What’s left behind in house moves
Colleen Hawkes delves into what people don’t take with them when they move house – rubbish, pregnant dogs, used contact lenses and rusty swing sets.
When you move into a new house, you expect it to be empty and hopefully clean. The same applies to the section.
So why is this often not the case? Why do people think it’s OK to leave stuff behind for someone else to look after or biff?
We sometimes see extremes, such as the fly-blown rubbish and clothing left behind when a family abandoned a house in Dunedin recently. The squalid mess created by subsequent squatters made viewing difficult and affected the (mortgagee) sale price, but it still had to be dealt with by the new owner.
Even personal items had been abandoned by the owners, including a citizenship certificate, a dissertation, photos of the children and school books.
And it’s often the smallest things that are disturbing – such as DNA. A colleague who recently moved into a new house was disgusted to find dozens of used contact lenses stuck to a window sill in the bathroom.
‘‘Someone was clearly in the habit of taking them out at night and throwing them out the window,’’ she says. ‘‘They had hardened and looked like fish scales – it was revolting.’’
A quick office survey also showed baby clothes were often left behind, probably because they have been folded away on top shelves in wardrobes and forgotten. Which is a little bit sad.
On a much larger scale, a friend bought her first home in the country, and found the previous owner had left behind a large, broken trampoline and an equally rusty, unusable swing set. And that was just the start.
Another acquaintance found a pile of recycled timber and a large, old door under the house when he moved in. He refused to move the items when he sold up 30 years later. Needless to say, the new owners had a pre-purchase inspection a couple of days before settlement and didn’t accept his explanation that they ‘‘came with the house’’.
But it’s never amusing to find animals that have been abandoned in a house move.
Jessie Gilchrist of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) says Hamilton students have a poor record.
‘‘We have a particular problem with students moving out of flats and leaving their cats behind.’’
Gilchrist says the SPCA is constantly looking for new homes for pets that have been abandoned when their owners move house.
‘‘Cats would be the most common, because they are the most popular pet, but we have had everything from cats and dogs to rabbits and guinea pigs.
‘‘We also get larger animals left behind when people leave lifestyle blocks, and these include horses and goats. The worst case I have seen in my time here was when a woman moved out of her house and left 13 cats behind.’’
More recently, the SPCA dealt with another sad case, where a pregnant dog was left to fend for herself when a family moved out of a house. After responding to reports of an abandoned dog living on a vacant section nearby, an SPCA inspector found not only the dog, but also her litter of seven four-week-old puppies.
And it appears that landlords are often left holding the animals when tenants leave, because the tenants can’t take them to their next home. The SPCA says finding pet-friendly rentals has been a national issue for some years, and the property crunch has exacerbated the problem.
Twenty months ago, Waikato SPCA centre manager Laura Vander Kley said: ‘‘We’ve got this real vicious cycle of people not taking care of their animals, the landlords getting dumped with the animals and then that makes them not want to rent to people who have pets and then that leaves people not being able to find places with pets.’’
One family we know who were moving overseas noted in their house-for-sale listing that the property came with a cat – that story had a happy ending.
Of course, we also hear stories of people who find unexpected treasure left behind. The owners of an old house in Toulouse discovered a painting hidden in the attic that may be a Caravaggio or the work of one of the Italian painter’s contemporaries – it had been left behind by a previous owner and has been the subject of much discussion. The French government placed an export ban on the work to stop it being bought by an overseas investor.
In 2007, the new owners of a run-down cottage in Bellport, New York, were told they could have all the ‘‘stuff’’ in the garage, which turned out to include thousands of valuable paintings and art by reclusive artist Arthur Pinajian, who once lived in the house.
Two other homeowners discovered a Van Gogh painting in the house they bought – Sunset at Montmajour. It was unsigned and it was several years before it was finally authenticated as the real thing. It now resides in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
For most of us, though, belongings left behind by a previous owner are simply a nuisance. So please, don’t do it.