In fact, just last week, Sacramento buyers discovered the home they had just purchased was left in the same condition as it was during the home inspection: dirt and filth everywhere, trash scattered all over the floors, and personal items, mostly broken things, were left in almost every room. The sellers, in their haste to depart, didn't even leave the keys.
It was as if the sellers blamed the buyers for bailing them out of the foreclosure proceedings by doing a short sale. The buyers were not at fault for the sellers' failure to make their mortgage payments. They simply wanted to buy an affordable home in a decent neighborhood . . . read more about Cleaning the House After Selling.
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At the time of writing, Elizabeth Weintraub, DRE # 00697006, is a Broker-Associate at Lyon Real Estate in Sacramento, California.
Comments
When I sold my mother’s house where I’d been living, the buyer gave me literally 24 hours notice that she wasn’t going to back out on the sale after all. She wanted to close late in the day on a Friday so I couldn’t close on my new house till the following Monday. Because the sale had been in doubt, I hadn’t been able to tell the movers when (or if) I would be moving, and they couldn’t come till Tuesday.
That Tuesday was chaos, and because I couldn’t be there to do a final walk-through, the movers left a lot of stuff behind. I went back Tuesday night and got a carload of stuff and ONE cat – the other one hid. I had to go back early Wednesday morning to get the second cat and take a carload with me.
Later that day the buyer called my realtor in a fury saying the house was a pit. What did she expect, and why did she care? She was going to tear the house down!! But she told my realtor that if I didn’t have the rest of my stuff out by midnight, she would call the sheriff.
There were three carloads of stuff left. I spent hours on Wednesday night loading my car and then dragging the rest to my next-door neighbor’s garage. And the place was still a pit when I left.
My neighbors were kind enough to load the rest in their two cars and bring it to my new house. And if that woman thought I was going to clean up after what she had put me through, she was out of her mind.
Can you tell I’m still angry?
Hi Marcia: Gosh, I’m sorry. Some buyers can be totally unreasonable. When I sold my home in Minneapolis and prepared to drive across country, the buyer of my home was over there in the middle of the afternoon (before possession) changing the locks on the doors as I was moving out my stuff! She demanded I vacuum the second floor and insisted I take the trash can down to the street, barking orders like a cop. It was at that point I said good riddance and drove away, leaving her with an unvacuumed floor and a full trash can in the drive.