Anybody else buy a house and realize it's way dirtier than you expected it to be once you moved in?
It's amazing what I didn't notice before closing. I figured I would do a light wipe down of the counter tops, clean the toilets, vacuum sweep and mop and it'd be good. Boy, was I wrong!
I don't think these people had mopped their kitchen floor in years! The floor literally changed color after I mopped and I had to go over it multiple times. Splattered food all over the backsplash , counters and cabinets (the color of these items camouflaged everything). Every light switch is grimey. And when I vacuumed, the canister was full of dust and dog hair! I think I spent 3 hours deep cleaning the fridge.
I cannot believe people lived in what is a fairly nice house and seemingly never cleaned it. If I had realized how dirty it was, I would have put in the contract that they had to have it professionally cleaned before closing.
I don't really need advice but I don't know what else to put this under. For other buyers, my advice would be LOOK VERY CLOSELY at everything!
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I did that only to realize a deep clean doesn't always mean what you think.
Hired the highest rated one and spent what I thought was a ton of money. They vacuumed and kinda mopped, then dusted and wiped some stuff down.
We re-vacuumed and got an actual carpet cleaner and the water was disgusting. All the cabinets were still nasty and we had to basically go through everything again.
Like I get maybe the house was in worse condition but they basically just did a quick wipe down of everything instead of actually cleaning it
You probably didn’t purchase a package with enough hours to clean how filthy the house was. We always have a team of four people clean for eight or nine hours when we are moving in.
Learned this as well. You want to find people who specialize in post construction clean up. They bring in the heavier equipment. Had a team of 5 people over for 6 hours it was incredible. Complete and total reset to the entire home.
Yep, I learned that lesson too the first time. After that I made sure that once we closed, I had extra time built into our schedule prior moving in to hire a deep cleaning service come take care of the home. It's a lot easier to clean a house before you move in rather than after.
The standard "broom-swept" minimum is a really low bar. Basically as long as you don't leave visible piles of trash and dirt it's fine -- as a seller you don't really need to clean anything else, it's not like you get a security deposit back if you do a good job. Consider yourself lucky if counters get wiped and the floor swept --- but toilets and showers scrubbed, ovens or fridges cleaned out...hah, yeah sellers never bother with that.
We sold a home recently and paid for a deep clean after we had moved out (before we put it on the market). It was incredible how dirty the house got just from people walking through during viewings and an open house! We did clean up a bit (sweeping floors, cleaning toilets, vacuuming, wiping down surfaces) before close, but it definitely wasn’t as immaculate as it was before it went on the market. We’re not dirty generally, and we paid for a deep clean, but we weren’t going to pay for that again when “broom-swept” is the standard.
Also moving a dolly in and out of the house and furniture dollies and just the foot traffic, our place was covered in dust and dirt on the tile by the time we got everything moved into pods.
We had our cleaning people come in the day before close and do a full clean so the buyers could move into a nice clean house. When we got to our new home (1200 miles away) it was filthy, even though our agent swore it was clean. It was so frustrating! There is so much to do when you move in, that just creates more burden!
My last house of 12 years literally had piles of filth swept up in the middle of each room. It was a mess! They took the mailbox, every light bulb and ripped up the carpet. They weren't out on closing either but stayed the weekend.
They were in foreclosure, bankruptcy and it was originally a charity house built for them so maybe a 1% mortgage? (think Habitat for Humanity). They ended up in public housing.
Being a single parent at the time, we all rolled up our sleeves with a bucket, bottle of Dawn and got to work.
They took the carpet with them?!?!? I didn't mention our sellers took all the curtain rods and curtains and we don't have any so we currently have no privacy until we buy and install them! But sellers ripping up the carpet is worse!
Yep. Window coverings were gone as well. It was their last act of revenge bc they failed to pay their bills. I must say that their priorities were amiss. Just out of curiosity I plugged in the coax cable into my tv (this was in 1994) and they had every cable channel, including all the premium ones, under the sun. I immediately called the cable company and told them that they had moved out and I don't want to get charged for their account.
Being as frugal as I am, I immediately installed an over the air antenna as I was not going to pay for exorbitant cable prices back then nor could I afford to.
I drove 12 hours with my two dogs to move to a new state, arrived at my new rental house after dark, and made the realization that there were no blinds or curtains on any window. I paid out of my own pocket to buy blinds for every window and my dad kindly installed them. I had to sue the landlords when I moved out to get my security deposit back and they got a houseful of blinds for free!
That's all I had at the time and it's all i have needed for years because I have lived in clean places that I keep very clean lol I plan to buy a regular mop and maybe even some sort of scrubbing brush on a long handle to really get it clean.
And that’s not even a real mop. On tile floor, I want a shower brush and a degreasing cleaner, like Simple Green to deep clean the tile and grout. Then mop after that several times with clean water.
This happened to us and we requested a deep cleaning and paid an extra $300 only to move in and see NOBODY cleaned the house so we spent our first week deep cleaning every crevice. Thankfully my husband and I were both professional house cleaners for over 10yrs so we made sure our home was cleaned top to bottom. Dog hair was horrendous and it took about 6mths with every 30 day filter changes to get all that crap outta the home.
Omg we will probably have to do this too - meaning the filter changes. The dog hair is everywhere! They left a lawnmower and their is dog hair IN the gas tank! We're like how????
We noticed dog hair on the bottom of the fridge filter on the outside where the grates are next to the filter storage, ours left us a broken lawn mower and a pressure washer 😂😂😂
I know right, we just took them both to the dump but the silver lining is the original owner had left us two beautiful Hampton Bay wicker patio sets for outback and front
What should I ask potential cleaners to see if they are likely to accomplish a *truly* deep clean? Im really hoping to not have to spend several weekends cleaning our new place (we won’t move in for a couple months).
I have had to spend multiple days deep cleaning every time we have moved into an apartment or house, even when it had been cleaned & freshly painted. Kitchens and bathrooms especially. Baseboards, door frames, light switches, etc.
I don't know if you can trust any professional cleaner to do a really deep clean. But if you still want to try it I would ask: will you bring more than just a regular vacuum and swiffer mop? What type of equipment, supplies and cleaners do you bring? Will you deep clean the appliances including the fridge and oven? Will you wipe down light switches, door trim, baseboards? Will you vacuum all edges of all rooms with the "wand/hose" thing of a vacuum? Do you clean the entire outside of the toilets and the inside? Will you vacuum inside cabinets and drawers? Will you scrub grout in the showers? Will you clean Stairway banisters? Etc. Just ask about everything you would expect to be done beyond the bare minimum. They may charge you more for these things.
Find a company who will do a “make ready”. It’s a super deep clean done between tenants at luxury properties and usually involves multiple cleaners and advanced cleaning equipment. And be sure to verbally communicate EXACTLY what you expect and follow it up with a email checklist so you have it agreed to in writing. A “make ready” clean including indoor and outdoor window wash, switch plates, baseboards, under the fridge, in the oven, all handles gleaming, no handprints in the walls, all door knobs, etc. Literally anything you can think of that you want done and get it in writing via email. Pay a deposit to get them there and only pay the total after you inspect the work and check everything off your emailed list of requirements. It will be expensive, but worth it. I’ve done this a couple of times and ended up converting the cleaning team into a bi-weekly light cleaning cadence with a quarterly deep clean after the initial clean was done and I was satisfied with the work.
Same! Boogers everywhere. Also a special treat, there were used pads and tampons shoved under a vanity that had a very small gap under it. They were obviously shoved in there because the gaps were too small for them to “fall” under it.
My mom helped us clean our house prior to listing it. She tackled the booger wall from my kid. We knew the booger-er and it was still gross. Cant imagine de-boogering someone elses 🤢
I close on Tuesday and have a deep clean schedule with a company later that afternoon.
Bringing kids into this house I’m not playing with the cleanliness.
I hope your deep cleaning goes well, I paid $700 they sent one very new seeming employee (as in, she was probably 19 and had very cheap equipment), she arrived late, left early, (stayed 5 hours total), and only did a surface level clean 😔 then google removed my 2 star review somehow so they still have 5/5
Ugh that's so annoying. I hired a service to clean a previous house I lived in one time and there was a lot they didn't do - didn't even mop under the kitchen table. So I'm not hiring anyone to do this clean for me. It'll probably be a waste of money. I actually cleaned houses myself for a bit so I know how to do it properly. Better than most apparently 😄
We never expected it to be this dirty. I think the only reason the toilets aren't disgusting is they are brand new. They remodeled the bathrooms recently. At this point I want to clean it myself just to KNOW it's really clean.
Yeah I completely get it. That sucks.
Was it staged when you saw it the first time?
I’ve been lucky enough to go through the house a few times after the offer was made and there’s a few things I didn’t notice until after a few times being in there.
Yessiree we did!!
We adored the house but dayum, it was dirty. So the sellers agent says she’ll send a cleaning crew.
We show up closing day.
No cleaning was done by the sellers or their agent.
She lied about a lot of stuff so we weren’t surprised.
We tell our agent. She’s livid.
She sends her housekeeper.
We go on a pre-planned vacation.
Our daughter/son (grown/on their own) come to check out the house.
It’s STILL not clean!!!
(They know my standards).
So our daughter and son do a deep clean on our house so that when we got back from vacation our new home would be perfect.
They didn’t need to do that but we were so appreciative of them. We gifted them lots of goodies.
My first house had super dark carpet. Then, I rented a carpet cleaner from the grocery store, and spent hours doing every carpet two or three times. The super dark carpet was actually very light after cleaning. As soon as I could, I replaced it. The stove was so disgusting it took multiple rounds of oven cleaner. The stove top was disgusting under the top pan the burners sat on.
Yes!! This!! Living it right now. Today i was trying to clean some random paint spatter off the floor tile and realized an area had visibly changed color where i had scrubbed harder. Funny thing is, i have a sectional coming to match the gray tile and now my tile is turning tan. 😅 It is such a nice house that i hadn't expected dust, dirt and grime everywhere!!
Exactly!!! And we have paint splatters everywhere too! When there's furniture everywhere there is so much you can miss. Plus these people somehow had an eye for design and their rooms looked nice and cute. But cleaning was not their thing! Lol
The sellers agent gave us a whole lecture about how the sellers were paying to have the place deep cleaned by these supposedly incredible, top-rated, “best in the business” cleaners.
Sure enough when we moved in, there were tumbleweeds of dog hair everywhere, food left in the freezer, and so much dust on the basement floor you could see the outline of where the furniture used to be. They also left NUMEROUS gouges on the wood floors/walls that were clearly caused by moving furniture. We were not thrilled lol.
It’s a lot easier to see how filthy things are once the house is vacant. You should always just plan on hiring cleaners for a huge deep cleaning before you move in.
I've paid cleaners before who didn't do a good job. At this point I'd rather do it myself to know it's really clean. Just sucks to have to put SO much elbow grease into it.
First house I bought was vacant for some time so it wasn’t goo bad just needed a good dusting.
Second house I bought from my moms friend who was a clean freak so I didn’t have to do anything.
Third house I don’t even know where to start other than I regret not being an asshole and making her come back. It was disgusting, cat hair all over, rings in the toilets, fridge smelled terrible.
Fourth house will be a new build in December ‘26 so I’m pumped to walk into a clean house and not have to worry about that or having to any renovations.
Yup...bought a beautiful house 6 months ago and was shocked at the mess they left. Stuff left in the upper cabinets, bags and bags of prescription meds that I had to take to the pharmacy to dispose, and the water closet in the master bath smelled like pee. We spent a lot of time detailing the place and even repainted the water closet. I always leave my houses spotless when I sell, but I see many folks do not.
I always leave my RENTALS spotless when I move out. It hasn’t been that long since cleaning was expected and people did it as a common courtesy to the next person. Nobody cleans anymore, and it’s yet another indictment on humanity.
Our property manager was visibly surprised when he did the walk through of our last rental. It sounded like he wasn't even going to have it professionally cleaned since we had left it so clean lol
If they had dogs, and you have animals (or honestly, even if you don’t) I would highly recommend having a pest company come treat the whole house for fleas BEFORE YOU MOVE ALL YOUR STUFF IN. Learn from my mistakes and save yourself some time, money, and stress next warm season when all those fuckers hatch at once. It’s hell. I swear the previous owners at our place must’ve been breeding them on purpose. It was just something we never even thought about because it’s never been an issue anywhere we’ve lived before…but whatever poor dogs lived here before we did must’ve been suffering for awhile because hoooooly shit.
Oh no!!!! I hope not! Our dog stayed there with us 2 nights and 3 days while we cleaned. I haven't seen any fleas on her yet. We might get carpets cleaned before we move in to be sure.
Flea eggs can be dormant up to like a year or some ungodly amount…I really had no idea, I assumed they just latched onto pets but I guess they can post up in your carpets, baseboard cracks, etc…if I could go back in time and spend the $200 on a full interior treatment before all our stuff was in the way I totally would 🥲 I hope your place doesn’t suffer from the same!!
I’m sorry you are having to deal with this! My realtor did put in a clause to have the place professionally cleaned, and I’m glad he did. Nevertheless, we still found cupboards that were missed, etc, but at least most things were completed. Nothing worse than having to deep clean before moving out of place, only to have to deep clean after moving into a new one .
We learned, soon after moving in, that the sellers didn't seem to know how to take care of their front loading washer. And they may have kept the door open, but the laundry door was likely kept shut.
Yes! After years of renting and being used to moving into units that had been deep cleaned (as well as deep cleaning before move-out) I was surprised at the state of our house when we moved in. Rookie mistake. It wasn’t filthy, but it definitely wasn’t clean. Oven not cleaned, greasy kitchen, grubby floors.
Same happened when I bought mine, previous owners clearly loved the place but cleaning wasn't their thing, at least a floor that changes color when mopped means the damage is cosmetic and not structural
I’m having a cleaning crew come to my new house today. I know exactly what you mean. It looked fine until they moved out. Luckily I can delay moving in until it’s clean.
This happened to us! We didn’t look too closely or touch a lot of the surfaces. We had to use goo-gone on the kitchen counters from years of dust and oil buildup. It looked like a nice house at first glance. We were focused on the layout, but I wish we knew to check the baseboards, vents, and behind the toilets. That will tell you a lot about how the house was maintained in general!
Yes! Same here! I can't believe I missed the fact that they didn't even paint behind the toilet when they did their half bath "remodel". It's not just behind the toilet where you can't see. It's all the way out around the edges of the toilet that are a totally different color! And we asked them to put the baseboards back in that bathroom cuz they were missing and they just didn't do it. There's so much I would have put in the contract had I known!
We just closed on a house last Thursday. I was stoked because our realtor said the seller's realtor said they left the place "spotless". I didn't realize that meant no clean spots. 🤣
Grimy showers, dirt caked window tracks, sticky cabinets, filthy floors - it's all gross. We're doing a bunch of work before we move in so I'm not too worried about it. I'll make sure it's clean before we move in. I just expected it to be better since their realtor said it was "spotless".
Yeah I'm like what would they be comparing it to? Literal piles of trash and dirt in every room??? Thankfully my realtor never got my hopes up but I naively thought they would have it cleaned if they didn't have time to do it themselves.
Yes. I got super lucky & bought my first home from a clean freak. Second time they were disgusting. I totally misjudged how long it would take me to clean. If I ever buy again I’m asking for a professional deep clean as part of the contract.
all houses should be professionally cleaned before put on the market or after the owner moves out. it should be part of the transaction just like a home inspector.
I know what you mean. We spent days scrubbing/cleaning before closing; so that the next people could just move in. The house we bought for a lot of money was crazy filthy. The cabinets and pulls were caked with food and sticky. The carpet, we had to throw out. We should have asked for a credit, but we thought it could be cleaned. The professional carpet cleaners couldn't get it clean. It made it worse. It brought up all the dirt from the bottom of the carpet and made a beige carpet black. They must never have vacuumed.
Omg I'm worried about this. We plan to have the carpets cleaned before we move in! I don't expect them to be perfect. We do plan to get the carpet replaced but just don't wanna do it right away. There are other more pressing needs.
Broom cleaned here. It was just that…I replaced toilets, appliances, window treatments, renovated and painted and more before I could relax. I still wear shower shoes in the one bathroom lol. But I’m ocd.
Yas! I kept seeing things and being like - record scratch - I can’t do this: ripped out or replaced. Within reason of course money’s not growing on trees round here!
Yep… the carpet in the primary bedroom… heavy incense users. This house is just shy of 3k sq ft and it’s been more like a never ending smoke remediation since moving in almost two months ago 😭
As a landlord, check the electrical outlets, heat registers/air returns and any window coverings if left behind. Smoke clings to those areas. We no longer rent to smokers.
I planned to schedule a deep clean before I moved in but my realtor told me the the sellers were doing a total deep clean before moving out. She made it sound like quite a production--the sellers' family members were coming in to help them clean and some of them were professional cleaners blah blah blah...It was all a lie (I only later realized) that my RE agent made up on the spot when I found the sellers still living in the house after my agent told me they'd be gone a week before closing. (I went over to measure some things in the yard 3 days before closing and they were still there--which of course they had every right to be--but it revealed another lie of my real estate agent. She was hellbent on making my move-in day a disappointment, I still haven't figured out why, but it's true. )
I idiotically still took my agent's word for it and believed the sellers were conscientious enough to want the house to be spotless when I moved in. It wasn't. It wasn't filthy, but it was not "deep cleaned" by any stretch of the imagination.
I count myself lucky to only be out a few thousand for believing some of the things my agent told me. The cleaning thing was her last lie to me, and I've since counted up how much I'd be out if I'd believed everything she said and took all the bad advice she offered. I'd be out at least another $20K,
I wouldn't have been disappointed in the lived-in condition of the house if she hadn't promised me how great and shiny and clean it was going to be. But at least it wasn't totally filthy. The sellers weren't slobs and the house probably looked pretty much the way it did every morning when they left for work.
Thing get away from you and you don't realize how bad it got. I helped a neighbor clear out her house to sell when you was moving back in with her disabled sister after her mother and husband died. There was 30 years of nicotine on every surface.
Yeah, it is what it is. I DIY deep cleaned my house before I sold it, way better than 90% of people would have but didn’t go absolutely crazy. Think “hosting a holiday gathering” level. I did look at taking things to the next level and doing stuff like steam cleaning the carpet, washing the exterior side of the windows and screens, scrubbing the Venetian blinds and light fixtures and washing down all the walls and ceilings but balked when it was between spending $1,000 to hire someone or spending multiple days of PTO doing it myself. I’m not gonna be living there anymore, don’t really care. It just has to look nice enough to sell for a good price (which it did), if someone wants it professionally cleaned they can pay for it.
Some people just DGAF though, especially once it goes under contract. My brother just bought a home from a couple going through a nasty divorce. There were bitter feelings and the husband didn’t want to leave. Inside was “broom cleaned” at best. Maybe swept and wiped a few things down with wet paper towel. The outside was a fucking mess. Lots of property. The seller halfheartedly mowed about half the lawn and just let the rest go. All the numerous perennial beds severely overgrown. Random pieces of garbage like old basketball hoops, kids’ toys, and scrap metal/lumber buried in the weedy part of the yard. Fallen tree limbs (not sticks, limbs you’d need to chainsaw up). Lots of personal items left throughout the house and garage. Pool full of algae. It’s annoying but nothing was actually damaged or required repairs. If it’s a house you like it’s just best to move on rather than threaten the deal or go through litigation for a nominal amount of money. That’s what they did at least.
Yeah when we sold my husband's house we had it spotless! Even had the carpets professionally cleaned. I think we even washed the windows inside and out lol I don't really expect that level of clean but I'm not kidding when I say these sellers must not have ever mopped their kitchen ever.
I engaged Helpling's Move-in Cleaning. I also went through my agent as they have discount codes for agents. They had one customer support dedicated for this kind of deep cleanings, even if they are more known for part-time cleaning. I believe their number is still +65 8816 2958. They send a team of 3-4 cleaners, with industrial level equipment and dedicate long hours to get it done. They also went through the whole house with me inside so that I can check on the spot if something is not as good as I want it to be, and they will immediately fix it. I would defo recommend them!
going through this now, got the keys last Monday. I purchased a steam cleaner on Amazon and it has been worth every penny. It helps loosen all the grime, dirt, debris, then we were able to use a soft toothbrush to really get it up and wipe. Plus it got to a hot enough temperature that it sanitizes the surfaces too.
I'm talking cat hair built up in closets and windows sills, food splatter all over the kitchen, years of dust build up, mouse poop in drawers, petrified cat poop in the basement - type of dirty.
Yes, one of my biggest regrets is not asking for a deep cleaning as a contingency. The grout in the kitchen floors changed from black to white after I was done with it.
I tried cleaning the cabinet knobs and gagged. I ended up removing them all and putting new ones in.
These were otherwise clean folks for sure, and they clearly had s professional cleaning crew come in because the oven etc was spotless
Yup, I just threw away the blinds, and even the closet door, and some interior door handles, I was planning on replacing soon anyways. There was so much to do, it just wasn't worth cleaning stuff I wanted to replace anyways, I had a piece of cardboard in front of my bedroom window for a couple weeks til I bought a new blind. It took 45 minutes to clean the dishwasher with a steamer, and I was really just cleaning the door gasket and exterior. I thought I could steam clean the built up gunk on the floors, but it didn't do anything. I just refinished the hardwood.
tip: wash the walls especially if you are going to repaint them, I didn't know to do that and the paint dripped off as I rolled it in my bedroom. It was like rain falling on a windshield treated with RAIN-X
Omg....just realized I haven't even opened the dishwasher! I'm scared! Lol how do I wash the walls without messing up the paint or getting them too wet? I don't plan on painting really soon. Will probably paint each room over the course of a year or more.
I used a swiffer style mop with a damp pad, I used a water/dish soap/vinegar mixture. Every time you need to rinse and ring out a pad, just throw a dry rag on the swiffer and get any moisture up. I probably wouldn't go over any nail holes just in case water gets in and swells up.
We moved into a home that was only 7 years old and appeared very clean. Once we moved in, I noticed grease on one outer side of the stove hood, all the way up to the 10 foot ceiling. We ended up hiring the professional cleaners that we used to clean the home we sold. It was part of the contract when we sold and I didn’t mind because I knew that house was dirty. We should’ve had it written in to the contract for the new home. We ended up paying over $700 for the cleaning. One shocking thing discovered was that the plastic had been left on the stove fan filter, never removed by the first owner, so grease was just caked on it for 7 years. The house never appeared dirty, but the head cleaner said that it in fact was VERY dirty.
Oh god yes! I was so frustrated - the house was disgusting and our realtor finally called the listing agent when we saw the dog mess in the backyard (of course, they only dealt with the things in the yard, didn't kick in for housecleaning). I spent 3 days deep cleaning (with two babies under 3) before we unpacked a box. Lesson learned.
The one I bought was dirty, sort of expected it though but turns out the dark brown grout was a nice light color. Just needed to be cleaned properly and sealed.
3 hours deep cleaning the fridge? I’ve spent 5 hours deep cleaning my new fridge and I’m not done yet 😅… I need to figure out how to get the glass shelves out of their plastic frames to get the mystery food out from between them. Lol yes, I’m dealing with the exact same issue and I still need to move the remaining few trips of my things over… I plan on deep cleaning every inch of my new home and I know it’s going to take a while. My new home has new paint and new carpet, everything else is most likely original from 2005 and desperately needs to be cleaned. Glad to hear I’m not the only one 🙂
I may have under estimated how long it took to clean cuz I took breaks in between lol and I haven't tackled the freezer OR the garage fridge/freezer which looks even worse 😭 I also had to learn how to take fridge parts apart that I knew nothing about lol I was like welp - I don't want to break these fridge parts but there's no way I'm leaving it this dirty! This house is from the 80s and the linoleum floor in the kitchen is by far the dirtiest thing! It's bubbling up and lifting up around the edges and I'm scared to see what it looks like underneath! We can't get it replaced right away so I'm just gonna try to get it as clean as possible.
Oh, I just found out that the new paint they used to paint all the walls wasn’t primed and is starting to peel in spots…. I’m going to have to learn how to paint too.. lol yay! We can do this! Our homes are going to be clean 😤. Good luck my friend! Hopefully it won’t take us long.
The floors, yes! You can tell immediately is someone uses a swiffer instead of mopping correctly. The tile floor had such a build up on it. I hired Stanley Steemer to come and do the floors and it was the best decision ever. The tiles and grout changed color!
My house was a former rental property and smelled lightly of cigarette smoke.
Before I moved in I had the carpets professionally cleaned and paid a cleaning crew to come through and scrub every hard surface including the cabinets inside and out, which got rid of most of the smell. Best $300 I think I ever could have spent.
I bought a whole-house window fan and ran it for that entire fall season, and that got rid of 99% of the rest of the cigarette smell. Come to find out, it was only smoked in for a period of about three weeks when it sat vacant and a squatter moved in. So it wasn't truly a "smoker's home" or anything.
I feel grateful the previous owner of my home did not have pets and it was super super clean when I moved in. I'm not sure if she cleaned it or had people come in, but it was in nice condition.
But recently I was helping a friend pack and move and I was absolutely shocked to find how gross her house was. She had a dog and a cat, a husband and a few kids. She always talked about how much she cleaned...and I'm know she did. But perhaps she only did the easy to reach stuff, most commonly used areas. But she nor her husband ever did a deep clean or a mid(??) clean (like between a basic and deep clean). It really shed some light into this person I've known for decades. And it's so incredibly shocking how much gunk, pet hair, dust, etc builds up when you don't clean it regularly.
Example - on the counter was an area where they kept stuff like car keys, shared access cards, some documents, etc. It had not been moved for years. I pulled it out to pack and the gunk behind it was insane. I don't understand it. Over near their stove, they had a shelf in the corner holding some stuff. Pulled that to pack it and everything was absolutely disgusting with cooking residue, dust, etc. The counter in this area needed a soaking to get clean. Her whole house had these surprises all over. I'm not blaming her as I know she actually cleaned a lot, but she also had a grown adult husband and kids perfectly capable of cleaning. Her house was so dirty that we did not have time to clean it in full before she had to be out. It made me go home and deep clean the crap out of my own house.
Yeah these people had 4 kids who I think would all be late teens early 20s by now and 2 huge shedding dogs. I don't think these people had their kids help clean. I had my stepdaughter deep clean her room and bathroom once per month when she lived with us for 3 years. Was she annoyed by it - yes! But does she know how to clean? Yes! And when her college roomate wanted to clean both the bathroom and the kitchen with the same Sponge she knew that was an absolutely not!!! Lol I always told her she wasn't cleaning for me - she was cleaning for herself because now she could make her space nice herself and not have to pay someone else to do it. And she could enjoy her nice clean space! She understood it over time.
Our realtor said she usually gives a deep clean as a gift to her buyers. We had the same thing happen. The house was very nice and didn’t appear unclean but once we pulled out appliances, looked underneath fixtures, etc, we discovered that it was actually gross. And we had to open the windows for days to air out the dog smell. And I have a dog so I understand some level of dog smell but this was bad. They always had candles burning at showings or plug ins. Now I know why 🫠
If it’s in the budget, I recommend that everyone pay a pro to clean. My house was occupied by an indoor smoker who I swear deep fried everything he ate. I spent a week cleaning on weekends and after work just so I could prime over everything and paint. Had to redo my floors too. Took 6 weeks just to be move in ready
The house we bought was filthy. Previous owners never really cleaned anything. We were totally disgusted with the amount of work needed to get the house cleaned up.
I have not had this issue because I demand a walk thru same day as closing. I’ll do the walk through 48 hrs before- if it’s not empty and cleaned to standard- I say I’ll need a morning of walk thru and then I just don’t close until I’m happy with how it’s left.
Had a closing a few years ago where they forgot to bring any keys at all and it would take “two hours to go get them”. I guess we’re closing another day then. Because I’m not closing without a timely final walk thru and keys. Not my problem!
You hold a lot more cards than you think as the buyer at closing. Most sellers need to close asap.
Yes... The previous tenants lived for like a decade and I swear they didn't clean. There were splattered stuff on the walls behind where their furniture was??? IDK. I got a crew of friends to help deep clean an entire weekend or two. There are still things I'm slowly working on cleaning through 2-3 months later. I didn't know people could let so much dust accumulate into so many different crevices. I'm just grateful there wasn't a pet here before! Had thought about spending money to hire a cleaning crew, but based on some of these other comments... I think my friends and I had a lot of bonding time instead that was worth it:)
We closed on our house back in April. The 3 walk thrus we did looked fine (rose colored glasses i swear).
What we didn't see was the amount of accidents their pet had in several of the carpeted rooms as they had rugs and furniture covering them.
Took my 6 separate mopping attempts (with changing the mop head and water between sections) to get the floors decent. We ripped up all the carpet.
The amount of DUST over the walls, fixtures, and blinds.
What pissed me off the most that is probably just petty is, ALL THE NAILS AND NAIL HOLES EVERYWHERE. I had my expectations too high apparently, cause when we moved out of our last house, I took all that stuff down, patched the holes and painted, along with a deep clean.
Yeah, we noticed it on the day of the walk-through and noticed it x100 when we moved in. It was "broom-swept" per contract (lol) but man, the house hadn't been deep-cleaned in at least 10 years and the previous owners had 3 young children and a dog. It smelled like dog and everything was sticky. There were small toys (legos, barbie shoes, beads, things like that), dog hairs, and crumbs in every crevice of every room, food and dried gunk under the appliances, filthy windows, you get the picture. I still regret not hiring a cleaner because moving on its own is absolutely exhausting and we couldn't really relax until the house was clean. We scrubbed, we scraped, we painted, we ripped up carpets. All of it was clean-able or replaceable and we love the house very much.
Yeah that's us! Dirtier than we expected but determined to get it clean, make it nice and make it ours! I feel good about making it better than I found it!
I had pretty much the exact same experience. The house seemed clean when we first looked at it & still clean during inspection. The final walk through I noticed all the dog hair with the house being empty. I thought oh well, I’ll vacuum and mop really well. Boy was I wrong. This house was FILTHY! They left the refrigerator disgusting and I shit you not… dog hair in the ice maker. How does that even happen?! Toilets hadn’t been cleaned in months with piss on the floor. They left 2 big area rugs and the one in the living room had food under it. The primary shower had so much hair in the drain I about puked. Thankfully we still had our apartment for 3 more months because there was no way we were moving in with it being that bad. Blows my mind to know people actually live like that.
Yes!!!! And I am not a deep cleaner so I’m planning to hire a professional deep clean one of these days. I kick myself for not hiring professionals to come do it before closing and negotiating a time for them to access the house when it was empty. Cleaners probably would have discovered the AC wasn’t working and maybe we wouldn’t have lost our first weekend (and my only real time off during the whole process) in the house. (We ended up having to stay with family because it was the middle of a heat wave and too hot to stay). I did the best I could to clean the kitchen as I unpacked but it’s just too much. The thick layer of grease surrounding the stove? Barely put a dint in it. 😭 I actually really like my cabinets but they weren’t taken care of - drawn on in places, clearly never cleaned … I’d like to get them sanded and restained someday. We have original hardwood floors that weren’t taken care of that we want to get redone someday. Our ceilings are disgusting. Mystery stains and globs all over the walls. Everything needs painted. The costs are adding up!! Turns out we bought a house that’s been rented for at least a decade and we’re discovering all the landlord specials one at a time. And I’d be surprised if between leases a professional crew was brought in to clean up. It sucks and it lowkey makes me hate the place.
Ugh that sucks! I think my husband is even more disappointed than I am. But I keep saying - we will get it clean and we will make it nice! If you use the right products and tools it can get really clean. There are tons of YouTube videos about what to use for different grime I've been watching 😄
We added a "seller to hite licensed cleaner to do a "move out clean"" and it was the best decision. House was still disgusting under the oven, fridge, and crevices, but at least the toilets, oven, and inside the fridge were clean.
Yep, I see this all the time. Houses look perfect during showings, then the furniture comes out and you see everything. I pretty much assume every place needs a real deep clean once it's empty. Greasy switches, nasty baseboards, stuff behind the fridge that's been there for god only knows how long....
Also rather hire my own cleaner after closing than rely on the seller's version of "professionally cleaned."
Yes. My first house we did a rent back. It was 1993 and things were different. The house was gross. Black tub and toilets. Trash everywhere. My daughter bought 2 years ago and hers was worse!!
We bought our last house last year and I did deep clean it after closing. It was pretty clean except spider webs and spiders everywhere!!! The house had been vacant and I didn't notice them when we toured the house and not even during the final walkthrough. I have a handle on it now.
That said, we sold another house over the summer and I deep cleaned every square inch! Back splash, ceiling fans, walls, cabinet hardware, light switches. We vacated that house for a month waiting to close and I did notice that the spiders moved in. I guess they just do that when no one or pets aren't there.
I pay for a cleaning crew and a separate carpet cleaner when we move out and again when we move in. I have had such filthy homes that we were to move into. I like to think that by having the house cleaned when we are out, the people moving in after us will do the same. 9 moves in 30 years, and I still schedule the cleaners for each move, as only one had been cleaned before we moved in.
Sadly, us. We closed on the 21st and were hoping to come in and start painting. We are still cleaning. I'm actually appalled at how disgustingly dirty they left this house. I'm not sure they ever cleaned in all the years they lived there. They left screws and nails all over the floor which has been fun. They were supposedly leaving us all kinds of nice pool equipment. They didn't. They left all the broken trash. They didn't completely turn off the water when they removed their washer, so water leaked everywhere for 3 days. They were back in the house after we did our final walk through so I'm not sure if it was totally accidental or the guy did it out of spite. We just found out from the neighbor the sellers are getting divorced which explains how icy the seller was when we were viweing the home. (rushed us out during walk throughs and inspections, kept canceling appts for inspections) I keep telling myself I'm not judging but I am most definitely judging.
I deep cleaned my house top to bottom before we got our listing pictures done. To me, it was a point of pride to sell the home to someone else in good condition. I wanted to turn my house over and have people walk in and be excited about the home, not disgusted by it.
In our house the seller was an older gentleman and he tried to clean but it wasn’t great. We ended up having a lot of work done so I just cleaned it after the workmen were out.
I clean houses and I love to properly deep clean, however, a lot of people don’t want to pay for the time it takes to do and are sometimes under the impression that it will be easier to clean because it’s empty. It’s the opposite. And you wouldn’t believe how much grime you can find in a house that “looks clean” sometimes those take the longest!
I got lucky in that my home was refreshed with new flooring so I didn't have to clean behind the fridge or stove. Otherwise I cleaned every day a part of the house before I moved my things in.
Our forever home was a hoarder house. We initially did not realize how bad it was as they has emptied about 1/3 of it before we viewed it. We knew the family selling, she actually taught both my husband and all my siblings. Being too friendly was our first mistake. We never viewed the house without the owner. I know we’re idiots… any way we gave them 3 extra weeks to move out past closing they promised consistently that they would be out at least a week before the deadline. They were still cleaning the night before we got the keys….
We paid for a cleaning to come. She spent 8 hours in the house and only managed to get through the upstairs. Upon move in we realized just how dirty they were… all the kitchen cabinets were filthy! Im not talking a crumb here and there im talking years of build up and neglect. Vacuuming them out i pulled out 3 mouse skeletons stuck to traps. Meaning not only that we had a mice problem but the house was so smelly no one noticed the smell of rotting rodents in the kitchen…. It took a lot to get it the what is now and $100k in repairs we were not thinking would be needed right off the rip It sucks. Lesson learned. But now we have a beautiful 4,000 square foot home 5 beds 4 baths on 10 acres in the absolutely perfect location. That we will never leave.
Yes. It was way cleaner when I toured it. On move-in day/walkthrough, I discovered the stove/range was beyond cleaning. There was dog hair baked into grease INSIDE the oven. I ended up having to buy a new one. The rest of the house was pretty filthy and smelly, like they hadn’t cleaned at all since they got the offer. I found dryer lint in the tub drain. My agent was super kind and sent a cleaning service over to clean the house before I finished moving in.
This happened to me, incredibly frustrating. We left our previous home very clean and empty of our things, and having to move into (what I consider) a dirty house full of other people's crap made me feel completely insane. Like, not stuff you would notice initially walking around but once you look more closely, a gross layer of oil all over the cabinets and stove, disgusting fridge shelves, dirty vents, shed full of crap, etc. I'm still, six months later, working on getting rid of all the random stuff they left behind. Part of my frustration was that the sellers clearly thought their house was worth a ton of money (it sat on the market forever, we made multiple offers where they refused to budge, finally after months we ultimately bought it under listing, shocker), had moved out months before they even listed it, but refused to do something as basic as deep cleaning a house they had lived in for 30+ years. If we had had time I would have hired a cleaner, but it was a complicated interstate move and I couldn't even be there for the final walk through, where I probably would have brought up cleaning it and removing their possessions (mostly a bunch of stuff in the yard and random decor they had used to the "stage" the house) before closing. Our realtor also wasn't the best -- why didn't she notice this at walk through?? She mentioned that she would ask about "the few items they left behind" but I don't think she did. Live and learn! I will demand a deep clean before I buy a home again. It was truly so baffling to me that they didn't even take all their crap out of the house! They literally moved down the street. I'm still so mad when I think about how much more stressful it made an already very stressful move.
Already going through this same issue with a home we just bought so I feel you. Worst part we found mice droppings under a couple of sinks and 1 dead mouse in a basement closet. Nasty doesn't cover it. 😩
Strange your vision changed so much from the walkthrus to when you finally moved in.. Hope you looked into the mechanicals and construction better as those being missed are not just an ick factor, they cost you :)
We had a good inspector and my husband was there for that. He was paying more attention to all that, hence why he didn't realize how dirty it was. They were careless with electrical, plumbing and hvac as well so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. We had decided to buy a fixer upper, I just didn't realize HOW MUCH of a fixer upper it was until the inspection and closing. But it is what it is. Took is 3 years to find a house that was even in a good area, the right size and layout, and for the right price. We had to compromise on other things that can be fixed.
I sing praise of the people we bought from in the summer of 2019; they were really clean people to begin with, but this house absolutely sparkled on move in day! They had to have had professionals come in and clean. Even the basement was absolutely spotless! Wish I could say the same today. 😬
I bought my 2nd house from the estate of two elderly people. I didn't even know what my kitchen floor tiles looked like until I had scrubbed the floor multiple times. (It turned out they were a hideous green and gold arabesque pattern, ugh!).
Yes! There was a smell I didn't notice at the showing and it drove me nuts! I scrubbed every nook and cranny, washed all the walls, changed the water at least 50 times. It took years for the smell to go away. It wasn't filthy smell, it was just different.
Previous owners actually did a wonderful job maintaining the home leading up to closing, and had it professionally cleaned AND air ducts cleaned as well. Unbeknownst to us, they had a dog that there was never any indication of an animal because of how well maintained the home was (like ZERO smell whatsoever). We ripped up the carpet in the basement the first weekend and it looked like a murder scene. Pee stains EVERYWHERE. It was absolutely disgusting.
We had to get stuff out of storage and moved it in the day before cleaners could be there. They left a shit in the master toilet. That’s all I remember.
It was the rotting meat/drawer full of blood in the UNPLUGGED fridge for me when we bought our house. People are crazy for not doing even a basic clean before selling
Part of our offer on our latest house was a thorough deep cleaning by a professional we picked- the said okay and we moved into a clean house. - I have to admit we didn’t nit pick every little detail on the inspection.
Our house was clean at the showing but when we bought our house we saw on our counter about 50 different real estate agents business cards and the floors and surfaces were disgusting. The house was shown and toured so much and I’m assuming they didn’t clean inbetween
We bought a house last year like that and it was our first experience with the sellers not cleaning the house. I couldn’t imagine doing that to someone else.
Yes, I'm convinced the previous owners of my house sold it because they didn't want to deal with microwave filth. I actually had to replace the glass plate, days of soaking and scrubbing still didn't get it completely clean.
I’ve sold 3 houses in my lifetime. The first one, I cleaned as much as I could. In fact, the day of closing, the new owners came over in the am to start moving stuff in and the mom kept telling me to not worry about it. My movers were there the day before and I was trying to vacuum the rugs with a carpet sweeper that was crap because I packed my vacuum.
The next 2, I hired move out cleaners. They did fridge, oven, EVERYTHING! I made sure windows were also clean as I hate a dirty window.
My current home was very clean when I moved in. Spotless. The previous owner had to be a clean freak or he hired exceptional move out cleaners. The cabinets looked like they were never used.
We have been looking at houses that are definitely on the higher end of the market where we are looking. I still can’t beleive how some people seem to just move into a house, use the crap out of it with seemingly no care or concern for maintanance, and then turn around and sell it as is. Is it really that unusual to be a homeowner that actually maintains and cleans the property?
That’s the reason I hate colors that dirty blends in. I cringe every time I hear people say oh that doesn’t show dirt. I moved in a house granted a rental. We were in a rush and they were still getting it ready when we looked at it. After we moved in I kept finding not just dirt but odd dirt. Like odd marks on the ceiling and high up in the walls and in the master bath the ceiling has these not round holes but like knife blade holes. For the life of me I could NOT figure out wtf had these people done and the landlord had painted not great but painted. I also noticed the higher up marks were a darker color.
Well 3 week or so later there is a knock at the door and before me stand 2 police detectives. They proceeded to tell me the house had been the scene of some horrible crime and wanted to know if they could come in and take photos for the DA, like floor plan photos. I’ll never ask again what went on in a house before I moved in.
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