BUYING A HOUSE IN POLAND.. and having the seller strip it bare..

I read an old posting by Sean bm about the people he bought a house from turning up to remove anything and everything including door handles etc...made me smile...So here is my story...

I bought my farm a few years back from an old Polish guy and his wife who had lived in the place for a long time....

I found out later that he didn,t really want to move , but he was getting old , his legs didn,t work so well , and his family talked him into selling and getting a flat in a small village....

I had a look round the place , decided it was what i wanted , and a short time later handed the estate agent the money in cash for the farm...

While i was back in the UK sorting things out my Polish friend who was taking care of the Polish end told me that the farmer had asked if he could stay in the farm for a few more months as he wanted to gather in the harvest of apples , pears , grapes and whatever...I had no objection to this , as i was not ready to move in yet , and i thought it better the place was occupied rather than empty...

At last , four months later i arrived in Poland and after a few days delay i was able to move into my new home...

The farmer and his wife called several times to show me how to operate the pump in the well , and make sure i was ok , and i was gratefull for this , but i was less than happy about him wandering around the farm picking up whatever he thought might be usefull to him...

He made several more visits to remove bits of garden hose , garden tools , shelves from the workshop , and piles of stuff that i had heaped up to throw away , now i know that much of this stuff isn,t really included in the house price , but for gods sake he had four months living there after i gave him the money in which to remove any stuff he needed....

His visits were becoming more frequent , much of the stuff he was cramming into his old car was just rubbish , i tried to imagine what his flat must look like with all this crap all over the place...

The final straw came when i came home and found him putting in his car my dustbin , along with the broken christmas lights i had thrown in there....Like Sean bm i lost my temper , and in my best Polish i told him if he came again i was going to shoot him... I felt a bit guilty about this later , but it worked , and he did not return...

When i told this tale to my friend down the road he told an even better tale...He had bought a house in need of much repair , and it was months later when the house was startiing to look very nice that the seller turned up , and said he had changed his mind about the sale and wanted to have his house back...for the same price of course....anybody else had a similar experiance...?

Never had this experience myself but I would tell the buy back guy to take a hike. The nerve of some people...insane. And taking off doorknobs etc? WTF kind of cheap arse nonsense is that?

yeah happened to my folks, the bloke came in and started taking all the lightbulbs, door handles etc., when he asked if he could take the water boiler my dad told him to get the feck out ha ha. he got back to my folks a couple of months later asking if they would sell the house back to him. so sad.

My god..so this is common? Three tales in less than 5 minutes. Amazing. I would be changing the locks the first day. Lightbulbs? Jesus....

If the previous owner has taken all the lightbulbs and doorknobs, why not pay a visit to the place you have just moved out of and ask if you can take the lightbulbs and doorknobs from your old property? I've moved into a place with no lightbulbs, but this wasn't in Poland and the previous owner had had the courtesy to leave the doorknobs behind. I do have some spare doorknobs if anyone's interested.

I have plenty of knobs...but i could do with some knockers.....!

lol, they open a lot of doors too.

I'm not sure how real estate law works in Poland now. I only have an experience with a studio apartment which was empty before even before viewing.

When I was buying a house in Canada my agent told me that the basic principle (give or take) is that if something is attached to the walls, floors or ceilings, and if it cannot be removed without tools such as a screwdriver, then it is a part of the house and stays put. Exceptions have to be clearly described in the contract. In my case, the previous owners had a TV set attached to a wall. I had to agree for them to take it with them.

The agent told me a story of a fella who sold a house with a rec room in the basement of the house. After the sale agreement has been signed, the seller removed interior walls, ceiling and floor coverings and turned the basement pretty much into bare concrete walls and floors.

I bought an apartment in Krakow a few years ago that included a lot of the original details, like chandeliers, stained glass, lamps, old door fixtures/knobs. I was a bit wary of the seller and coming from the US I have heard stories of sellers stripping the house of everything, nailed down or not.

There was some tough negotiating on the selling price, and I made sure that the sale was to include all of those items. We agreed to a price and set a date with the notary. I arrived at the notary with a dozen photographs of the lamps, etc and asked that the photos & descriptions be placed in the pre-contract. The seller, his lawyer, the notary all had a good laugh at my expense. Then everyone stopped laughing when the seller confessed that he did indeed plan to strip the apartment of these items and “donate them to the church” (not sure which church in Krakow is in need of door handles). There was some arguing and more haggling and eventually the notary put the photos into the pre-contract, much to her own amazement.

When we met for the final contract the seller was desperately trying to get out of the pre-contract as prices in Krakow were rising so quickly. He kept stepping out of the room to take calls from potential buyers who would hopefully offer enough to offset the penalty he would face for breaking the pre-contract. In the end he signed the contract. The estate agent on the deal told me that he bumped into the seller a few months later and he tried to start a fist fight right there on the street.

I had the opposite problem buying a house. The previous owner was an elderly gentleman who had passed away leaving decades of “stuff”. His family did not have the means to clean the place out and at casual glance there were some nice looking pieces of furniture, that would offset the cost of removing the rubbish. I agreed to take the house, stuff and all. Some of the furniture turned out to be so rotten that is collapsed. And the wonderful looking antique bed was only 180cm long, which might have been practical 80 years ago.

Smart move, you cant be too carefull.

When i sold a house recently I was astonished when the buyer asked me is the kitchen staying? I replied of course... fitted Bosch cooker and fridge with all the trimmings. After reading this I'm kind of regretting not ransacking the place for at least the expensive stuff, when in Rome and all that.

I found the sellers sitting in my kitchen, six months after they'd sold the flat. They'd kept a set of keys for old times sake and didn't understand why I was so angry.

Ha....priceless....I think the guy i bough my farm from still thought it was his....kept coming back to take stuff....