What is something the previous owner of your house did that you're grateful for?
Mine installed a pegboard in the pantry. It's incredibly useful for hanging up pots and pans.
In my last house, the previous owners left a folder with information about various known quirks, which came in handy. They also left manuals for things like the stove and fireplace, as well as contact info for contractors they had used over the years. It ended up being a sort of owner's manual for the house that we really appreciated. We did the same when we moved out.
My current house... There's an under-cabinet CD player/radio in the kitchen that I almost never use, and the previous owners left the soundtrack to the Trolls movie in it, so I guess there's that?
Literally trolled.
BECAUSE SINGING KILLED MY GRANDMA OKAY
Patched CAT6 cable to nearly every room in the house. WIFI is good these days but still cant compete with good ol ethernet.
Mine hired a bad realtor who listed the house poorly. It means we didn't compete with cash offers and could actually buy the house.
My friend got his townhouse that way. It was a pretty decent place, and nobody was interested because there were, like, 2 almost-identical exterior shots, maybe one of the kitchen? and 5 from the master bedroom. None from the living room or anything like that
Mine had a single grainy outside shot, worse than Google Street view at the time and called it a contractors special. They essentially put all the red flags they could in the listing, for what was a very manageable purchase (yes we did the flooring before we moved in, and fixed some walls, but we were looking at full guts before, just to get anything.)
I wish there was a website listing bad or lazy realtors.
That's how we got our first place. The sellers still got 2x what they'd paid for it seven or eight years before. But the price was relatively low, so we could afford it.
My apartment used to be owned by a landlord cop who moved to Florida. So I appreciate that he reduced the population of landlord cops in my area by 1
A COP AND LANDLORD?
🤨
Bruh, that's terrifying. Imagine how much surveilance they put in the house, knowing the cops be weird af and want to spy on people all the time.
NYC's mayor is literally one. Turns out landlords and cops both enjoy abusing people to their benefit
You would think.... An ex of mine had a cop for landlord for a while. He neglected to change the keys after the previous really sketchy tenants. Guess who got burglarized. And yet they never found the culprits, not recovered the items.
How the fuck do yall afford houses?
I got lucky on the fact that I'm old now so I was able to buy a house in 2014 with a low interest rate. I also live in a low cost of living area, my mortgage, which includes property taxes and house insurance is $1k/mo. The majority is that goes to taxes and insurance, interest is about $60/mo. I have 5 more years on the 15 yr mortgage. I've gotten lucky that we've not had to have any major repairs in the past ten years, but I was looking for houses that were who built with good roofing and hvac systems since those are the two killers. The house has a lot of dated aesthetics from every decade from the sixties onwards, but that stuff is easy and cheap, plus you're probably going to do that kind of stuff anyway.
Man, so many things.
They fully remodeled it in 2016, and by virtue of being stupid rich, left it fully furnished and equipped. To them it was just a line on their balance sheet that they wanted liquidated. To me, it was an extra $10,000 I didn't have to spend on furniture and appliances.
The owner prior to the last planted fruit trees in the 70s. I love having fresh fruit to eat/share.
The previous owner switched the central AC to split units. Definitely saves on electricity being able to cool/heat individual rooms vs the entire house.
They planted two plum trees and one cherry tree. I picked so many plums this year. Still have a bunch on the freezer ready to go in pies. Made two batches of slivovice moonshine back in the fall just so they wouldn't go to waste.
In the living room they routed audio cables through the walls for a surround sound system
Nothing.
And that's why we were able to afford it.
The owner we bought from had been divorced and was so depressed he neglected the yard and house. I am grateful they didn't change the insane layout, so it didn't sell, because apparently nobody else saw the potential - we changed it when we moved in, and dealt with the yard, once the bamboo was out (that was a struggle) it was huge, and while house is not fancy and will doubtless be a lifelong project it is so nice now for us, and getting better all the time and I love the basic layout of it now.
As a kid we moved into a house in the middle of winter, the previous owner had left the fire ready to go, including matches and a couple days worth of wood.
Fuck if I know. These people were idiots and did so many stupid things
Hello fellow sufferer. May your future surprises be boring.
I suffer with you. This is my first place so I didn’t have as good an eye of what to look out for. Now after having lived in this place for a while I realize the previous owner took a lot of shortcuts and did a really crappy “remodel” job.
I’m pretty sure my house got flipped by some DIY morons
The two mirrors(2m x 1.5m) installed in the exposed brick, narrow, central room of the house, make such a massive difference to the amount of light available from the skylight, and give a feeling of extra roominess.
One mirror was down for the day during an AC install, and the feeling in the space was noticeably more closed-in.
I'm grateful the previous owners relationship broke down and he was forced to sell the house after only living in it for 8 months. I'm grateful to the original owner for being a stonemason and doing beautiful stonework around the yard with obviously hand picked stones including quartz crystals and fossil rocks hidden around.
They had me. Right now I'm back at my parents' house.
left a pullup bar in the garage, use it pretty often
Screwed up every single bit of electrical wiring. I've learned so much replacing it all.
Soundproofing in the wall shared with next door unit. Like, really good soundproofing. I can't recall hearing anything from them ever.
Bad landlord move: IDK WTF they were thinking with the shower. There are SO MANY little nooks and crannies that are narrower than a pencil. I spray so much crap in there trying to prevent mold. I hate it. Landlord is lucky I'm a diligent tenant, most would let his bathroom rot, it takes so much work to keep it clean. When I build a house the shower will be SO SMOOTH and I'm going to lay it out so I can just plug in a power washer and spray it down.
Fill them with clear silicone caulk.
...can't think of a single thing.
Fuck you, Larry.
I love the battery powered blinds on the master bedroom. I can control them with an app (1000+ downloads on google play lol) or remote control.
Literally closing escrow next weekend.
I'm grateful she took such good care of the house. When I stepped inside I immediately knew it had good bones. Built in the early 80's, I had a very thorough inspection done, and that guy was blown away. So I feel good about my purchase.
For whatever reason, we were the only offer after she was on market for 90 days. No idea why, and I spoke to a lot of people about the area, the land, just everything.
Husband's mother renovated the kitchen in the 90s and made it for her height. Which is my height. So that's really nice. It also has a lot of electrical outlets which is nice.
Kitchen faucet is hands free if you put batteries in a thing under the sink. I don't think the last people used it because it didn't have batteries when we moved in. Works great though, turning a faucet on and off without touching it is really convenient when your hands are dirty.
Somebody installed a sump pump fairly recently. There's plenty of evidence that the basement used to be partially finished, but it was probably all ripped out due to water damage. It's dry now, thanks to the pump.
I just un-finished my basement to put in a full perimeter drain. Prior owners put in a partial drain and (re?) finished over everything. Took 5 years to get (visible) water down there but when it happened I wasn't surprised. So much other stuff had been covered up that I just kind of assumed there were issues behind the paneling. And there were. More bucks to clean it up and finish the demo of a side room they had partitioned off. Then I found out that the chimney leaked when it rained sideways.
...it's been an eventful and expensive year. 💀
That's why I'm thankful somebody did it before I moved in! The chimney, on the other hand, didn't have a cap, so it leaked when the rain fell vertically. The re-lining and new cap was pretty expensive, too.
Built shelves into the back wall of the garage. It's been great for storage.
Installed a water softener, but more on that in a minute.
Also wrote with sharpie on the wall of the maintenance closet the dates of routine PMs for the furnace and water heater. Unfortunately, I found out the hard way that they weren't particularly diligent about the water heater stuff. It just said "bleach" and dates, but they clearly weren't flushing it properly. I found and removed probably like 15-20 pounds of scale and replaced the lower element that it killed. I have a theory that they installed the water softener well after living with hard water for a while, and by then there was already a bunch of scale in the water heater. Combine that with dosing bleach which is higher pH and not properly flushing it out and they welcomed crystallization of the dissolved solids that were already there. Then under deposit corrosion killed the lower element. I'm not sure why they felt the need to dose bleach though. That would only really attack organics, and the water is already treated before coming through. Idk, it's my first home so maybe I'm the one who's a clueless idiot here, so I shouldn't judge too harshly here lol.
They installed some sort of sound isolating suspended/floating (?) ceiling in my apartment. I absolutely love it. In my neighbors apartment I could constantly hear people above, but in mine it's almost always silent.
I have a terrible problem in my apartment with noise through the ceiling. I am curious what this is that you have installed as I havent seen any good options such as this. Can you take a picture of this or something? I would love to explore options to get rid of the noise.
Is it something like this?
Bars on the windows and a nice big hedgerow out front. Extra security, and occasional package deliveries are obscured from the street to deter porch pirates.
