Bought a house, filthy stuff left in loft

Scam

Scam

Scam

Soldato
Joined
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Sorry, not filthy like that :D

The house was rented and the tenants have left a whole load of stuff which the estate agent has confirmed they don't want. Problem is, this is London, we don't have a car so it will cost us to get rid of, and it's generally just tricky to manage. Together with the time taken to heave this stuff (plus some others) out of a filthy dirty loft before we move in, which means everything on the way down will get filthy, mwhich means cleaning - again! Well we're not very impressed.

Here's the stuff taken out; (removed)

Afraid all the boxes are empty for a start so they've gone in the recycling. But all the bags/suitcases etc. are just a pain in the behind to sort out. It's not a big house, we don't want to store them etc.

Is there literally any point pursuing this with the sellers? We had poked our heads in the loft before and before we exchanged contracts confirmed that everything would be removed, together with some rubbish left in the garden (which did go).

We're just pushed for time, annoyed the pensioner landlords have made a mint on this and now not bothered to sort this out as they should have done :( Thoughts?

PS: For context, this is a house that needs a fair amount of work. It's been rented out but generally neglected. Downstairs original sash windows are sealed/painted shut so we need to do that. We will be converting the loft and one company who poked her head up pointed out the stuff and said how they should have gotten rid of it, and any loft conversion company would charge us for removal/cleaning :(

EDIT: Plus further stuff as posted below: Sorry, I totally forgot to add that that was the tenants stuff (kept under a sheet hence not so dirty). The owners had clearly left stuff up there as well... an office chair, a trunk (empty), some old pictures/mirrors. All not covered and absolutely filthy - and harder to get down. The roof is still the original c1900 so not sealed, no membrane etc. so there there is thick black dust/dirt all over anything that was not covered. So it's more that, and having to traipse that through the house rather than the stuff itself. Well, that and the aggro of having to get rid of it all without a car, and the aggro of having to clean again.
 
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Scam said:
Sorry, not filthy like that :D
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Oh... thread closed.
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Scam said:
Is there literally any point pursuing this with the sellers?
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No.

Speaking from experience where I moved into a property and the loft and garage were full with old rubbish, there is no point in even considering this option. My solicitor shouted and made legal threats on the day, to their solicitor, whilst the previous owner had been gone for less than 15 minutes. We looked at options to claim back money etc.... and it was all just pointless - going to cost more than it's worth, drag on for months and months or end up with a big bill anyway.

We paid a small amount to get rid of it before we moved our stuff in and chalked it down to a moving cost.

Skips are £200, man with van a lot cheaper (mine was all complete rubbish).

My advice for that would be to use Facebook Marketplace or Freecycle for a week, anything else that's too big for standard bins I'd get a man with a van to get rid of it for about £50-£100 and just forget about it.
 
Sorry, I totally forgot to add that that was the tenants stuff (kept under a sheet hence not so dirty). The owners had clearly left stuff up there as well... an office chair, a trunk (empty), some old pictures/mirrors. All not covered and absolutely filthy - and harder to get down. The roof is still the original c1900 so not sealed, no membrane etc. so there there is thick black dust/dirt all over anything that was not covered. So it's more that, and having to traipse that through the house rather than the stuff itself. Well, that and the aggro of having to get rid of it all without a car, and the aggro of having to clean again.

Sigh. Why can't people just be "normal" and do what's expected of them? :(

Liquid_Entity said:
Shame those Rokits weren't in the box. I'd have had em off ya
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I was mildly excited at seeing that and the iMac box and camera bags. But alas, no...
 
blimey i wish that was all my loft had in it......after 30 plus years and 2 grown up kids in there 30s im still trying to empty mine found a set of wieghts and bars up there yesterday lol
 
Had a similar experience to @Peerzy — unfortunately, it’s not worth the bother perusing it.

It was a real slap in the face for us because we made sure our old house was spotless before we left, cleaning after the removals team emptied each room etc. We even left a bottle of bubbly as a housewarming gift for the new owners. Then we got to our new place and a) they were still packing when we arrived and b) it was in an absolutely disgusting state.

The following day was our first wedding anniversary and we spent the day scrubbing the house from top to bottom. We thought about getting in professional cleaners (plus a skip or MWAV to remove the junk) and then try to reclaim the money but in the end we just did it ourselves.

As you say, why can’t people just be normal?
 
Irish_Tom said:
Had a similar experience to @Peerzy — unfortunately, it’s not worth the bother perusing it.

It was a real slap in the face for us because we made sure our old house was spotless before we left, cleaning after the removals team emptied each room etc. We even left a bottle of bubbly as a housewarming gift for the new owners. Then we got to our new place and a) they were still packing when we arrived and b) it was in an absolutely disgusting state.

The following day was our first wedding anniversary and we spent the day scrubbing the house from top to bottom. We thought about getting in professional cleaners (plus a skip or MWAV to remove the junk) and then try to reclaim the money but in the end we just did it ourselves.

As you say, why can’t people just be normal?
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Sometimes you massively underestimate how long it will take and run out of time - my last move we only got half the cleaning done we'd intended before we had to vacate though it was generally clean and tidy anyhow so not too bad.

A previous move my mum was rushing around last minute still trying to clean everything to perfection and we had to drag her out saying she couldn't leave it in that state - by that point the house wasn't even hers any more.
 
pp111 said:
You can claim the costs of disposing of the items from them. Hire a small skip and send them the bill.
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Yeah I would do this. At least the rubbish has gone so you can get on with your life. Then fire a claim through the small claims court, they're really unlikely to contest it, just hope you got some pictures of the stuff first.
 
That's pretty tame compared to the filthy greasy old hob, yes hob! that was found in a friend's loft along with some other filthy stuff that should have been skipped.
 
Just leave it up there and deal with it when you re-roof the place which you inevitably will if it's an original pointed up, un-felted/un-breather membrane 100 year old rosemary tiled roof.
 
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