Finally closed on our house - seller's stuff still inside!

[ms.yt]

After deciding to move back to the small town that I grew up in and still work in, we finally found a house in July. It was the home of an older couple where the husband had passed away and the wife is now in the nursing home. Their daughter owned the house, which no one had been living in for well over a year. When we looked at it, there was still tons of stuff (mostly just worthless junk) scattered all over the house. The realtor told us the seller was working on getting the stuff out, and there was a trailer parked in the driveway presumably to put the stuff in. Well, we closed Friday, and not only had none of the stuff in the house been touched, but the garage was now full of boxes and furniture that belonged to the seller's son who had recently moved back to the area!

The realtor has been calling this woman for weeks telling her she had to have all that stuff out by closing, and the seller (who has a reputation in town for being difficult and, quite frankly, crazy) kept telling her that she was working on it. The realtor even offered last weekend to sell the stuff for her at the city wide yard sale, but she said no. Well, we told the realtor to tell her Friday that she had Saturday to get the stuff cleared out because we have people coming to start working on it today (it needs a lot of renovation work before we move in). This woman had the nerve to ask the realtor to call us to see if she could store the stuff in the workshop on the property for a "week or so"! We said absolutely not! We went over there at about 5 pm yesterday, and the realtor had been helping her all day because this woman's worthless son wouldn't even come help clear out his stuff!

My husband's on his way over there right now to change the locks. It's a good thing we got a good deal on this house!!!! I just had to vent. It's been a crazy weekend!

 

[Jennasis]

Can you legally throw things left behind away. Check into it. Then start chucking!

FWIW, when DH and I moved into our house 6 years ago, the seller left a fridge full of food, and a basement and wokrshop filled with worthless crap. I called her and made her come and clean the fridge (which she did). Then I went into the basement and found a 20x20' persian rug that had been rolled up and attempted to be dragged out of the basement. Apparently it was too heavy for whoever tied to move it, so they left it on the staircase!! It was sopping wet (basement had a flooding problem) and so gigantic that you literally could not use the stairs atall. I called the seller again and told her about the rug and she said "thats' a very expensive rug. I thought you might want it."!!!!!

Soaking wet? Moldy? And just left on the stairs?? ruined???

Idiot.

Made her come move that too. Oh and she told all of her 4-H students they could have a yard sale the day after we moved in (on our property) so our big workshop was loaded up with the tagged items for the sale. Meanwhile we had just driven 17 hours from NY to NC and where exactly were we supposed to put two houses worth of stuff (MIL moved with us).

Idiots.

 

[golfgal]

Some friends of ours bought a house from a couple that were building a new house. They closed on the house in April and didn't move into the house until August. It was written into the contract that way so the previous owners could wait to move until their new house was done. Our friends were moving from an apartment so it wasn't a big deal. Well, the move date rolls around, the previous couple was due to be out by noon, we rolled up to the house at noon to start unloading and they had NOTHING packed. They hired a moving company to move their stuff but not pack it. We ended up helping them "pack". We basically just started dumping stuff into boxes-no wrapping anything, etc. They had 4 MONTHS to pack and hadn't packed a single box.

I feel for you ms.yt. I would say that you now OWN ANYTHING left in the house or garage and you can sell it at a garage sale.

 

[daughtersrus]

Check and see what your local abandoned property laws are. It may be that everything in the house at closing is now yours to do as you wish with.

 

[AlleyKat]

Unless you signed an agreement stating otherwise, whatever is left on YOUR property when the keys were handed to you is now YOURS to do with how you see fit!

Put a large "Everything FREE" sign on your yard and let folks have at it!

 

[Wishing on a star]

Yes, check into the abandoned property laws....

Yes, you do have a right to act...
But, there may be stipulations, such as have the owners served with a 30 day notice by legal authorities.... You can put all of this 'stuff' into a storage unit. And, you will have the right to recover any rental costs before handing them the keys to the unit to have access to their stuff.

After any legally required time limit, the stuff is yours to keep or sell.... It is yours, your profit.

Boy, things can be crazy sometimes!!!!

 

[The Mystery Machine]

Since you did not write it into the contract, find out what you can legally do about the stuff and then proceed from there.

Take pictures of "the stuff" and make an inventory sheet.

You might have to send a certified letter with receipt notifying them that they have "X" amount of days per the law, to get their stuff.

This would back you up if they brought you to court to try and get a settlement.

You left the door open by not protecting yourself in the contract.

 

[ms.yt]

I asked our loan officer at the bank when we started this process about what we could do if her stuff was still in there when we closed because we anticipated this problem (though we didn't expect her to add more stuff to what was already there!). He said that the way the offer & acceptance was written entitled us to the home & all property upon closing. His advice was basically to tread lightly about it until closing because of her reputation for being unreasonable. He was thinking that if we pushed her on it before closing, she might just call the whole thing off (she is that strange). I'll probably check with our attorney before we do anything with the leftover stuff, but I'm fairly certain it's ours to do with as we wish.

This is a very small town (1,100 pop.), and I'm bound to run into this woman from time to time. I feel very sorry for her if she ever tries to say anything rude to me about it. I've held my tongue so far, but I'm past that now. Everybody in town that I've mentioned who we're buying our house from has something bad to say about her! I won't be losing any friends if I tell her off! If my dad was still alive (he strongly disliked her, too), I feel certain that he would have just taken all the stuff out of the house the minute we closed and dumped it in her front yard just out of spite!

 

[The Mystery Machine]

You have the problem of the brother's stuff. Was he part of signing the contract?

If not he could come after you for a settlement if the law is on his side. You would need to check abandoned property laws with that.

I would certainly talk with your lawyer. Does your contract specifically say that property left was legally yours?

 

[EthansMom]

I'd ask the attorney. I won't be surprised if you need to send a certified letter letting each known owner of property (the mother, the brother, the woman) know that if the property is not removed within a certain period of time (say, 30 days), that it will be disposed of. But, certainly check on the laws in your state. Another person I might ask for help would be the county court clerk.

 

[JR6ooo4]

Unless you signed an agreement stating otherwise, whatever is left on YOUR property when the keys were handed to you is now YOURS to do with how you see fit!

Put a large "Everything FREE" sign on your yard and let folks have at it!

In fact, you don't even buy the house. You buy the land and the house comes with it.

Mikeeee

 

[princess momma]

The same thing happened to some friends of ours. They bought the house from a couple that was divorcing, the husband was still living in the house and didn't want to accept the offer or move. When they closed he still had quite a bit of stuff in the house.

I can't recall the exact circumstances, but I do know they weren't allowed to just dump his stuff. I think they had to give him more time to get the junk out, which he eventually did.

 

[hrh_disney_queen]

Years ago when we were getting ready to close on our second house, the owner still had rooms of furniture and junk, clothes, empty liquor bottle, a full unplugged fridge in the garage(South Carolina, August..I was afraid to open it), (you get the picture) still in it. Before our last meeting before closing, I asked our lawyer if we can legally lay claim to the stuff after closing and he said, "No. If it's not written into the selling agreement, it's not yours." So we would be stuck with the stuff until they decided to come and get it.

At the meeting I laid it all out. I said, you will have to get all that stuff out, per our attorneys advisement, or we will not buy the house. The realtor arranged for them to get the stuff they wanted, and then the Salvation Army came through the house and got the rest of the crap out. Needless to say, there was no cleaning involved, but at least we were done with them.

 

[AustinTink]

Ah, sellers and their shenanigans. The day we closed on our last house, we arrived at the house to find the sellers hightailing it out of the driveway and water rushing out the front door!!

Their movers had broken a pipe in the wall when disconnecting the washer. The first floor completely flooded. Hardwood floors were ruined and the walls had to be gutted. We found an amazing real estate lawyer and after 6 months of fighting and another six months of remodeling, we finally moved in.

Unfortunately, the smell was off the rose by then and we stayed less than 2 years. We never could shake that horrible beginning.

 

[LUVMYTINK]

We went thru this last year when we bought our home.

This is a post to friends about what we were going thru at that point:

We are still in our old crappy house as of tonight.
We were supposed to close this morning, but since the dang seller didn't get off her butt till the last minute to get the repairs done the VA appraiser had to wait to come back out. They have to turn in their approval paperwork before 12pm the day before so all the paperwork can be finished by the law office, which they could have done Tues. morning, but the repair work WAS STILL BEING DONE!!!!

So now we are supposed to close on Fri. meanwhile the water and electric are already in our name and the phone gets transfered tomorrow. Oh yeah they still haven't canceled their cable or internet so I can't set ours up.
Oh we were supposed to get the keys this afternoon and do a walk thru cause our realtor told them that we had people lined up to help us move in tomorrow. Guess what? It's after 5pm and they are STILL MOVING OUT!!!!!

LATER THE SAME DAY:
Update:

Got off the phone with our realtor about an hour ago-- VA appraiser noticed two minor things that didn't get fixed so the contractor is coming out tonight to fix them then the appraiser will be out by 10am tomorrow to give ok and get paperwork in, in time for a closing on Friday. The seller will be out by the morning, the people that were supposed to help them move bailed so they have been packing up the 2 PODS by themselves (they would have been done earlier if they started packing as soon as we did ).
We will be doing a walk thru at 10:30 tomorrow and then get the keys and can start moving in (ABOUT FRICKIN TIME)

Oh the reason they didn't cancel their cable yet---- "we have little kids and didn't want to be without cable until we moved"
Are you kidding me? Uh genius you can set up a disconnect date for a certain day you want they don't automatically shut it off if you don't want them too. By the way you were supposed to be out of the house ALREADY And we have kids too that's why we wanted to set up the transfer appt for before the weekend.


--We arrived at 10am the next morning to do the walk thru and they we still moving out. I don't think they finished till about 3pm and our realtor mentioned something about making them clean or hire someone to clean the house before we moved in but we had, had it with this seller that we just wanted her out of the house and we would deal with the mess ourselves...little did we know that they were complete and total pigs and I spent the majority of 2 days cleaning spiders & egg sacs out of kitchen cabinets and stuck on dog hair off the base boards

 

[Liberty Belle]

When we bought our house the owner had passed away and the children were clearing it out. There were four tvs left (this woman had cable in every room), a Thompsonville dining set, two sofas, three easy type/queen anne chairs, a bed, two dressers, and a vanity, and loads of pictures, etc. The realtor was going to take it to goodwill because the owner's children said they didn't want any of it. We kept it and sold most of it on Craigs list. There are still a few things in our garage that we need to either sell at a garage sale or take to goodwill.

We had to have a lot of stuff done to our house, too, so it was kind of a pain, but we just moved it all into the garage. Luckily almost all of it was decent stuff and no junky papers and such. I feel for you.

 

[emma'smom]

Wow...I had know idea that this could happen. When we moved into our house, we insisted that we do a walk through with our realtor on the way to our closing to assure that everything was moved out and that it was broom-swept clean. It was.....and the previous owners had even left a housewarming plant and a nice note welcoming us to town.

I just assumed this was typical (not the plant, but the condition). They did return to dig up a rose bush a few weeks later that we had verbally discussed (never written into a contract). It was planted as a memorial to a child they had lost---so of course they would want to take it with them.

They actually left behind a coat rack that they had planned to take, but upon trying to remove it from the wall discovered that it would have really left a huge damaged spot on the paint--so they left it. We still have it up, but if we ever change the mudroom, I'll send it on to them as they must have wanted it.

 

[Disney Doll]

We bought an estate. House was clean except for a bedroom set in the spare room. We moved it to the basement, called the nieces and told them they had until X date to pick it up or we'd donate it. They came & got it. We had done a final walk through the day before, so we knew the house was OK other than that.

 

[luvmy3]

We did a walk through before our closing and there was stuff still in the family room and garage. We stipulated that it had to be out before the closing or it would be considered ours. They cam and emptied the family room which looked like mostly junk but they left a piano in the garage that became our property, although we did contact them after to see if the needed to make arrangements to pick it up. They said we could just keep it.

 

[pirateofthecarolinas]

Your realtor should have done a walk thru if you weren't able to before closing. Money should have been set aside for removal of items left by sellers. I'm afraid your realtor really let you down.