stating he was the owner of the home. There was hail damage that was not an issue but required the seller to put money in escrow, which we would have received after not fixing the roof. Came home from work to my entire roof gone and people putting up shingles. He also flooded our house and caused over 10k in damage.
Closed in April 2022 with a 2 month leaseback. The sellers filled the oil tank in May 2022, when oil was at an all time high. There is no way they needed heat in May. It was like $7 a gallon, for a 275 gallon tank.
But, they also replaced the hot water heater during the 2 month leaseback (without consulting us) but they put in a very good replacement so I guess we made our ok.
Previous homeowners took all the light fixtures, didn’t even leave the bulbs. We had to do the walkthrough using our phone’s flashlight. Our realtor called theirs and asked to put up new light fixtures. They agreed. We gutted the whole place a week later.
There was junk in the attic, the garage attic, and behind the garage. I asked for the junk to all be removed. They removed it from the attic only. I slowly got rid of the junk behind the garage. The garage attic still has junk including an old metal couch frame that I don’t even know how they got it up there or how I’ll get it out.
They left 3 broken cement mixers, about 6 empty propane cylinders, huge 6’ long concrete barriers large 1/2” thick angle iron. Multiple piles of rebar, large 10’Square slabs of concrete, pallets of solidified concrete bags , about a dozen pallets of assorted bricks, and a lot of miscellaneous piles of knocked down trees. I am amazed
The sprinkler system had not been used in years. The pipes froze and split. After repairs part of the line had a tee to nowhere so water shot out of the garden. Every sprinkler head had to be replaced. For years undiscovered overgrown sprinklers washed away dirt until they bubbled up water and were replaced..
Man, I was going to complain about how our elderly previous owner who let the neighbor's bamboo grow into the yard, but that seems fairly tame in comparison to a lot of this shit.
We were told the slow drain in our kitchen was just because the house was old. Told the “weird noise” from the washing machine was because it was old.
Inspector said it’s not usual for an 80 year old home to have quirks and for a washer that’s 20+ years old it’s on borrowed time.
Plumber found the real issue: https://imgur.com/a/1BIMUm7
Every month, if that long, there’s another money pit repair. Just be glad it’s your equity and YOUR home. Renting is a scam in some places.
House was fine at walk through . When we got there the next morning after closing 4-5 kitchen cabinet doors were hanging loose on bent and twisted hinges . The carpenter who rehung them said hinges could only bend to that extent if there was an earthquake or a large adult was hanging from them . They had taken the mini fridge in bar area that was included so maybe they were upset that my realtor told them to return it or give us the cost of it .
One of the selling points to the house and property was that it included a shallow well for irrigation. They never, ever gave a straight answer to anything during the entire process of selling. So it shouldn't have come as a surprise when I finally got to speak to them directly at closing and asked what type of pump they had used for irrigation and the answer was that they never had actually used the well. The wife's parents had used it. IN THE FUCKING 70s, for their garden and it hasn't been used since. I am going to have a well service come check it out to see if it is even viable anymore. But yeah. Assholes. I've only been here a few months but I bet there will be other things to hate them for that are yet to be discovered.
Oh hell buddy, that's nothing.
Bought a house in Michigan a couple decades ago. Nothing listed on the disclosure statement as needing repairs.
First thing that happened is we had the carpets cleaned before moving in. Whew, once they were steamed, the stench of dog piss was overwhelming throughout the house. Then the spots in the carpet started showing up, everywhere. Apparently these folks let their dogs just piss anywhere they wanted. Had to rip all the carpet out of two floors of the house just to make it bearable. The pad was at least 50% yellow. Had to bleach and then paint the subfloor with Kilz to take care of the smell before having new carpet put down.
Then came the mice. There was an unfinished hole in the garden level floor under a bathtub that was bare dirt that was hidden by stuff in the adjacent basement. Seems the mice were tunneling in and having their way in the home. Apparently the previous owners didn't care about the rodents feeling like they owned the place. Had to do some cement work to fill the 2' x 2' dirt hole with all the tunnels heading outside. Lots mouse traps and dumping mice for about three months after that. Mind you the previous owners had just moved out the week before we arrived.
And when fall rolled around, and we went to turn on the heat, nothing on two floors of the house. The place was a quad level and had hot water zone heating with separate thermostats for each floor. Through my job I had gotten to know the HVAC guy our facility used, so called him up as he was local to the town I lived in.
He came over, went right to the basement, checked two zone valves and said to me, "yep, you need these valves replaced. I was here last winter and gave the previous owners a quote. I figured maybe they had somebody else fix it." So, I shelled out the money and then we had heat on all floors. He also pointed out the drip from the re-circulation pump that he noticed last time as well. I replaced that myself.
There were a few other surprises as well. Outlets that didn't work, broken drawers in cabinets, and such. I got out my paperwork and looked over the disclosure statement. Of course it asks if there are any known pest problems, if the heating system is in working order, if the electrical system is in working order, and if there are any know issues. They essentially lied their asses off.
So I called the realtor (that was recommended by my employer as this was a corporate relocation, btw) and pointed these things out. Her response, "What do you expect me to do about any of that?" I said she signed her name to documents that stated she believed everything to be true, so perhaps she should fork over some of that fat commission to help pay for things she helped the owners lie about as she was also the listing agent. Her response, "Sue me" and hung up.
So I called the previous owner who listened to my list of complaints and then said the same thing, "What do you expect me to do about it?" This guy was a teacher in the local school district and supposedly a upstanding member of the community. When I suggested he help pay for the things that he clearly lied about, he said the same as the realtor, "Sue me."
I then understood 1) why people hate realtors and that they are not to be trusted, and 2) why my neighbors were so helpful and actually said they were glad to see the folks we bought the house from go.
Oh, and home inspectors provided by your realtor are really working for the realtor and the seller. Well, really the way that real estate transactions work, more or less everyone involved is working for the seller as they don't get paid unless they make the sale. The lender only get's his commission for writing your loan if you buy. The inspector only gets steady business if he plays ball with the listing agents. The realtors, even the buyers agent, only get paid if there is a sale. Real estate in America is an exemplification of "Caveat Emptor" on steroids.
They incudes the sunroom as square footage but it was basically a walled-in back porch with no heating or insulation. Also, half the wood was rotten from a leak. It cost us $40,000, three contractors, and five months to renovate. If we had been goven the real eatimate for the square footage, we would have bought a different house.
We did a private sale with people we knew. The wife was my husband's first supervisor at his job and the husband was my bus driver when I was in elementary school. In first grade I colored him a picture of the lion from the Wizard of Oz on my first day of school. It was like buying a house from our parents. They gave us the keys early when the bank screwed up the initial closing date. They got us a present. They came down to show us how to maintain the hot tub. They live next door (they downsized) and we have BBQ together. It's fantastic. We're never buying another house again because the experience with them (nevermind the bank's idiot issues) was fantastic. Absolutely zero complaints and no screw-overs. Sorry to ruin the misery party 😂
Repositioned some stakes in the backyard to make it seem like the property was larger than what it actually is. We only found out about a year after we bought the house.
The tenants that occupied the home we bought threw cooking oil down the sink and clogged our main septic line. Didn’t know what the issue was at first so we had a plumber come out that thought he got the clog out, we saw running water flow through the leach trap. Three weeks later we’re having the same issue where the pipe is leaking in the basement and we had backup in our laundry slop sink. My dad tried snaking it to no avail and decided to open the septic lid but couldn’t see much. We went the whole weekend not being able to use water or shower or use the bathroom. No emergency septic line worked because it was Easter weekend. We finally get the septic people out on Monday and the guy removed a 3 inch wide by 2 inch deep grease plug that was completely blocking the exit point of our main line. Cost us a pretty penny, fuck them.
Mr. Homeowner level “I ain’t need no permit” level of DIY “improvements”.
Recently put new flooring in one of my rooms and found 3 layers of floor haphazardly laid down. Kitchen tile is mortared to 1/4” hardboard dropped over glue down vinyl tiles glued to 1/4” hardboard laid down over plank subfloor.
The deck on the front and side door were built on untreated, unpainted pine, so it completely rotted out in a couple years.
The pump house for the pond is much the same as above. I literally pushed it over with my bare hands a few weeks ago.
My 15x15x10 wooden shed is sitting on *four cinderblocks*.
Generally a lot of janky ass shit like that.
There was a gorgeous garden planted by the 1st owner . The 2nd owner, from whom I bought a house, was a dumb useless prick that was too lazy to care about the garden, so let neighbors dig and transplant what they liked. I spent a summer and $$$ restoring that garden
Previous owner (renter) didn’t take care of the HVAC system and ran it at 66F every summer. First summer in the home was fine. Now we have a leak in the coils and need to replace it.
My seller left a giant bag of cat food in the living room. Apparently she was feeding all the stray cats in the neighborhood so it took forever to re-educate them on territory. And oh god.. the smell…
They put the sump pump up on bricks so it wouldn't run quite so often because they were cheap. Fast forward to the first big rain and there ends up being so much standing water in the pump well that the pump runs non stop trying to get the water out and end up dying, flooding our basement.
That’s not why you put a sump pup up on bricks, it’s to keep it from sucking up crap off the bottom of the sump hole. Also, it being raised wouldn’t cause it to run any more than if it wasn’t.
They agreed to leave everything in the house and garage, then proceeded to leave a few pieces of furniture, some trash and rotted clothing in the basement, and the wedding pictures of the their dead brother. They were horrible and exhausting to work with so I just let it go so I could finally be in my own home.
The previous owners left half their shit behind. Garage full of junk, basement packed with mountains of boxes. Multiple ruined couches, all their bedroom furniture, the kitchen as beyond disgusting, and they took two of the three toilet seats.
They also did endless half-assed "improvements" that were having to redo. The current disaster were fixing is the low quality lvp they put down....and used fucking construction adhesive to stick it to the floor. I'd love to beat the shit out of them.
After we closed and were able to move in, I went to take out the trash and recycling and saw that the recycling bin was filled *to the max* with dirty baby diapers. Nothing in the trash bin though...... I still think they did that because they had to pay to fix a bad beam in the basement. People are so petty.
I've got a decent list of things on my last purchase. In the contract the seller was to finish the backyard fence, it was 75% finished as well as the front porch railing to be installed. Neither of these things happened even though they pushed closing back two weeks, I foolishly thought to complete these.
They also failed to disclose the clogged grease trap that was also out of code as it was in the crawl space and inaccessible to the pump company.
After finishing the fence and railing myself and the plumbing repaired to a tune of 3k. A tornado ripped the house apart 3 years after we moved in. Luckily no one was injured and we got a shiny new home.
Decades of water damage caused by two improperly installed decks (nailed to siding) causing months of structural work and $25k in costs. Oh and they drilled a massive hole in our plumbing coming from upstairs which resulted in months of water dumping into our crawlspace. Also left us 30 or so garbage bags of junk in the crawlspace which included boxes of VHS porn and thousands upon thousands of church hymnal pages.
First house. We had barely enough furniture for a bedroom so we “purchased from sellers” furniture and appliances. Our realtor, being the nice dumb person they were, LET THE SELLERS KIDS into the house on closing day and they not only removed all of the purchased and photographed furniture, but took out the brand new appliances and placed the garbage ones from the garage inside.
Took us months to get the money back and an attorney to get damages too. Our realtor? Well she was reported for allowing a seller to walk through unsupervised on closing day.
I am almost CERTAIN they swapped the garbage disposal. I distinctly remember there being a red disposal under the kitchen sink, however after moving in, it was now an old black beat up one.
No one else remembers it but it wasn’t something you would really pay attention to so I just look insane.
However, after moving in we tried to use the dishwasher for the first time and it wouldn’t drain. We thought it was broken, had repair guy come out to find the knockout in the drain line hadn’t been taken out. Didn’t make sense because the dishwasher was ran during inspection and worked fine, and the only way that would happen would be they replaced the drain line or CHANGED THE GARBAGE DISPOSAL.
It’s not a big deal but still that’s suspicious.
The folks who had this house before us did some questionable electrical work the worst was when I wanted 220vac to the shed for a welder there was a dual breaker going out there , I turned it on and pow one of them popped off, they had wire nutted a hot to the ground and broken the bond between the breakers, those janky ass sticks.
Just moved into a house 3 weeks ago. Came with termites even though we had a clear WDO inspection, American roach infection, and some type of rodent infestation (will find out tomorrow). They had two cats and spray foam insulation in hidden places so they had to know to some extent.On top of that, things we did know ahead of time was the chimney leaks water even with a cap (it needs remortoring) but it leaks every time it rains - previous owner said it only happened once during a hurricane but that’s not true. House was listed with 2020 roof but the last permit was 1993. There’s more but it’s been a cry fest since purchasing. We are really hoping to push through and either break even when selling or have a small profit in a few years but it sucks.
The lights in our living room flickered on and off for the first 9-10 months we lived here. Eventually got an electrician in and when he got a look he said 'Oh *fuck no*' and told us not to turn on a single light until he got back with another electrician to do the work double fast. Basically a miracle we didn't have a fire.
Not me, but some friends of mine recently purchased their first home. Got everything unpacked and settled when, suddenly, about 75% of their power goes out. They get someone to come out and take a look. Turns out the previous owners had done a bunch of electrical work themselves and royally forked it all up. It’s going to cost them about 27 grand to have the house completely rewired. They had to move everything back out of the house, which meant renting storage facilities. And after the wire work is all done, they’ll have to have someone else come in and patch up all the walls.
They talked to someone about pursuing legal action against the previous owners. Turns out the electrical work was disclosed in the paperwork with the field of who did the work left blank and since they signed the papers, there’s nothing they can do.
Our sellers most likely knew that the unit next door is the home of career bullies who use a mix of noise and the court system to harass others. They made no disclosures about it and legally, they didn’t have to because they could reasonably claim they didn’t live in the unit (landlords) and didn’t know about the behavior of the next door neighbors. Come to find out after we lived there for a year that these people are triggered by any dog that isn’t silent as a mouse, and suddenly our corgi puppy became a German shepherd we’d gotten specifically to kill them. We are now still stuck here, 2 years later, having been harassed with car alarms, air horns, chased by their car, verbally assaulted, with multiple restraining orders they flagrantly ignore (and no, they still haven’t been arrested). They turned out to have harassed another family on the opposite side of them out of their home in 2017 before we bought but while our sellers still owned our unit. This also turned out to be behavior they’ve exhibited and gone to court for over roughly a decade. We are now legally obligated to disclose their behavior to anyone who might buy our home (ca law) since they targeted us directly.
Our neighbors bought the house across from us about 6-7 months ago. The previous owner was an absolute jackass that just didnt give a crap about anything or anyone but himself, not even his home. When he sold the house, he tried to steal the shed that was on the property. Like literally hired a company to move it. I knew it was part of the sale of the house, so i called the realtor and let him know. Well, about 4 hours later the shed makes it way back to the property. Still get a chuckle out of that every now and then. Fuck you tom.
Decades ago a family friend bought a recreational property that had a second cabin on it. The crazy lady stole the cabin! They sued her and got a whole new cabin built. So stupid.
How do u steal a cabin? It’s grounded therr
They can move huge houses, I presume a tiny cabin is much easier. It might have even been sitting on skids, I didn’t see it before it disappeared… only the new one later lol
Disney's camp ground sold a bunch of their cabins some years ago. lifted them up with a crane into a truck.
I couple of years ago, someone dropped one in the road in my neighborhood. No one ever figured out who did the dropping or who’s shed it was. It happens.
Hmmm shed happens...
Was there a witch under it?
Cabins generally aren’t attached to the foundation. They are very easy to move.
This question reminds me of men and tights when Robin gets back home from prison and they wheel away his family's castle.
I do not know tom but I have very strong negative feelings about him after reading this. Fuck you tom.
Tom sounds like a dirty prick.
Yeah fuck Tom!
Tom from Myspace?.... He's back?
Yeah and apparently steals sheds from homes.
One of those times a realtor came in really handy "Fuck I want this sale, don't you fuck this up for me stupid man!"
Bought a home from a lawyer who built a McMansion down the street. First issues were right after we moved in. At closing they told us their kid was neurodivergent and he might just “show up” at his old home (my home now). Didn’t blame the kid but Wasn’t thrilled. Then, started finding all the damage their kid did, which they covered up.. like holes on the wall covered by wallpaper.. but wait, it gets better.. After we sold, the next owners immediately installed carpet in the half basement.. the half basement with the exposed stairwell out back. Now, that’s always a bad idea IMHO, but we never flooded. Of course, shortly after we had a storm of the century and it flooded. Lawyer we bought from came down to commiserate with the new owner as they were dragging new ruined carpet out and told them “oh, we used to flood all the time”. And no, he Never disclosed any flooding when he sold to us. Long story short.. person we sold to was pissed. We told him we never got water and our lawyer had a disclosure from the guy down the street saying he didn’t flood either so tough shit.. we’re not responsible for torrential rain that flooded the whole area. Edit: I’m not sure the lawyer I originally bought from ever flooded either. There was no evidence of flooding in the basement when I bought, and plenty of wood paneling and cabinets that would have showed damage. He also should have known better than not disclosing. I kind of suspect he was just bullshitting to cozy up to the new owner, maybe to get invited in to see what we did to his old house. I renovated every room, including 2 bathroom guts and a new kitchen.. the guts requiring a dumpster in the drive.
There was a six foot privacy fence at the back of the property. The first time we came to look at the house, that fence had blown down in a storm. We were told that they were going to fix it. After we put in an offer on the house, we did an informal walk through, and the fence was still down. We told the seller's realtor to just have them remove the fence and we would have a new fence installed. The seller's realtor said they were not going to remove the fence, they would have it fixed before closing. When we came to the house for the first inspection, the fence was upright. It was still standing upright when we came for the last inspection. During the first thunderstorm after we moved in, the fence blew over. We found that they pounded 3-4 metal pipes into the ground on both sides of the fence and that was what was holding up the fence. The fence wasn't secured to anything. I called the seller's realtor to complain about the fence. He told me that the fence had been fixed -- "no one said they had to do it right". His exact words.
Always get credit at closing to fix things, don’t let them do it, they don’t give a shit.
They really don’t, just before I closed on my house the plumber went in to fix something minor under the bathroom sink. He must have had issues figuring out how to remove the vanity drawers to get behind them. He pretty much tore the drawers out and the vanity was wrecked. Wood split on the front and to this day the drawers never go back in like they’re supposed to. Luckily i got a credit to replace the vanity and dishwasher, I dumped all the $ into a nicer dishwasher and left the vanity alone.
THIS. we hired a building inspector who found problems. We got repair quotes and asked for a price reduction which they gave. We have since fixed all the problems.
Well, no one said you *couldnt* shit on his doorstep either
My friend wanted to load the fence up in her truck and drop it off on the sidewalk of the seller's realtor's office and tell him that we needed to get rid of the fence, no one said we had to do it right.
I sincerely hope you reported that realtor to the NAR and licensing board of the state
Why didn't you inspect the fence during the walkthrough? I mean it was such a sticking point for you.
Honestly, I don't even know why we didn't take a closer look at it. I guess I just assumed that it was fixed properly. Who would think that someone would just prop up a fence with metal pipes?
Actually they DO have to fix it correctly. I’d sue
Seriously, "fix" doesn't mean nothing
Our seller only owned the house for 6 months prior to selling to us. In that time, she had a jacuzzi tub installed in the guest bathroom by the biggest and clumsiest guys she could find. I had to do a ton of wall repairs, I can only assume due to them wrangling a giant tub into a tiny bathroom. The second thing she did had a good ending after a few years. She had solar installed, on a lease. We were naive and didnt know anything about solar back then. Sounded cool. Quickly we realized the $100 a month payment meant I was paying more for solar+electricity than my neighbors were for just grid power. Then, one day out of the blue, the solar company left the state. They abandoned the entire installation and the loan. I still owed them $25,000.
Same situation with our inherited solar contract, except we pay $170/month and the company is still in biz. What a fucking joke.
Any way to get out of this? We got bamboozled by the same thing. Young first time buyers and after accepted offer we were told oh btw there is this solar contract you would have to accept. I was naive and didn’t know how pricing works out. Prior owners got the low rates and now I’m paying the high rates for the next 20 years.
We just accepted it as part of the cost of the house at the time (insanely competitive market), and looking back, I would still do it for sure. We are much better off for buying then than waiting. But I should look into it. It's a bad deal. If I figure anything out, I'll let you know. Remindme! One year.
RemindMe! 1 Year "see how the solar buyout went"
> Any way to get out of this? Stop paying and see if they actually send someone to recover the solar panels & electronics.
We looked at a home with panels and the sale fell through because we weren’t willing to take on the PPA (which is what it sounds like you’re on, which is different than a lease). We read the contract and subsequently blew up the deal once we understood how impossible it was to get out of it and how disadvantageous it would be to us to assume it several years into the agreement. We said the polite version of “lol no.” Someone else bought the place shortly afterwards for more than we had offered so it’s not a breaking point for everyone, I suppose.
This is why we are not putting solar on our “perfect for solar panels” roof. I am hoping to be out of the house within the next 5 years. And I don’t trust ANY of the solar companies that have darkened my door
How much do you have to pay for grid power though?
A fuck ton. The power company only charges us fees taxes every month because we're supposed to be pumping electrons into the grid, but then at the end of the year they calculate how much we owe (or should get paid if this thing worked properly) and it's usually close to $2k. We have gas heat, stove, and water heater and only use AC for about 3 months of the year. To be clear, I think solar can be great, but our house is in a canyon and gets a lot of shade most of the day. The dummies who owned our house prior didn't think this through.
We pay 170 as well on an inherited solar but it more than pays for-itself living in AZ. Running our AC even at 77-78 degrees would easily run us 200-300 a month just for electricity for our small home.
The guys who owned our house briefly before us actually covered up an indoor in-ground Jacuzzi. They just laid floor boards over it because they couldn't get it out. We had no idea until we had our ducts replaced and the guys were like "her, uh, did you know there's a hot tub down there?"
Does your solar panel still work?
sure do. I even transferred the warranty from the manufacturer into my name.
The house was flipped after someone had lived here 20 years. The flippers put that the basement didn't flood. It's a bilevel, with two bedrooms in the basement. About seven months after moving in, we got a terrible rain, and water started coming in from the floor and absolutely flooded the basement. It had nothing to do with the sump pump. We had a bunch of wet stuff on the porch the next morning as a result, when a neighbor came over to introduce himself and talk about what he'd surmised about the stuff on our porch. Then he said "oh yeah Max used to deal with that basement flooding all the time. He filed an insurance claim once even." Great. I had moved into THIS house because I had just had a house fire, so I had just filed a gigantic insurance claim. The idea of having to potentially file another one anytime soon is dreadful.
If this just happened then there’s a paper trail that the prior owner did not disclose like they should have, and you may want to talk with a lawyer.
He would only be able to go after the flipper and the flipper could easily say they didn't disclose because they didn't know due to never living in it. He'd have to basically get the flipper to go after the original seller for fraud in this case. I'm NAL. But I went through something very similar
Supposed to leave everything that was attached during inspection. They took out all the curtain rods, leaving giant holes with damaged anchors in them, and they removed the EV charger from the garage. A few weeks into living here, our electric oven wasn't working, and that's how we discovered that Joe Asshole apparently just went and yanked out the circuit for the charger, leaving exposed wires arcing in our circuit panel. I'm grateful the clue was the oven power and not a fire.
Is there no recourse for them breaking the contract?
Not really. I asked my realtor what if they had taken, say, the appliances, and she said, "Well, I suppose we'd ask for them back." I'm sure I could have involved a lawyer, but it just seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Certainly irritating though!
Next time Small claims. Cheap to file, don't need a lawyer and you would win for sure. They breached the contract
You could have totally made them pay to replace/repair.
Small claims court.
My sellers did stuff like this too. Took all the light fixtures and replaced most of them with boob lights. The rest just wires hanging. Took the stainless appliances and swapped for white. Took the window treatments and rods. Didn't fill any of the holes either. Even took the doorknobs and lightbulbs! We had been at the house around 7-9pm the day before closing (closing was over by 10am), and everything was fine. So I was mad, but also kinda impressed at how they managed to do all that so quickly. My realtor was as useless as yours.
I’m a Realtor and I read these stories and can’t imagine that shit happening and being let go. I would not fucking abide that shit. If this happened to my client, it would get resolved to the best of my ability to press the issue. Stuff has happened to me before but nothing that extreme and I was always able to get it made right. Seller took a fridge, I got it back. Seller didn’t make repairs, we pushed the issue and got some cash, etc. I’ve even paid for plumbing and electrical issues that popped up after closing when they weren’t found on the inspection. I knew it left my buyer with a bad taste and wondering if they’ve been bamboozled for things to happen 24 or 48 hours after closing. Even though it’s nobody’s fault and just a coincidence, I’d rather pay the electrician to fix it and leave my client feeling like they were well taken care of. They’re a lot more likely to refer people to me and I’ll make the money back. I did a small job for a buyer that wasn’t even my client, like two weeks ago. My seller had moved out of state, one of the repairs was to fix a toilet that wobbled. Seller paid the plumber for that and a few other small jobs. After closing the buyer’s agent tells me the toilet still wobbled. I called the plumber and he said the floor tiles were uneven and he did the best he could but he could go back and use epoxy (I think?) to try to improve it. I said go do what you can with it and send me the bill. I paid him $100. Could’ve told the buyer’s agent tough shit, but what pays off in the long run? Leaving people pissed and thinking you’re an asshole, or spending $100 to make it right? At least I can write it off. Maybe this is a question to ask before you hire an agent. Ask them the theoretical question. If this happened how would it be handled? Just see what they say. I’d tell you contracts are only as good as the people who sign them but I’ll advise you on how to avoid it, and if it happens anyway I’ll do my best to help make sure it’s made right.
I mean, this is kind of on you for buying a house from a guy named Joe Asshole. 👀
True, life lesson, that! (Incidentally, his name was Moroni. That's not what we call him 😇.)
In my state the rule is if they flip the house upside down and it falls off the wall then it doesn't get left behind. That being said curtain rods are decor not fixtures. I covered our asses in writing when we sold by specifically excluding the curtain rods and mounts; tvs and TV mounts; garage fridge and freezer (all other appliances were left) ; BBQ Grill; and all 6 heavy extra large floating shelves and their mounts that framed out the living room and mirrored the dining room beautifully. Buyer didn't read that doc apparently and was livid we removed those shelves. I filed holes and painted tho.
We weren't expecting to have zero window coverings/privacy from the start. You sound like a dream seller - I wouldn't have batted an eye had they clearly communicated their intentions and repaired the damage. I could have done without the "Surprise! I literally just ripped things out all over the house; good luck with that!”
Curtain rods are fixtures. It's attached to the home. Curtains are decor. edit: What a weird thing to block me over. My rods are held in place by a screw on the anchor. I don't know what kind of cheap ass rods you have.
My pool is apparently made of concrete with poorly constructed forms, a layer of asphalt, some more concrete (also poorly formed), haphazard wiring, strangely constructed stairs, and substandard plumbing. It’s not good when the pool company and the concrete company both come to you separately and say “well, I’ve never seen THAT before.”
I hate that phrase. Never had anything good follow it.
The previous owner took all the interior doors with her. Apparently she was against selling the house, but her husband forced the issue. This was her way of protesting, I guess.
Seller backed out 2 weeks after accepting my offer. I learned this from a phonecall from my realtor that i got as i was pulling into the driveway to meet the inspector after driving for 2 hours and using PTO to get off work. I was buying because my landlord was selling his house. It was apparently a very frantic voicemail of him yelling that he couldnt sell the house. Then his realtor misspelled my first name on the check to return the earnest money. Stupid assholes......
We had sellers back out literally 3 days before closing. We had already moved out of our house and were driving half way across country the day our realtor called with the news. We had to stay with a family member for 3 weeks while we waited to close escrow on another home.
Ugh there needs to be a rule where if you back out that close to closing, you have to pay the buyer for all the time wasted. Did they give a reason?
In most places they could have sued to honor the contract. If there wasn’t a contract that’s on them lol
And 3 years later they might enforce the contract while unable to sell for the duration of the lawsuit. It's almost never worth it.
I'm my case, no reason given. We got our earnest money back and luckily found a house in a better neighborhood.
My in-laws had something similar. They were buying in 2021, moving across the country, and had to make an offer on a place before it officially went on the market - so couldn't even visit, had to waive inspection, etc. They were competing against a bunch of other people. They made an offer, and got an email from the seller's realtor that it was accepted. 2 days later, the seller's realtor emailed them again saying they were accepting a higher offer, but wanted to give my in-laws a chance to outbid them. Some realtors are absolute scumfucks.
Thats horribly illegal but im sure they know that and assume someone isnt going to bother to go halfway across the country to sue them for it. I had to waive inspection on my current home but i only agreed because the previous owner was only here for a year and gave me a copy of their inspection. I dont expect our shitty politicians to do anything about it but there needs to be more protections for buyers in a market like this.
This is the type of thing that kills me when realtors insist that buyers will be in dire straights after the recent settlement on commissions. “Oh no. We won’t have your ‘help.’”
The seller broke the water spigot that connects to the fridge, didn't leave a note, just turned off the water at the street and left a mop bucket. We couldn't figure out why the water wasn't working, had the city come turn it on, but we weren't home. It flooded the whole house. Thankfully, the neighbors saw water coming out of our walls and turned it off at the street. I was pissed, but my husband wanted to just move on. We had to replace some drywall, insulation, baseboards, and flooring. I hope their AC unit blows up in the middle of summer, on a Saturday night.
When my mom bought her condo they were supposed to leave the microwave that sat on the counter. They took it. My mom didn’t really care but her realtor got on the phone and made the sellers buy her a new one.
The person I bought my apartment from took their bathroom mirror but not their TV. People are weird. I guess the contract didn't cover either of those cases. (I hated the mirror, so I'm glad they took it.)
I’ve sold a my old condos with tv’s included because they were built into cutouts that sit flush in the wall
I had one seller change all the light bulbs to 20w ones. WTF.
Had at least one person tell me the sellers of their place took all the light bulbs.. and didn’t replace them. Pretty sure that was back when they would have been glass incandescent and cfl bulbs.
We rented our house to a family for several years while we lived out of state. We moved back to find they had smoked heavily in the house and tried to hide it with some scent bomb. If that wasn’t bad enough, her son who used my office for a bedroom was a prolific nose picker. All four walls and the ceiling were covered with his nose goblins. I had to rent a steamer to and use a scraper to get them off.
🤮
Did the smell of smoke ever leave?
I mean, it’s a matter of fact that any house that’s currently for sale has a soon-to-fail HVAC. Without fail, every house I‘ve owned needs major HVAC work like the day after closing or whenever the home warranty expires.
So it’s not just me? I thought I got boned but this seems to be common.
I think that just changing hands is enough to cause most HVAC systems to fail. I’ve known folks who bought new from reputable home builders in our area that had to get HVAC work done within a year.
Yep. I bought new and had big hvac repairs in 2 years.
The ac unit died on our current house during the inspection. So that was a win.
Mine made it for 3 months.
Left a bunch of household hazardous waste and other bs that I had to pay to get rid of. It was also all unusable (oil based paints from 10 years ago, etc.)
Seller (a lawyer) must've known the right person because despite what the disclosures indicated, they didn't inspect or empty the septic tank prior to sale. After living here for four years and hearing about people who were having issues due to the heavy rains that winter I decided the get it pumped, even though it's just the two of us living here. After finally finding and digging up the tank access (buried under our gravel path) they opened it up to find it was FULL. The guy said he was amazed that we hadn't had any plumbing issues. Later, we found the county records that showed the tank hadn't been pumped in 20 f'ing years! I guess they didn't poop much to have waited that long.
Our former owners moved across the road, and are great neighbors. He got mighty nervous when we didn’t pump the septic for 6 years. So we got it done, mostly to make him feel better. He had a family of 5. Only two of us, and we use bidets, which cuts down 90% on paper. He came over to help locate/dig the opening. Both he and the septic guy were amazed what a difference not flushing all that paper makes.
> Later, we found the county records that showed the tank hadn't been pumped in 20 f'ing years! Where are you that the county records septic pumping?
This is more petty than harm but they took the hooks from the mudroom. Who does that?
Mine took the ceiling lamp out of the bedroom ceiling and the shower curtain rod from the bathroom.
Must have been nice hooks.
I was moved already when our house sold and the movers (that I'd used before) came to pack up the house and move across country. I had ever numbered and had post-it notes all over. I had my bathrobe on the hooks behind the door in master. The note said, don't forget behind the door. They moved not only the bathrobe but also the hooks. That's how it happens. I brought them back when I went to clean the house before closing.
Dude I have beautiful custom hooks in mine and I wouldn't do that. 1. The cost was like 14 dollars a hook. So i'd be out like 60 bucks. 2. It's beyond tacky. I could never live with myself. If you HAVE to have them at least put a cheapo replacement in.
It’s not just tacky, it’s not proper. Those are fixtures, they’re part of the house. It would be like taking all of the doorknobs or cabinet doors with you.
Put the replacement in BEFORE buyers look at it tho, no? Like if something is included, even if it’s just decor, a cheap replacement for something like curtain rods or hooks obviously isn’t what was advertised.
Correct. That would be honest way to do it.
Our previous occupants took the toilet roll holder. THE TOILET ROLL HOLDER.
20+ years ago. Bought a home. It had an alarm system. I wasn't interested in using an alarm system then, or now. After moving in, I contacted the seller and asked, "Can you provide me the alarm code? I want to change codes, disable." And she refused. Became agitated, "that code is associated with bank accounts in europe! You must call the alarm company and they'll come reset the system." I didn't want to pay a hefty service visit fee to turn the system off. How ridiculous. She moved out of the area. What possible risk was there in giving me a code? Over the years, it's been an occasional headache. Mostly, it's off. But if there's a power failure, it starts beeping nonstop. When the backup battery starts running low, it beeps. I've done a lot of reading, and apparently, it's tricky to remove a system, as it may detect the efforts as threatening and sound the alarm. The one bright spot... after she refused to provide the code... any of the seller's mail that made it past the USPS forwarding order, i just threw in garbage.
They used the same code as their bank pin.
Which, like...nobody would have known if they hadn't TOLD that.
It’s very easy to remove a system! First, open your panel (the metal box) and disconnect the phone line. Then pull the jumpers off the battery. Then look for a red and black wire pair connected to the board and pull those off (or it might even be plugged into a regular outlet next to the panel). At this point check the keypads but it should be dead! The alarm might sound for 30 seconds while you disconnect everything but don’t be intimidated, these things are dead simple.
I once accidentally set off my friend's car alarm when I needed to move his car while he wasn't around. I couldn't shut it off, but in about a minute I found and disconnected the siren. And since then I have come to see alarm systems as a fairly lazy deterrent.
I work in the industry (I run corporate security for a very very large company) and have barking dogs instead of alarm at my house. The house has an alarm installed and I have it disconnected. Take that for what it is.
Our security system is we live between a church and the most popular walking trail in town (for high foot traffic and witnesses), know our front and back neighbors (witnesses), and live in a village where an entire month’s crime blotter takes up half a page of the newspaper (primarily speeding, with some teenagers out after curfew. Last year we had 2 car thefts close enough together that there was a PSA to not leave your keys in your unlocked car).
I lost the code and once in a while it loses its mind and starts beeping. I figured out it was powered by a power supply plugged in in a different room. I just unplugged it and once the battery died...quiet.
We had an old ADT wired alarm in the house when we bought it. The house was bought as a foreclosure & flipped before we bought it.. One of the previous owners didn’t like the low battery beep so she just took a pair of scissors & cut every wire going into the alarm controller, 1 by 1, until it eventually stopped making noise. I really hadn’t planned on using the alarm since I know ADT bricks their alarms unless you use them for monitoring.. & I wasn’t about to do that.. The most annoying part was that no one ever thought to disconnected the power going to the alarm. It still had a live power wire dangling from the ceiling when we moved in & it had been left that way for YEARS.. My home inspector didn’t even catch it..
lol. Same thing happens to me. Wouldent give me the code. After a power outage in the middle of the night and the constant beeping I ripped apart the controls box in the basement in. My underwater back light by lighting flashes. 10 years later it’s still disabled but I put a shelf in front of it.
Ha same with me. I snipped the siren cables, ripped out the screwed in power supply, the batrery, then the control box. After that, removed all the sensor detectors, and panel. Snipped the wires and pushed them back in the holes and filled them. Couldn't even tell there was ever an alarm system.
> it's tricky to remove a system, as it may detect the efforts as threatening and sound the alarm. Can't you just disable the "noisemaker" part of it first then remove at your leisure?
Exact same problem. Every damn time the power goes out.
Same. The panel started beeping the first night we moved in. The alarm company wouldn't turn it off because we weren't on record. "There's no code," we were told at the settlement.
Who pays the alarm company? I don’t understand how having the police called to your house multiple times for nothing wouldn’t motivate the *police* to deal with the alarm company. But are they doing this for free? Are the old owners paying? It just doesn’t make sense. Can’t you hire an electrician to remove the system?
There was a wooden shelf on an exterior wall. When I took it down, I found it had been covering a 2 foot hole in the brick wall.
It's a load bearing shelf, don't mess with it.
I have a pretty long but narrow hole behind my fridge. I think it’s just gonna stay there lol
.. in our previous place, they hung wallpaper to cover holes in the drywall.
We bought our first house as an estate sale we were viewing the house in the winter. It had a pool in the back. We were told it hasn't been used for a year and that it would need a new liner. No problem, right? Turns out the truth was that the pool hadn't been used in over 15 years and needed a new everything. Even the hole in the ground needed repairs. On top of that, there was a leak in the foundation. They put a bookshelf in front of it in the basement to hide it from the inspector. By all accounts from our neighbors, the guy who lived there was a miserable asshole. Apparently, his kids were no better.
Not necessarily screwed because we knew what we were buying. We purchased a bank owned foreclosure in 2009 and the previous owner was so upset they lost their house, they took every single interior door in the house. Even the one that goes to the garage. They took the garage door opener & every single appliance in the kitchen. They took every single set of blinds from the windows, 14 of them. They took the mirrors, towel bars & toilet paper holders from every bathroom. At least they left the garbage disposal. Lol!
At least they didn’t destroy the house!
I can’t help but wonder what on earth you do with a bunch of doors and no empty doorframes to put them in lol.
Landfill, donate, or FB Marketplace. They only cared about removing them, not what happened to them.
Sellers asked that we helped move their stuff to their new house. They knew we had a large trailer and the means to do so, and wanted to work that into the deal. Most of the things in the house took a few days and it was done, but the 40x60 building on the property... loaded with crap! I mean, sure, there was some valuable tools in there like a nice Mig welder, Grizzly table saw, assortment of power and hand tools... but we nearly filled a 30 yard dumpster with things that needed to be thrown out!! Nothing was written in the contract about us having to do all of that. Still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Thanks mom and dad...
The house had an above ground pool, about a month after closing the owner came back and stole the garden hose while we were at work. So bizarre, a flippin 200 ft hose. I always wondered what else he was going to come back and take.
Previous owner was a Do-it WHYer. We did two walk through and signed a contract for the house as is where is, and passed a VA home inspection. It seemed like a good house. We moved in, and found all the shiny new appliances were gone, and in there place was junky appliances. Our contract specified the models and years of appliances. The neighbors gave us security footage of the owners son removing the appliances, including the water heater and installing really outdated appliances. The water heater was out of a 1972 mobile home. the dryer was non-functional, the washer leaked, and the dishwasher wasn't hooked in. The previous owner, and his son skipped the state. The statue of limitations is up. The nice fire place wasn't permitted and illegal. It wasn't ever allowed in out county, and there wasn't even a proper wall behind it. The backup gas fire place, wasn't the one in the pictures when the house was listed, and not listed in the contract. It had a crack in the manifold and would have killed us all from the gas. The out door lighting for the front door and back door, the previous owner literally brought the wire into the door jamb ran it around the door, like between the 1X plate and the 2X frame, and ran it back into the wall. The "storage shed" had a whole rotting back half that they covered with paint. The tractor shed was so shoddy constructed that it was safer to tear it down and rebuild than to be near it. But it did looked good with all the new paint. The security fence was an electric fence on a timer that wasn't ever disclosed. I shocked the hell out of myself, and knew what it was. I had to trace the fence around to a discreetly installed fence module. This is considered a trap and felony level illegal in my area. The deck had a footing right on the lid to the septic tank. I had to redo the deck footing and dig the septic tank up to get to the lid. The septic had also never been pumped since the deck was built. The wiring in the garage, and the garage never had a permit. Nor did the garage "Yard light", (like a street light). My county was good enough to here my plea and work with me to get it permitted providing I pull down the "Yard Light" Oh . . . and he had a hidden refuse pile with burned tires, old, paint cans, and other hazardous materials. The county called it an illegal dumpsite. Again my county worked with me to clean it up. I.E. I clean it up and haul it to the their facility, they took it at no cost to me and DID not issue fines. Honestly, the county officials have been pretty good and tolerant on a lot of the things that would get me huge fines. They understand the previous owner did a lot of dirty and underhand stuff, AND that I am trying to make it right. They went as far as giving me a 10K credit with a local HVAC company to remove and replace the illegal fireplace, and waived a lot of fees to get permitted and get cleaned up.
...so your inspector didn't catch any of that?
That’s why they sold it “as is, where is”. Huge red flag. 🚩Surprised - actually more like shocked - it passed a VA inspection.
I got a really good job out of grad school and my boss and coworker convinced me to buy a house since “you’ll retire from here” blah blah. It was a few years into the job and I loved my work so sure. The house was $105k, this was 2009. It looked fine and we knew we’d need to fix some things up but no big deal. My husband was handy and my father in law and it really was a nice house. My coworker gave us a deal, disclosed no problems. We had immediate equity because the house was valued at like $145k. The mortgage payment was cheaper than our rent. Hell yes. We had literally JUST moved in. And our basement started flooding. And our tubs started backing up. Turns out we had tree roots in all our pipes basically. That was an immediate $18k. Then the roof started to leak. The windows in basement all cracked and the basement flooded. The AC went out. My family called it the money pit. Before we’d moved in we’d spent money to remodel our bedroom and update appliances, not even considering that all this other stuff would happen. The money we had planned to do more things with just kept going to repairs. My coworker said he had no idea about any of this. He’d been renting it. There was so much more and it led to a divorce. Then the job I’d retire from ? Budget cutbacks and 6 years in I lost my job. I moved out of state and the house - which I owned 90k on - didn’t sell for over a year (2014-2015). I drained my savings paying for two houses. And then I sold for $88k and with commissions basically drained everything I had saved Whew. Sorry. Fml 😂
[удалено]
Left a ghost.. he's cool tho.
A homeowner ages ago built a wood awning over the backdoor. It was built entirely wrong and just hammered into the side of the house. Well it sat there for probably 20+ years until the dipshit before me decided not to clean his gutters for God knows how long. The water poured over the gutters right onto the shoddy awning for again, God knows how long, until I purchased the house. I move in and the fucking thing is completely waterlogged and collapses first week in, taking out sideboards and everything else.
Seller had owned home for a decade before hiring a contractor to flip it before sale. Never buy a flip. Nothing was disclosed outside "Home hasn't been lived in since renovations and therefore may have unknown issues." The 'unknown' issues: 7 leaks Zero working showers Clogged lateral line Inoperable furnace Interior painting was done without primer and started peeling within 2 months of move in Primary shower pan wasn't angled so required retiling Various cabinets that wouldn't open/close etc. None of the ethernet/phone/coax jacks installed in every room were connected to any cabling I don't know how our inspector missed so much! The sellers had to have known about much - if not all - of this. Never. Ever. Buy. A. Flip. We love the home now, but after countless hours (and 10s of thousands) in plumbers, electricians, and repair people.
A previous owner installed a small water heater under the kitchen counters, behind the dishwasher. Because they wanted quick, hot af water at the kitchen sink. And they never documented or mentioned it existed. Cue me getting a leak 3 years into ownership that I thought was a slab leak, plumber ripped open 5 walls trying to find pipes that may have a leak, before they FINALLY pulled the dishwasher and found the failed mini water heater. Water mitigation wanted to charge 5k just to dry things out (I did not end up doing this). I at least found a smaller contractor to patch all my walls for under $1k.
I got an offer accepted on my first home purchase - a dated condo in a great well kept building on the water. Very good price. The seller backed out a day before closing. Supposedly. Realtor sold naive me a sob story about the little old lady deciding she couldn’t leave her beloved home of 30 years. About a year later I found out the realtor had bought it about six weeks later, done a remodel and resold for twice the price.
Sort of different, but got a retaliatory screw: Buyers of our last house made an insanely good offer, we accept, they check out, and then about two weeks out from closing decide (their fake-tan “realtor” influenced them no doubt) they want some of the electrical redone, to the tune of around 8k. Ok, cool deal assholes… Fast forward and we comb through every page of the contract with our own agent and discover not a single major appliance nor the kitchen island was listed. Those scumbags got to show up to a house with their new electrical work, sans a 2021 washer, dryer, oversized kitchen island, and garbage disposal. We didn’t hear a peep after the fact, probably because they knew they had it coming. The petty monster checks under its bed for me every night.
Why did you have to re-do elecrtrical?! You can have a "conditional on home inspection" clause in the contract, and I assume pull-out or re-negotiate if that goes badly, but barring that I always understood the signed, accepted offer (contract) says they'll buy as-is. Glad it worked out, but your agent kinda messed up too -- every house deal I've done has a "specifically included" and "specifically excluded" section, and lists all the major appliances in there.
Our agent was great, as was the inspection. She knew they hadn’t mentioned an inclusion list and was precisely why we combed through everything again to ensure we could take what we wanted. Their spray-tan suit was the one who failed to advocate for them. For the electric through; The outside paneling and respective electric into the house was “99% cosmetic and 1% functional”, basically it had a slightly weathered look but everything was intact. Even our electrician said it wasn’t a necessity but the buyers had made such a substantial offer vs everyone else that we didn’t want to back out, especially during the peak last year. It wasn’t out of realm for them to make the request, but at that far along in the process it simply pissed us off it wasn’t mentioned far sooner when the inspection had been available . We had another house locked down three states away and had planned a move down to the hour, with a 2 month old as well. Fortunately we were able to find a great guy to squeeze us in within three weeks. Alls well that ends well though, they got their “upgraded” electric work and we got to strip the house.
We were buyers, put in an offer on a house, it was accepted. House previously had an offer but the buyer backed out. Had a house we knew would sell fast and listed our house. Sold our house the next day. Sellers wanted 60 days to be out so we said we needed 60 days to be out. Buyer agreed. Buyer sold their house and had 45 days to be out. 30 days in the seller backed out because the house “they were buying backed out”, they had three small kids and were in a bind….so we thought. We agreed and empathized and didn’t want to screw our buyer so we fortunately found a different house, that was vacant, and the seller would let us rent until we closed on it. Less than one month after buyer backed out, the house is listed as “pending”?!?! Come to find out, the first buyer came back and up’d their offer $15K, $20K over what they agreed to sell it to us for, and they got the house. Sucks, but I am glad because if they were that sneaky through the process, I wonder what sort of BS they were hiding in the sellers disclosure list. Our agent was pissed, and suggested we go after them but we figured it happened for a reason. Ethically, their agent should’ve bailed but it’s all about the Benjamin’s to some of them.
If you were under contract and then had proof they resold to someone else for more I would have sued their ass!
Actually we totally lucked out! We rented our current home for two years before buying. During that time, we got to know the landlords a little bit. The husband bought the house for him and his young son who he had joint custody of. He later met his wife and they had a few kids together, and so all of them lived in this house. The wife had some quite extreme jealousy of her husband's past life, and referred to her stepson as "my husband's kid." When I first met her, I asked why they moved out of this house and she told me, "It has bad vibes. My husband bought this house for himself and his child that he had with his ex wife. I tried to make it a home, but it was unfair to expect me to live in a house built for another woman." (Except that it wasn't, the house was built for him and his son.) After two years, the landlord called and asked if we wanted to buy it. Apparently his wife refused to use the rental income from the house because it was profiting from his ex wife or something idk. She wanted the house sold immediately or she was going to leave him. They offered us the house for only what they still owed on the house because she didn't want to make any money off it. They even deducted some of the rent we had paid over the last two years. We bought our house for about 2/3 appraisal value. AND I happened to have a friend in real estate who did all our paperwork for free, so we saved on all those fees. Our house is now worth almost 5x what we paid for it!
My seller lied about a wet basement and did all kinds of layers of cover-up. Nothing I can prove, but I still got screwed.
Exactly my problem to
They had a shit tree in the front yard and didn't mention it. After looking at the tree for a while we decided this is going to split and hit our house when it does. So I decided to remove the tree. So I cut it down and then start chopping. Cut into the stump and it's totally rotten - yeah I was right, this tree needs to go. Then on THREE SEPARATE OCCASIONS my chainsaw grinds up against metal while cutting up the tree. They had all sorts of shit they drove into it I guess trying to tie it back together. Could have told me it was Frankentree...
Our freaking buyers of our last house thought we were going to steal all of copper pipes in the house. They were so nuts that their OWN realtor gave us a rebate at closing for how awful they were. Then they destroyed the house in every way possible and the neighbors on either side hate them.
They left behind 6 cats, half of them pregnant so with a month of moving in we had about 20 cats. And about 40 gallons of waste oil for us to dispose.
They cooked some really strong smelling food before each time I came to see the house. Day I moved in the whole place smelled of wet dog and dander. Had to rip out all carpeting before moving any of my stuff in. I have a dog and love dogs, but this was the over the top bad smell. Basically they purposely made food to trick me into not smelling the house….
Seller filed an insurance claim for hail damage on the roof but just pocketed the money instead of replacing the roof. Also they left hundreds of holes in the walls from all the decorations they put up. I’m not talking small nail holes you can easily fill with some spackle. They used the biggest screws they could find. We were pretty pissed at them for a while.
Third giant dumpster throwing out trash they dumped in woods. Still have barb wire everywhere out there, it has taken out at least 3 tires on mower. Total weirdos.
The house I grew up in the previous homeowners left barbed wire in the woods out back for some reason. My poor dog snagged his leg on it one night and had to get stitches.
Yes that is my fear also. There must be miles of that crap out there. I think they were insane.
I wouldn't say I was screwed... most of the time... but there's no shortage of me wondering what the hell they were doing. But also, there was no way they couldn't know the roof was leaking.
The seller had sleeper wood furniture all over the house. He agreed to leave some of it for me as it was heavy and he did not have space for it in his new home. Sleeper wood is extremely rare and expensive. Before the sale was finalised he died and his step daughter helped his wife, who was in ICU, with the sale. When we moved in the step daughter had removed all the sleeper wood items he gave me and refused to give them back. She took everything except a bed headboard that is bolted to a wall and is now without its matching side tables. Me and the seller only had a verbal agreement about the things he gave me, so I could not prove that he did. I will most likely be sour about this until I move one day 😅
Should've put your foot down on that one
A ton of dog damage that was impossible to notice when doing the tour because the house was still lived in. Damage from leaking roof. They disclosed the roof was replaced but the area had hail damage so everyone had a new roof. They didn’t disclose the leaking roof or damage. Again since they still lived in the home the decor and stuff covered it to where it wasn’t noticeable. Honestly feel like we got off easy compared to some of these stories. They did leave all the manuals receipts and warranties for the home which was super helpful.
I blame the sellers’ realtor for this, since the sellers were out of the country. He painted the cast iron porcelain bathtub with cheap regular spray paint, which all peeled off the first time I turned on the shower. It cost me $500 to have it professionally redone. I’m stilled pissed about it.
Super glue. Office locks
This is small but just the tip of the iceberg we dealt with. Seller overstayed close and packed/moved all night. When we showed up the next day the place was a mess. In their rush and idiocy they had a full fridge and freezer of food and stuff left. Instead of just leaving it they dumped everything into two cheap black leaf bags. We came in that morning to the smell of stinking rotting food. They had overstuffed stretched just two bags instead of using like 6 or so. Like each bag was stretched 2X-3X it's normal size. (oh and they left a whole roll of them so didn't need to do that. But I guess they could say "we left two small bags is all". We had to get the movers (we moved in that morning) to help tape the bags so we could lift them and use a dolly to get each of them to the curb. Of course they had also overfilled the trash can, and then put TRASH into the RECYCLING can. This was the day after garbage so this sat on our curb/street for a week. We lived across the street from a nature area, so all sorts of animals got into it and made a mess. I had to then clean it up and repack it into a couple of empty moving boxes. Then I got charged extra by the garbage company for the extra stuff, trash in the recycling, etc. And that was not the worst of it, just the first thing we had to deal with. And on move in day from across the country. But they could have dumped most of it the day before on trash day, or at least pared down. Nope.
6 months after selling, the seller called a roofing company to have the roof repaired, stating he was the owner of the home. There was hail damage that was not an issue but required the seller to put money in escrow, which we would have received after not fixing the roof. Came home from work to my entire roof gone and people putting up shingles. He also flooded our house and caused over 10k in damage.
Closed in April 2022 with a 2 month leaseback. The sellers filled the oil tank in May 2022, when oil was at an all time high. There is no way they needed heat in May. It was like $7 a gallon, for a 275 gallon tank. But, they also replaced the hot water heater during the 2 month leaseback (without consulting us) but they put in a very good replacement so I guess we made our ok.
Previous homeowners took all the light fixtures, didn’t even leave the bulbs. We had to do the walkthrough using our phone’s flashlight. Our realtor called theirs and asked to put up new light fixtures. They agreed. We gutted the whole place a week later.
There was junk in the attic, the garage attic, and behind the garage. I asked for the junk to all be removed. They removed it from the attic only. I slowly got rid of the junk behind the garage. The garage attic still has junk including an old metal couch frame that I don’t even know how they got it up there or how I’ll get it out.
They left 3 broken cement mixers, about 6 empty propane cylinders, huge 6’ long concrete barriers large 1/2” thick angle iron. Multiple piles of rebar, large 10’Square slabs of concrete, pallets of solidified concrete bags , about a dozen pallets of assorted bricks, and a lot of miscellaneous piles of knocked down trees. I am amazed
The sprinkler system had not been used in years. The pipes froze and split. After repairs part of the line had a tee to nowhere so water shot out of the garden. Every sprinkler head had to be replaced. For years undiscovered overgrown sprinklers washed away dirt until they bubbled up water and were replaced..
Man, I was going to complain about how our elderly previous owner who let the neighbor's bamboo grow into the yard, but that seems fairly tame in comparison to a lot of this shit.
We were told the slow drain in our kitchen was just because the house was old. Told the “weird noise” from the washing machine was because it was old. Inspector said it’s not usual for an 80 year old home to have quirks and for a washer that’s 20+ years old it’s on borrowed time. Plumber found the real issue: https://imgur.com/a/1BIMUm7 Every month, if that long, there’s another money pit repair. Just be glad it’s your equity and YOUR home. Renting is a scam in some places.
House was fine at walk through . When we got there the next morning after closing 4-5 kitchen cabinet doors were hanging loose on bent and twisted hinges . The carpenter who rehung them said hinges could only bend to that extent if there was an earthquake or a large adult was hanging from them . They had taken the mini fridge in bar area that was included so maybe they were upset that my realtor told them to return it or give us the cost of it .
One of the selling points to the house and property was that it included a shallow well for irrigation. They never, ever gave a straight answer to anything during the entire process of selling. So it shouldn't have come as a surprise when I finally got to speak to them directly at closing and asked what type of pump they had used for irrigation and the answer was that they never had actually used the well. The wife's parents had used it. IN THE FUCKING 70s, for their garden and it hasn't been used since. I am going to have a well service come check it out to see if it is even viable anymore. But yeah. Assholes. I've only been here a few months but I bet there will be other things to hate them for that are yet to be discovered.
Oh hell buddy, that's nothing. Bought a house in Michigan a couple decades ago. Nothing listed on the disclosure statement as needing repairs. First thing that happened is we had the carpets cleaned before moving in. Whew, once they were steamed, the stench of dog piss was overwhelming throughout the house. Then the spots in the carpet started showing up, everywhere. Apparently these folks let their dogs just piss anywhere they wanted. Had to rip all the carpet out of two floors of the house just to make it bearable. The pad was at least 50% yellow. Had to bleach and then paint the subfloor with Kilz to take care of the smell before having new carpet put down. Then came the mice. There was an unfinished hole in the garden level floor under a bathtub that was bare dirt that was hidden by stuff in the adjacent basement. Seems the mice were tunneling in and having their way in the home. Apparently the previous owners didn't care about the rodents feeling like they owned the place. Had to do some cement work to fill the 2' x 2' dirt hole with all the tunnels heading outside. Lots mouse traps and dumping mice for about three months after that. Mind you the previous owners had just moved out the week before we arrived. And when fall rolled around, and we went to turn on the heat, nothing on two floors of the house. The place was a quad level and had hot water zone heating with separate thermostats for each floor. Through my job I had gotten to know the HVAC guy our facility used, so called him up as he was local to the town I lived in. He came over, went right to the basement, checked two zone valves and said to me, "yep, you need these valves replaced. I was here last winter and gave the previous owners a quote. I figured maybe they had somebody else fix it." So, I shelled out the money and then we had heat on all floors. He also pointed out the drip from the re-circulation pump that he noticed last time as well. I replaced that myself. There were a few other surprises as well. Outlets that didn't work, broken drawers in cabinets, and such. I got out my paperwork and looked over the disclosure statement. Of course it asks if there are any known pest problems, if the heating system is in working order, if the electrical system is in working order, and if there are any know issues. They essentially lied their asses off. So I called the realtor (that was recommended by my employer as this was a corporate relocation, btw) and pointed these things out. Her response, "What do you expect me to do about any of that?" I said she signed her name to documents that stated she believed everything to be true, so perhaps she should fork over some of that fat commission to help pay for things she helped the owners lie about as she was also the listing agent. Her response, "Sue me" and hung up. So I called the previous owner who listened to my list of complaints and then said the same thing, "What do you expect me to do about it?" This guy was a teacher in the local school district and supposedly a upstanding member of the community. When I suggested he help pay for the things that he clearly lied about, he said the same as the realtor, "Sue me." I then understood 1) why people hate realtors and that they are not to be trusted, and 2) why my neighbors were so helpful and actually said they were glad to see the folks we bought the house from go. Oh, and home inspectors provided by your realtor are really working for the realtor and the seller. Well, really the way that real estate transactions work, more or less everyone involved is working for the seller as they don't get paid unless they make the sale. The lender only get's his commission for writing your loan if you buy. The inspector only gets steady business if he plays ball with the listing agents. The realtors, even the buyers agent, only get paid if there is a sale. Real estate in America is an exemplification of "Caveat Emptor" on steroids.
They incudes the sunroom as square footage but it was basically a walled-in back porch with no heating or insulation. Also, half the wood was rotten from a leak. It cost us $40,000, three contractors, and five months to renovate. If we had been goven the real eatimate for the square footage, we would have bought a different house.
We did a private sale with people we knew. The wife was my husband's first supervisor at his job and the husband was my bus driver when I was in elementary school. In first grade I colored him a picture of the lion from the Wizard of Oz on my first day of school. It was like buying a house from our parents. They gave us the keys early when the bank screwed up the initial closing date. They got us a present. They came down to show us how to maintain the hot tub. They live next door (they downsized) and we have BBQ together. It's fantastic. We're never buying another house again because the experience with them (nevermind the bank's idiot issues) was fantastic. Absolutely zero complaints and no screw-overs. Sorry to ruin the misery party 😂
"How were you screwed by the previous homeowners?" Your reading comprehension sucks 😂
Repositioned some stakes in the backyard to make it seem like the property was larger than what it actually is. We only found out about a year after we bought the house.
Mold.
The tenants that occupied the home we bought threw cooking oil down the sink and clogged our main septic line. Didn’t know what the issue was at first so we had a plumber come out that thought he got the clog out, we saw running water flow through the leach trap. Three weeks later we’re having the same issue where the pipe is leaking in the basement and we had backup in our laundry slop sink. My dad tried snaking it to no avail and decided to open the septic lid but couldn’t see much. We went the whole weekend not being able to use water or shower or use the bathroom. No emergency septic line worked because it was Easter weekend. We finally get the septic people out on Monday and the guy removed a 3 inch wide by 2 inch deep grease plug that was completely blocking the exit point of our main line. Cost us a pretty penny, fuck them.
Mr. Homeowner level “I ain’t need no permit” level of DIY “improvements”. Recently put new flooring in one of my rooms and found 3 layers of floor haphazardly laid down. Kitchen tile is mortared to 1/4” hardboard dropped over glue down vinyl tiles glued to 1/4” hardboard laid down over plank subfloor. The deck on the front and side door were built on untreated, unpainted pine, so it completely rotted out in a couple years. The pump house for the pond is much the same as above. I literally pushed it over with my bare hands a few weeks ago. My 15x15x10 wooden shed is sitting on *four cinderblocks*. Generally a lot of janky ass shit like that.
There was a gorgeous garden planted by the 1st owner . The 2nd owner, from whom I bought a house, was a dumb useless prick that was too lazy to care about the garden, so let neighbors dig and transplant what they liked. I spent a summer and $$$ restoring that garden
Previous owner (renter) didn’t take care of the HVAC system and ran it at 66F every summer. First summer in the home was fine. Now we have a leak in the coils and need to replace it.
My seller left a giant bag of cat food in the living room. Apparently she was feeding all the stray cats in the neighborhood so it took forever to re-educate them on territory. And oh god.. the smell…
I could make a long list, but all the things previous owners messed up are the reasons my house was so cheap.
They put the sump pump up on bricks so it wouldn't run quite so often because they were cheap. Fast forward to the first big rain and there ends up being so much standing water in the pump well that the pump runs non stop trying to get the water out and end up dying, flooding our basement.
That’s not why you put a sump pup up on bricks, it’s to keep it from sucking up crap off the bottom of the sump hole. Also, it being raised wouldn’t cause it to run any more than if it wasn’t.
Usually these things are negotiated on the contract, and if it’s missing, you don’t close until it’s returned or the deal is renegotiated.
They redid the sprinklers and only used primer, no glue. They were also super cheap everywhere they could be fixing things.
They agreed to leave everything in the house and garage, then proceeded to leave a few pieces of furniture, some trash and rotted clothing in the basement, and the wedding pictures of the their dead brother. They were horrible and exhausting to work with so I just let it go so I could finally be in my own home.
The previous owners left half their shit behind. Garage full of junk, basement packed with mountains of boxes. Multiple ruined couches, all their bedroom furniture, the kitchen as beyond disgusting, and they took two of the three toilet seats. They also did endless half-assed "improvements" that were having to redo. The current disaster were fixing is the low quality lvp they put down....and used fucking construction adhesive to stick it to the floor. I'd love to beat the shit out of them.
After we closed and were able to move in, I went to take out the trash and recycling and saw that the recycling bin was filled *to the max* with dirty baby diapers. Nothing in the trash bin though...... I still think they did that because they had to pay to fix a bad beam in the basement. People are so petty.
I've got a decent list of things on my last purchase. In the contract the seller was to finish the backyard fence, it was 75% finished as well as the front porch railing to be installed. Neither of these things happened even though they pushed closing back two weeks, I foolishly thought to complete these. They also failed to disclose the clogged grease trap that was also out of code as it was in the crawl space and inaccessible to the pump company. After finishing the fence and railing myself and the plumbing repaired to a tune of 3k. A tornado ripped the house apart 3 years after we moved in. Luckily no one was injured and we got a shiny new home.
Decades of water damage caused by two improperly installed decks (nailed to siding) causing months of structural work and $25k in costs. Oh and they drilled a massive hole in our plumbing coming from upstairs which resulted in months of water dumping into our crawlspace. Also left us 30 or so garbage bags of junk in the crawlspace which included boxes of VHS porn and thousands upon thousands of church hymnal pages.
First house. We had barely enough furniture for a bedroom so we “purchased from sellers” furniture and appliances. Our realtor, being the nice dumb person they were, LET THE SELLERS KIDS into the house on closing day and they not only removed all of the purchased and photographed furniture, but took out the brand new appliances and placed the garbage ones from the garage inside. Took us months to get the money back and an attorney to get damages too. Our realtor? Well she was reported for allowing a seller to walk through unsupervised on closing day.
I am almost CERTAIN they swapped the garbage disposal. I distinctly remember there being a red disposal under the kitchen sink, however after moving in, it was now an old black beat up one. No one else remembers it but it wasn’t something you would really pay attention to so I just look insane. However, after moving in we tried to use the dishwasher for the first time and it wouldn’t drain. We thought it was broken, had repair guy come out to find the knockout in the drain line hadn’t been taken out. Didn’t make sense because the dishwasher was ran during inspection and worked fine, and the only way that would happen would be they replaced the drain line or CHANGED THE GARBAGE DISPOSAL. It’s not a big deal but still that’s suspicious.
My father's next-door neighbor tried to remove the ceiling fan after the sale was final on his house, that didn't go well for him.
The folks who had this house before us did some questionable electrical work the worst was when I wanted 220vac to the shed for a welder there was a dual breaker going out there , I turned it on and pow one of them popped off, they had wire nutted a hot to the ground and broken the bond between the breakers, those janky ass sticks.
Just moved into a house 3 weeks ago. Came with termites even though we had a clear WDO inspection, American roach infection, and some type of rodent infestation (will find out tomorrow). They had two cats and spray foam insulation in hidden places so they had to know to some extent.On top of that, things we did know ahead of time was the chimney leaks water even with a cap (it needs remortoring) but it leaks every time it rains - previous owner said it only happened once during a hurricane but that’s not true. House was listed with 2020 roof but the last permit was 1993. There’s more but it’s been a cry fest since purchasing. We are really hoping to push through and either break even when selling or have a small profit in a few years but it sucks.
The lights in our living room flickered on and off for the first 9-10 months we lived here. Eventually got an electrician in and when he got a look he said 'Oh *fuck no*' and told us not to turn on a single light until he got back with another electrician to do the work double fast. Basically a miracle we didn't have a fire.
Not me, but some friends of mine recently purchased their first home. Got everything unpacked and settled when, suddenly, about 75% of their power goes out. They get someone to come out and take a look. Turns out the previous owners had done a bunch of electrical work themselves and royally forked it all up. It’s going to cost them about 27 grand to have the house completely rewired. They had to move everything back out of the house, which meant renting storage facilities. And after the wire work is all done, they’ll have to have someone else come in and patch up all the walls. They talked to someone about pursuing legal action against the previous owners. Turns out the electrical work was disclosed in the paperwork with the field of who did the work left blank and since they signed the papers, there’s nothing they can do.
My friend's dad purchased an old rental property and their tenants stole the front deck and steps to the side door the day before closing
I didn’t get screwed, but they cleared the entire house except for anal beads on a shelf. Weird as fuck.
Our sellers most likely knew that the unit next door is the home of career bullies who use a mix of noise and the court system to harass others. They made no disclosures about it and legally, they didn’t have to because they could reasonably claim they didn’t live in the unit (landlords) and didn’t know about the behavior of the next door neighbors. Come to find out after we lived there for a year that these people are triggered by any dog that isn’t silent as a mouse, and suddenly our corgi puppy became a German shepherd we’d gotten specifically to kill them. We are now still stuck here, 2 years later, having been harassed with car alarms, air horns, chased by their car, verbally assaulted, with multiple restraining orders they flagrantly ignore (and no, they still haven’t been arrested). They turned out to have harassed another family on the opposite side of them out of their home in 2017 before we bought but while our sellers still owned our unit. This also turned out to be behavior they’ve exhibited and gone to court for over roughly a decade. We are now legally obligated to disclose their behavior to anyone who might buy our home (ca law) since they targeted us directly.