When I bought my house in Chicago I don’t remember anything in the contract regarding everything being cleared out. The sellers hadn’t lived in the house long, and apparently never used the basement. When we did the final walk through the rest of the house was empty, but the basement was full of stuff that the owners before the sellers had left behind. Mostly it was lumber, paint, and building supplies, some of which was actually useful.
When I sold the house, however, the contract specified that it had to be broom clean. After I moved everything I was keeping out of the place, I called one of those places that hauled junk away and had them clear it out.
Interesting because I would say on the oven/range and fridge my experience on the East Coast across a number of real estate transactions is almost inverted. The oven/range are almost always left, and the fridge is probably left 90% of the time. Washer/dryer however are almost never left around here that I’ve seen, either.
When I did my final walk through (on the advice on a lawyer helping me with the closing), I remember finishing up, saying to my then wife, ‘we can back out if you want’, because the contract included the washer and dryer. They decided to take the washer and dryer and buy us a brand new one. On the one hand, that seems nice, on the other hand, they bought us bottom of the line ones and took their mid-grade set with them. They also left them right in the middle of the basement, still in the boxes. If I wasn’t handy, I probably would have had to spend a few hundred dollars to get them hooked up.
But that wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was the stuff I didn’t notice during the walk through, namely, all the crap they left behind. 30ish empty paint cans (not ‘empty’ like they saved them to touch something up, ‘empty’ as in I could see brush strokes on the bottom of the can). Lots of stuff like that. We filled up our garbage cart with crap they left there every week for the first month or two. PLUS, they kept coming back for stuff. At the closing they said they were going to stop by to pick up a few things they didn’t have time to get. Fast forward about 2 months when we finally called them, told them all their stuff was in the 55gallon drum they left in the backyard and that they need to take that AND get rid of the swing set they were supposed to take (and that was a whole big thing in and of itself).
The only thing they actually did take right after closing…a fucking tree. Yup, they dug up a tree and took that. Not that I cared, but it was just so odd.
Two important things I learned from that experience. Any issues the inspector brings up, get an estimate and get them to cover the cost of having it done. They’re almost certainly not going to do it themselves. When you do the pre-closing walk through, if the house is a mess (or even just full of crap that’ll need to get tossed) consider getting a quote from a maid service or house cleaner and have them pay for that as well. My house would have felt like my house much sooner if I had hired a few people to give the house a good cleaning and haul all the crap to the dump the first weekend I was there.
Having said all that. I’m not sure I had all that much recourse after the papers were signed and as annoyed about it as I still am to this day, it wasn’t that big of a deal.
Oh, and fun fact, just saw the wife’s name pop up on my facebook feed. She’s an anti-vaxxer ER Nurse.
That house had changed owners multiple times, and all of them noticed the barrel in the crawl space but had never investigated it. This new owner wanted it removed, and when the trash people didn’t take it, because it was too heavy, the owner opened it - and called the police, who took things from there.
Heh. I moved in with my gf and sold my house. A month or three later, I was looking for something I knew I had somewhere. My gf helped me search.
After days of searching I had a “Eureka” moment. I may have actually yelled “Eureka”. I told my gf the thing we’d been searching for was in my shed, and I was gonna go get it.
She stopped me, put an arm around my shoulder, and said, “honey it’s been too long, that shed and its contents are theirs”.
It took me a minute, but I eventually rolled my eyes and said, “my shed at work”.
The previous owner was in the hospital. So, we got a reduced price, in exchange for no cleaning. They also left behind, per agreement, some heavy but nice furniture, including a massive roll top desk. Fridge, etc too.
That is funny: in German it is called besenrein, which means literally the same: Besen = broom, rein = clean. And it is in every rental contract I signed so far. Of course, rental is not buying, but it is a standard clause.
But sensible people can talk and reach agreements. We are moving out of our rented flat in Brussels in five weeks and the landlord has agreed to take everything we leave, so we are going to leave chairs, a sofa, a desktop computer, a desk, a television, two beds with matresses, the kitchen half equiped (pots, pans, disches…), some bookshelfs, plants, etc. etc. His kids are leaving home soon and they may want to use this stuff. We are not leaving any debris or junk and the flat will be clean, broom clean actually, but this is of course open to interpretation. The sofa is crap, for instance.
I am not poor, but of course I pick pennies on the sidewalk (much to the chagrin of my lovely wife). They bring good luck . I keep them separately. I have a pot full of them by now.
In my case, I got a net bonus worth of stuff but it did add a lot of work after the closing. While on the way to the closing, my agent and I stopped by for the final*. The previous owner was 95 years old and had been totally independent until he broke a leg or something and he had to sell. I never met him and he’s gone now. The house was still loaded with stuff like an undesired bedroom set and an 800 lb hide-a-bed couch that will probably still be here when I’m 95 myself. The trash area in the alley was piled high with all types of stuff that ‘they’ (a middle aged niece and I don’t know who else) obviously had rushed out in a panic. I don’t think they touched anything in the attic.
But the basement workroom had a bunch of tools and tons of useful plumbing adapters and pipefittings and a great array of assorted nuts & bolts & washers and whatnot that have come in handy many, many times. The shed had a full complement of shovels, rakes, weed pullers, pruning clippers and other non-power tools. No gold coins in the attic but some interesting things to look through, I suppose.
My girl at the time was PISSED.
*While my agent and I were in the basement talking about what to do, we heard someone enter the house and footsteps above. It was the niece who said, “Oh, today is the closing? But there’s still so much to do!” My agent was like, “You shouldn’t even have keys anymore, the closing is in 40 minutes.”
This is a regional thing. There are fun stories of folks moving across the country and winding up with
numberof(appliance) <> 1
afterward, to great surprise. Yes, this should be in the contract.
Since we’re swapping anecdotes:
~15 years ago, I inherited an distant elderly relative. She lived nearish to me (30 miles) and had just been deemed unable to live alone in her apartment, where she’d been for over 30 years. So I got her settled in a retirement community and cleaned out her apartment. This was a horror show, including prescriptions from the 1970s, much dirt, and just stuff, stuff, stuff. She had a piano and, for some reason, two piano benches, both of which were crammed with more stuff. At one point I had just emptied the second one, turned around and saw the first one and thought it was yet a THIRD and almost had a panic attack.
Once I got things more or less under control, there was a bunch of furniture to get rid of. I advertised on Craigslist and sold some, but even though I just wanted it gone, most of it didn’t move. At the end, a guy had emailed me to say he might be interested in a couch (which was listed as free at that point). I didn’t have any other reason to go back there after that day, and he couldn’t come by then, so I finally send him email saying “It’s apartment #n, the door is open; I’ll give it three days before I tell management that I’m out”. And that was that. There was a LOT of crap left, including many bags of trash. I never heard from the management, which I guess doesn’t surprise me, since I wasn’t on the lease and she’d been there so long. I assume they just firebombed the place.
On a much smaller scale, we’ve been in this house over 30 years. About 25 years ago, we had the basement finished. There’s an oak entertainment center down that that I think COULD be brought up the stairs, but I sure wouldn’t want to do it. When we eventually sell, it conveys!
I did this when I moved from the east coast. Basically, when we packed up the moving truck it broke down, and by the time we got a new one we were all so exhausted we didn’t pack as neatly and not everything fit, so I ended up abandoning a bunch of boxes of books and odds and ends (plus, unknown to me, my paintball gear and a tool chest with a bunch of my electric tools…which really hurt later on). Anyway, the consequences is I had to pay a fine…it was like $1000. Other than that, there weren’t any other real consequences. The real estate person said the new owner could have filed a breach of contract and gotten out of buying the house, but considering they were the winner in a bidding war I doubt that was ever a real possibility.
This was in the early 2000’s in Maryland btw…my WAG is it will vary depending on where you are. Haven’t looked at the other answers, but since this actually happened to me I figured I’d chime in.
My dad did an ok job at sawing the top half of an old (and long gone) entertainment center to make basically a flat buffet. It’s about the right height and could hold ‘wide’ vs, probably like 45" plasma or dlp at the time.
I’ve got a workbench like that! When I moved into my house, my dad and I made part of the basement a workshop, and my dad built an absurdly large workbench for it. I’d have to literally remove a door to even get the bench out of the shop, and getting it down the hall and up the stairs would be even more ridiculous.
So it’s either a chainsaw, or leave it behind when I move out of this house.
Years ago, the next door neighbor to my grandmother was a hoarder with garbage piled up inside and out. It had been that was for at least 20 years.
Finally the guy died and the estate sold it to someone who just hauled truckloads of trash to the dump. He said it wasn’t worth looking for anything valuable in it.
The guy who bought the house after it had been flipped spent a ton of money remodeling it, only to have to attempt to have it sold for him while he was in jail awaiting some serious drug charges. I was living in what at been my grandma’s place so I could follow the drama.
If the house is full of junk on the final walk through that is the time to speak up. Or if your contract states leaving the appliances and they are gone you can do something about it. If the buyer does not sign off on the final walk through because something is not right the seller is in breach of contract. And the money is still in escrow and the seller can be forced to comply. But if after escrow has closed and the new owner finds troubles the it can be more difficult. And if may require going to court to get it settled.
Before escrow is closed and all contingincies removed several thing can happen.
When we purchased our new home we had several inspections. One was termite. The inspector found some damage and recommended tenting the house and making some repairs, his cost wad around $4,800. The mechanical inspection was full of problems. Electrical outlet no ground or reversed poliarity, lack of attic insulation, problem with the fan on the HVAC, and quite a few other things. Enough that that we had our realter get an estamate from a contractor based on the inspection. The estamate $24,000. I have the skills to fix many of the problems so I knew I could do it for a lot less. To clear the contingency we countered with requiring a $17,000 credit.
I understand the seller went ballistic. He told his agent that he would not even give us a $7,500 credit all we were wanting was his money. This after our offer was $80,000 over asking. Our agent called us back and told us what the seller had said… We told our agent then lets look for another house. We signed the papers cancelling the deal.
My wife and I talked it over after we signed off and wondered if we had made a mistake. When we 1st started looking at houses they were in the $650,000 range and selling over asking.4 months later they are now going in the $780,000 range. Figured we if we found another house that we liked we would have to pay about $20,000 more than the house we just canceled plus it would need about $100,000 to make it wher we would want it.
At the same time I think the seller’s agent talked to the sellers and told them that they now had a long list of things that would need to be taken care of or let any potential buyer about. And with out hte repairs they would not even get their asking.
The next morning we got a call from our agent. She had gotten a call from the seller’s agent want to know if there was anything they could do to keep the sell, could we comprise. I told my agent we have talked about it and we can drop the credit to $15,000, but tell the seller this is not a negoation it is either a yes or no deal.
About 5 years after my family moved out of the house I grew up in, we thought about the fishing rods (just cheap kids rods) and decided to back and ask about them. It was only a 2 minute drive over so it’s not like we went way out of our way. And, luckily, when we told them who we were, what we were looking for and exactly where they were in the house, that was enough to convince them to let us grab them. Still in the exact same place.
The fishing rods weren’t really all that important, it was just fun to see the house we all lived in for 15 years.
When I sold my first house I was there late on move-out day, with the house completely empty, vacuuming for the last time.
A few weeks later my wife asked about a particular mirror we hadn’t uncovered, and I realized why I had the specific image in my head of me vacuuming - because of the mirror that I’d left on the wall of one room.
Fortunately the new owners weren’t moving in immediately, and the realtors worked it out so we could retrieve it, and it still hangs in my hallway, almost 20 years and 3000 miles across the country later.
. I keep them separately. I have a pot full of them by now.