Would you buy a house that smelled like cat pee...

[Beth76]

Nope we looked at ahouse that was the perfect floorplan but needed updating and smelled of cat urine in the basement. Passed the 1st time. it went to forclosure because they couldn't sell. A builder bought and did it up fabulous but could not get the smell out of the basement. He tried everything including sealing the concrete the smell stayed. It ended up being on the market for over 2 years and he dropped $200,000 off asking price it sold for even less than that. He sold for about $20,000 more than he paid but he put in new kitchen TOL w/ granite, baths, windows, roof, doors, siding, electrical,furnace but the smell couldn't be overlooked. So we passed the 2nd time as well.

Wow, that's crazy.

 

[Mouse House Mama]

Unless the house was free and I was going to tear it down. Otherwise no. I would not buy any home that stunk of animal or smoke.

 

[MsLeFever]

When we were last looking at houses - it was in an area where there has been flooding in the past. We could always count on DS (who isn't shy at all) to holler "It STINKS in here"! The realtor finally stopped showing us homes with any smell.

 

[lilyv]

That's an easy one-Never. If it had been an easy fix, they would have taken care of it.

I'm a cat owner. I am extremely sensitive to cat smells. I scoop the box 1-2x a day.....and I've sold, oh, 6 homes in the past. I just won't allow any home to develop any odor. Never know when we're going to get transferred.

Cat smells are simple to prevent...but once they are allowed to stay, hard to get rid of.

 

[Minnesota!]

Yes, if I could get a substantial reduction that would cover the cost of mitigating the odor. When anyone replaces carpeting, they should replace the padding anyway, because after a time it looses it effectiveness. Subflooring can be roller painted with Kilnz (sp) to seal the odor in. It is effectively an oil based sealant. Same should be true of cement.

We bought our current house in 2004. It REEEEEKED of cat urine. It was DH's aunts house and she let her cats/dog use the DINING ROOM as a litter box. We got the house SUPER cheap (wonder why) otherwise we wouldn't have bought it.

Anyway, we ripped up all the carpeting, the padding, etc (had 20 years (thats how old their cat was!) of cat pee soaked in.)

The hardwood underneath was trashed...warped.

We scrubbed it up really good, replaced what we could ($$), and put KILZ over the top of it.

VOILA! Perfect!

So - if you can get the house SUPER CHEAP, and have them give you $$ for new carpet/padding/KILZ, I would do it.

 

[malibuconlee]

Not unless it was really, really cheap and I could afford to rip up the floors if I had to.

When we bought our house we saw the house in March but didn't close until September. I don't think the previous owner cleaned in those months. When we got the keys after closing there was dog hair everywhere. When it rained the house stunk of dog. It took weeks of cleaning before moving in to get it clean and not smelling like dogs.

You didn't do a final walk-thru before closing? That is customary everywhere I've lived. I would think that the house not being in the condition you had agreed to purchase it in could have nulled the contract.

 

[olena]

No way. When we were house hunting, we walked out of every house that smelled of pets or smoke. I have to breathe and my home is my safe zone.

 

[dcgrumpy]

You didn't do a final walk-thru before closing? That is customary everywhere I've lived. I would think that the house not being in the condition you had agreed to purchase it in could have nulled the contract.

We did but all the hair everywhere wasn't noticeable with the furniture still in it. We didn't notice the smell until it was damp a rainy.

We bought the house in 2004 when the market was going crazy. The value of the house had increased over $50K before we even moved in so we were getting a great deal. Luckily we had a month before we had to be out of our apartment so we had time to clean before moving in.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

I would never buy a house like that.

 

[Green Tea]

No, not unless you have a large budget for replacing flooring. My father bought one to fix and sell. The carpet that was over the floors came out but the smell did not. He ultimately had to pull out all the hardwood and replace it.

 

[POOHDRMR]

No I wouldn't either-I learned the hard way with my house that smells are not that easy to get rid of.I bought my house from a cigar smoker and although we tore up all the carpet and refinished the wood floors,primed everything in kilz odor blocking sealer and have painted many times on damp or humid days my daughter playroom and bedroom still stink like someone was just in it smoking Never again will I buy a house with smoke or pets.

 

[godmother923]

My friends made that mistake. They bought this adorable house.. It was clean and everything seemed to be great. They passed papers and got me and the rest of their friends and family to come over and help clean the house so they could move their stuff in. I was in charge of the kitchen.. Every time I opened a cabinet I was almost knocked over by the smell. I tried everything to get the smell out. They were lucky.. They had friends and a little money left over because the pee had gone through all the cabinets and the only way to gt it out was to rip everything out.. They had to get a brand new kitchen..

 

[kimisabella]

We did - unfortunatley we had to pay top dollar for the house because of the location, and it was right before the housing market started to go about a year and a half ago. We pulled up all the pee drenched carpets, refinished all the wood floors, and scrubbed and repainted every wall in the house. The realtor that sold us the house came over a few weeks after we were finished working on the house and couldn't believe the difference, he said that the smell was completlely gone.

 

[enyaj40]

no way no how not ever

my parents did and i will NEVER forget the stench when they pulled up the rugs

my father almost passed out

it had seeped into and stained the wooden floor and i cannot remember how many times they had to treat it

 

[Sandy22]

No way - not unless I was planning on tearing down the house. You'll never get that smell out.

 

[NotUrsula]

If you included in the offer a proviso that the owner had to escrow the price of professionally replacing the floors and professionally repainting the interior, yes. No do-it-yourself jobs; insist on being able to approve the bids.

Note that is NOT refinishing the floors, but replacing them, down to the joists. Urine soaks into wood, all the way through, and nothing will remove the stain or the odor.

We bought a house under these conditions, though only some of the rooms needed to have the floors replaced. In this case, it wasn't pet urine, it was human, courtesy of the previous owner using the dining room as a bedroom for an incontinent elderly relative. There also was a dog situation on the basement concrete, but only our cat could smell that, so we didn't discover it until after we moved in. (The smell became noticable once we scrubbed, but didn't linger.)

 

[believe]

My sister bought one that smelled of dog, beer, etc. She put in the contract for it to be sanitized. You never would have known it ever smelled once they sanitized it.

 

[Grumpy's Gal]

no way -- you'd have it in some form forever unless you tore out and replaced much more than the carpet.....

 

[KristaTX]

Even if I could get rid of the smell as far as I was concerned, I have 2 very territorial boy kitties with better noses than mine. I am waayyy too afraid that if we moved into a house and my cats got any whiff of cat pee that they would start marking the house for themselves .