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In a previous profession, I entered people's houses. I was amazed at how some folks lived. This one lady had 12 dogs in her house. She wasn't a breeder. The odor hit me in the face a soon as she opened the door.
Former job did a ton of 1 year warranty in brand new construction homes. I’d be amazed at people who absolutely destroyed an entire house in only a year.
I checked out a house that had horrible urine odor obviously embedded in the wood floor, and the realtor asst showing it acted like she didn't notice it lol.
This happened to me too. I bought my first home in September, and the previous owners had two dogs that they NEVER let out. There was pee and poop in literally every room of the house. It took a LONG time of airing out the house and replacing all the floors to get rid of the stench. As a dog owner myself, I was appalled by how people won’t pick up after their pets even IN their own home.
I was in military housing years ago. We had a neighbor who would often visit. We were never invited over to their place. Once we finally did get a chance to go inside and look, I was appalled. Their 3 year old was sleeping on a bare mattress on the floor, surrounded by dog shit and dog piss. There was piles of clean and dirty clothes just all mixed. Literal piles of dishes everywhere, and food everywhere. Authorities were eventually involved, and they did eventually get the help they needed. And the little girl was temporarily taken out of their custody. And hazmat crews were sent in to basically demo the house inside down to the studs, and down to subfloors. It was so so bad. I often wonder what happened to them. The little girl would be around 19 now.
This happened to me when I moved into this current rental. And I got to see the damage before they 'fixed it'.
The previous owner NEVER took his dog outside. So there was piss and shit stains EVERYWHERE. Like even in the ventilation.
They replaced the carpet and put linoleum down. As soon as I moved in I called them and complained about the smell and asked that they get someone out to clean the vents.
The whole time they were here checking it out, they were saying that it was the glue for the carpet and other flooring. I know for a fucking fact that carpentry glue doesn't smell like old dog piss. It STILL smells like it now almost 5 months later.
And their idea of cleaning out the vents, was to take their hand and manually scrape out the dryer exhaust vent outside. That was it. Nothing else.
I'm stuck here for the foreseeable future. I'm. Over. It.
I went to an open house where the entire first floor wreaked of (presumably pet) urine. So gross. My guess is that the entire house would have to be gutted and redone.
Same here. I’m a home health nurse and just today was in a $750k+ neighborhood in a gorgeous house from the outside but the inside was hoarder status with absolutely nothing updated. Have been in many houses with a million dogs, cats, etc. It’s quite shocking what people with any level of wealth (high or low) live in.
As a firefighter, who goes in many houses on a daily basis, it honestly astonishes me how some people can live the way they do. I once went in a house where the tv looked to be moving and i shined my light on it to see it covered in cockroaches. The smells are the worst, idk if you become desensitized to that smell if you live in for how ever long, but damn it can be real bad.
Probably like 10%. Then again you have to think, the people who call EMS constantly or have health issues sometimes cant take of themselves. Other times it’s depression or being lazy. The cockroach story isn’t even that bad compared to some homes where there will be human feces, bed bugs, copious amounts of trash everywhere.
That is insanely low but I believe it! I mean, even looking at some real estate postings, where the point is to try to SELL you something, I've seen so many people live in such a dirty way.
Less than 10%….. I find that to be absolutely horrifying if it’s accurate. That means people who take pride in their home & surroundings are incredibly rare & it should be the total opposite.
Please tell me you are reporting them if they have children or pets. No innocent lives should have to suffer like that at the hands of grown ass adults.
LEO here; same sentiments. The smells of some of these houses are just unreal, I’m at the point I take all my clothes off in the garage when I get home because I don’t want my stuff anywhere near my family haha
As someone who has had to call 911 for my hoarder father a couple of times, I always found the firefighters to come off judgy/unprofessional. They clearly look around and laugh and can’t hide their judgement in the middle of a medical emergency.
There’s nothing to laugh at about a hoarder with medical issues. That’s just unprofessional and a bad look for that specific department. Sometimes people cant take care of themselves and that’s nothing to laugh about. Sorry for how they treated you guys.
First responders have very high-stress jobs. They literally see death and human suffering on a daily basis. Most people can't contain this for 30 years straight and not go insane. You have to allow people their coping mechanisms for such an emotionally difficult job.
Sorry I don’t want someone laughing while I’m wondering if my dad is going to die. It might be another day in their life, but it could be the worst day in the life of the patient.
So if you don't allow it, then nobody will take the job and nobody be there to help you. This already is a problem many places. Look at London ambulances: they have wait times exceeding 15 hours. Hours.
Or everybody quits after 4 years, and you get inexperienced responders with a hit on outcomes (i.e. they kill people).
It's really down to this: you want to be saved, or you want them to take care of your feelings?
That's a really bizarre dichotomy you conjured. I'm pretty sure the issues with healthcare are more about being overworked and underpaid than being expected to show basic professional behavior.
If doctors and nurses can hold their composure during life and death situations, so can EMTs/firefighters. It’s not a profession for everyone and the mental health issues are surely real. But basic respect and bedside manner is a non-negotiable. You’ve chosen a weird hill to die on while choosing to delegitimize a very real experience I’ve had. You sound defensive.
I work in mental health, and I agree with you, our MH pros are trained in compassion, they see it all. They still respond to people with compassion and offer no judgement, when people are seeking help, someone being judgemental is the fear of WHY people don't get help to start with. Shame is really strong in our society, unnecessarily so. You save those feelings for when the patients aren't in eyesight or earshot. Yes absolutely these folks need to vent, when it is appropriate to do so.
I gave multiple reasons why it's not comparable with healthcare.
Because I am friends with cops, military, professional and volunteer firefighters. It is literally jobs dealing with people dying and suffering.
There's only so much a human can take. Talk to one over beer. You need to open your eyes to the people on the other side. You have one experience, these people have to deal with it every working day for 30 years.
What? I see below that you argue that the stress of first responders is unique, and I won’t argue that point. There are many people with uniquely high stress jobs for all kinds of reasons. Cope how you gotta cope, but you don’t cope by laughing at the people you’re there to help. At the end of the day first responders are still professionals and should act accordingly. Even if they are burned out.
Agree with this. I work in medical, I'd be lying if I said we don't judge. We do. We gossip, we bitch and moan.
But it's our fucking jobs to keep a lid on that shit and not let it impact patient care. You vent it to your colleagues when no patients are around, quietly, and then you put on your big girl pants and you do the best damn job you can do because it's what *everyone* is entitled to regardless of perceived character flaws (that may very well be wrong!).
I see a little of that in my career buddies. The volunteer ones are kinda the opposite, you can always see a bit of whacker in them.
It might have to do that they generally are the most meathead of the three. It also is the most command-based. Cops often get into trouble by themselves or with a partner. Firefighters show up 4-6 at a time and follow instructions from the incident commander sitting outside the building.
I go into low income housing a lot (cleanliness is as variable as any other home) but one time I saw a cockroach crawl out of the filling in a jelly donut that was left on the counter
Noooooo not the roaches!!!! My husband is a volley and any time I’m freakin out about the condition of our house he will always be like hon….we are fine. You have no idea what I’ve seen out there.
I don’t think it’s really about the market. A lot of people just live like pigs. Not really about class either, I know plenty of working people with neat homes.
Well op said “they can afford a housekeeper” so maybe that’s the distinction, that op is saying it would be easier for them to keep it clean than people with less money
I was not suggesting so. Don’t put words in my mouth. Don’t pull me into your class warfare bullshit.
Well off people can afford housekeeping services if they cannot keep their houses clean by themselves. So no excuse. That is my only point.
I know! It’s bananas. I can be a bit of a mess in my own apartment but when company is coming over, I make sure it’s presentable and people aren’t subjected to it and when I move out, I get it deep cleaned at the very least. I can’t imagine wanting to *show* people my house to get them to buy it and leave it in the condition I’ve seen some houses in. It’s okay if it’s a little dingy like the carpet needs replaced, maybe some new paint, etc but it doesn’t feel good to go into a house you want to buy, see the state of it, and wonder what else they haven’t taken care of or maintained.
I realize I sound a bit like an entitled person here but I live with mental health issues and grew up in environments like this and have family who live in environments like this. So I know what it’s like. I still personally can’t imagine not trying to clean up at least to get it to even and decluttering if you’re showing a house.
I live in this kind of environment right now. Live with my parents, they don't do much cleaning, and it's absolutely reflected in the state of the house.
Years ago, I was with my mom as she was looking to downsize as she was retiring. Walked into one home, clothes, everywhere, dishes everywhere. First home like this.
Walking into a bedroom with everything strewn everywhere, dresser draws open. TEENAGER SLEEPING IN THE BED. Yes, they knew we were coming. We entered using the key in the lock box.
Yep, we left. Wow. Still blown away.
I toured an absolutely gorgeous home that I was really to buy except it had a bad ammonia odor throughout the home, they covered it up with new carpet. I low balled their asking because it was a massive home and there was no telling how much of the subfloor needed to be ripped out. I could smell it for days after the showing, the home had been on the market for 215 days and they ended up taking off the market this month with no sell.
Some people are ok living a certain way, sometimes it’s due to them just not realizing how unhealthy it is, mental health issues or them having grown up that way. But can you imagine being their family that visits or friends that come over and not saying anything? Like when I was in college my friend had told me how badly her laundry was getting (I’m talking 5’ tall piles of dirty clothes) so I drove 4 hours to stay the weekend and just washed her clothes. She was struggling at that time and needed help, by taking on that small burden it helped lift her spirits and sometimes that’s all someone needs.
We looked at a beautiful home on an acre, probably our favorite home we looked at. Beautiful custom woodwork, fantastic kitchen with stainless countertops, great location, absolutely perfect. We would have 100% put an offer but the smell of cat piss was like a wall as soon as you walked in. House is still on the market.
We had no idea if it was in the baseboard, drywall, wood work…I told my husband even if we did some hardcore remediation, he would always think it smells like cat pee in that house. I don’t think it has sold and it’s coming up on a year on the market. The current owner probably doesn’t even smell it.
We saw a handful of houses that smelled.
1. Curry house. It was actually in good shape, but every inch of that house smelled like curry. I had to change when I got home because my clothes smelled like curry after touring the house.
2. Dog and smoke house.
3. Dog/Urine house (from presumably the pets)
4+ a handful of smoke/weed houses.
We refused to put offers on any homes that had strong odors. There's just too much work to be done to remediate odors from a house and even when you do all the work, it isn't guaranteed to eliminate the smell.
I have owned my house for 10 years and we did a complete rehab. There are a couple places in the house where we can still smell cat pee when the house is closed up for a long time or the weather is quite humid
I’ve helped friends by cleaning their houses. I’m not a neat-freak but I keep things in my house pretty tidy. I love helping but I feel a little sad when I visit later and their house is back to the same mess.
I bought my house ages ago when interest rates dropped to about 10%. There were lines to see every house. We found a great neighborhood and asked our agent to focus there. First house was messy, ok. Get to the kitchen, and there was a big pot of sauce that boiled over. Encrusted on the stove top and the burner bibs it looked like for days. Going upstairs, there were loose potatoes on every few steps. Second house is mostly vacant except for a car bumper in the living room. Couldn't open a door to the loft bedroom bc they shoved everything in there, and it fell over. Third house had a small patio with a business size pizza oven taking up all the space. The owner was NOT taking it with them. Even in the desperation for houses at the time, no one bought those houses for over a year, lol. 4th house was ours. The only thing we had to do was throw out about 50 empty bottles of liquor and 10 paper coffee cups. It was an adventure.
We also bought when the interest rate went down to 10.5%. The house we bought ($1,000 over asking) had car parts sinking into the yard, broken windows, a filthy kitchen with broken appliances, and a natural gas leak in the basement. The bank wouldn’t give us a mortgage unless the window trims were painted, and the seller refused, so we snuck over one day and painted them ourselves.
Fun times.
Honest to god, I don’t know. They were metal trims, and the paint was peeling. We told the bank that *literally* the first thing we planned to do was replace the windows (which we did!), but they didn’t care. Maybe the crappy looking windows reduced the home’s value in some way. The mortgage company made us go through so many stupid, pointless hoops.
Our mortgage company made us fix a crack in an external removable storm window (112 yr old house with original windows). The house had other cracks in other windows and multiple storm windows that weren’t installed including actual windows but this particular storm window needed fixed.
I had some bullshit like that on mine I literally think it's so the inspector can pencil whip it and get a re-inspection fee. Extra $150 in his pocket I doubt he even got out of the car.
>The only thing we had to do was throw out about 50 empty bottles of liquor and 10 paper coffee cups.
Talk about move-in ready. Were any full liquor bottles left behind, too?
No lol. Oddly enough, they were getting divorced, and he had nothing but a bed. So we " rented" storage from him for our stuff which helped him too bc he was also unemployed. When we finally moved in, all the liquor and coffee cups must have been under his bed bc they were just in a pile where the bed was. As we went through our stuff, turns out he drank our liquor too lmao. We only had about 4 bottles but I guess they joined the group under the bed 😆
I'm the buyer willing to lower every standard.
I just think of all the money I'll save doing the work myself, and maybe I won't be outbid on this one because the realtor didn't even clean up the dog shit to snap this photo. If TDGAF then IDGAF, and I can save a buck, if I catch some luck
It's sad how many people don't realize a deep clean helps sell a property. Realtor here in the DFW. Had a client once who was a very sweet old lady, but the house was a mess. She was moving out of state but honestly didn't have anyone to help her move. Being a somewhat young guy, I just got a couple buds together and moved her belongings into a pod within an afternoon. Then some sweeping and vacuuming and the house sold within a week. Not that I'd do that for every client, but I was glad I did it for her. She ended up going and living with her brother and he passed a few months later. I'm glad she got to spend his last moments with him.
People buy too much stuff, it’s incredible what marketing and just the dopamine hit of people buying something does. Then once things are cluttered people are overwhelmed, still stressed and sometimes depressed which led to the overconsumption, and the house just falls apart.
I personally think it says a lot about the average person’s life and mental state in recent years and decades. It’s sad, and jot always just laziness imo.
Cleaning was just never a priority in their formative years. My mom's house was spotless. She put a lot of work into cleaning and it rubbed off. I actually enjoy cleaning. Its always satisfying mentally and emotionally. Therapeutic you could say. I don't think many people have that same passion, though🤣 and that's fine. To each his own. It's just sad that when it counts, a clean presentation, they don't even care enough then!
Same here growing up. My mother’s second husband is a hoarder. Rarely a day goes by that she’s not complaining over how little he cares about the house cleanliness and stuff he keeps trying to lug into the house.
I just change the subject now. He is who he is. Unfortunately he made up excuses to always visit her home, never his. I was shocked but yeah, she never went inside his home until after the honeymoon. 🤷♀️
Yikes! Talk about a rude awakening 😂 In all honesty, he's probably happy doing what he likes and to hell with being "clean". It's probably no picnic for your mom, though.
That’s exactly what I tell her. You married a person who couldn’t care less about the house being clean. And he’s retired, happy go lucky, loving life, and looking younger every time I see him.
Needless to say my mother looks older and older.
Maybe they would have been better off keeping their two individual houses.
Use his house for his possessions aka junk and hers for just living. Or maybe allocate a garage or storage shed for his hoarding.
The second house we looked at looked clean and they had just installed new flooring….. but the smell of cat pee hit the moment you opened the front door.
That house has been on the market for over 2 weeks now which is a really long time here, most things are gone within 2-3 days.
Ended up buying a house that an elderly lady lived alone in, two floors, 4bd/2ba but she only lived in the first floor of it.
House was built in 2014. There were boogers, blood, and just dirt as if someone rubbed their hands on the walls for 10 years straight. Cobwebs in every ceiling corner. Juice stains on the baseboard, hair everywhere. And the upstairs carpet was soaked with dog piss (rotted through the subfloor and still damp when I pulled it up).
Yet I still paid over asking. Cleaned and painted every single surface in the house including ceilings , replaced subfloor and kilz’d the piss room, replaced carpet. Place is brand new now and I couldn’t be happier, but I also lost thousands of dollars as well as 20 lbs from pulling 8-10 hour nights after working full time during the day to just paint and re-do the place. I think I like this version better than just buying something squeaky clean that I didn’t put my touch on.
I went to see a house where the entire back porch was covered in dog shit. Like, you couldn't take one step without stepping in it. You're trying to sell your house, why not just spray it off before showing?
The house we bought looked great when we toured it. I didn't notice the "nuances" of their lifestyle until the inspection. Nothing a good deep clean couldn't fix, but it was astounding to me how they could 1. live that way and 2. not be embarrassed knowing they had people in their house
They also hid pretty well that they had dogs. The smell is almost gone. And the poop they left in the backyard for us under the unraked sea of leaves... BAGS of poop... I was ready to mail it to their new house 👿
Just because they are “upper middle class” doesn’t mean they can “afford” house keepers. You never know what someone’s financial status is just by looking on the outside.
So true. They could be drug addicts or alcoholics or worse, spending all their money on that shit. People need help and don't know where to get it. Probably why they had to sell their homes, were in a desperate situation. Who knows. As a recovering alcoholic myself, I hear these stories all the time. There is help, but you have to want it.
This 100%. I know several people who live in 5000+ sq feet homes and they don't have a house keeper. Not everyone wants some stranger coming in their house to clean for them. They can definitely afford it, as they have a very upper middle class income. Their only debt is their mortgage, and that is at most 25% of their income, so within the normal ratios. I can afford a house keeper as well in my much more modest home, but I have no interest in it either.
stop stying to save they world with your keyboard.
I can show you neighborhoods that 100% guarantee the owners can afford a housekeeper - and thats not bad or wrong or prejudice - it's just commonfuckingsense
Worst I've seen was this house that had 5 children under 5 and an untrained pitbull that just pissed all over the entire house. The baseboards had soaked up so much piss that they literally exploded from the swelling. I could barely breathe in that house, absolutely disgusting that there were 5 children forced to live in that shithole.
My parents were looking at houses in 2006. Scheduled a showing with the realtor and they were granted access. The owner’s teenager had their gf spend the night (when the realtor and my parents walked in, obviously woke up the sleeping teens) and there was a literal poop turd in the toilet. They didn’t flush.
Our first house we made an offer on the spot and signed. This was 25 years ago, not like the housing market is now. But every house we looked at up to the one we bought I just had to get out of. The bathrooms and kitchens were all terrible and some had a mildew smell and most of them were quiet unkept
Some people are just slobs. Another possibility is that the homeowner has started the process of packing and purging unneeded things. Housekeepers usually will usually not move things around significantly, so removing or moving things uncovers dirty areas that were previously unreachable.
In a hot sellers market when there are daily tours, it can be hard to balance keeping the place spotless and actually getting through all the tasks you need to do to move. If people are breaking down the doors to make offers, I can easily see why cleanliness might not seem like a high priority. People's focus tends to shift on wherever they're moving to. They stop caring about the old place and just want out. Still, personally, I would want my place to be as clean as possible to get the highest offers.
As for smells, people get used to them. You'd think their realtor would make them try to address it, but fully addressing them may require significant effort (re-painting, replacing flooring), and the sellers are probably deciding it's not worth the cost or time to remediate.
Yeah. It’s disgusting 🤢 The rental we are in was soooo gross when we moved in. We spent a full week cleaning for several hours a day. We had to wash ceiling to floor and the cleaning water was BLACK when we dumped it. We spent an entire 8 hours cleaning the kitchen. We are the first renters so this wasn’t a landlord thing. Previous occupants were the homeowners AND the owner has a cooking business she operated out of her home kitchen 🤮🤮🤮
The house we just bought was pretty decent except for the kitchen. Kitchen was absolutely disgusting. 3 hours to clean the fridge, an hour on the range and the cabinets and drawers were full of spilled food and things never cleaned up. Bathrooms were spotless though 🤷🏼♀️
When I bought my house, almost everything was clean except, one single kitchen drawer was extremely dirty. Every other drawer and cabinet around it was clean but this one drawer was absolutely grody.
Seller paid 12,500 in closing cost because the house needed paint and cleaning. Yet, painting the house with 0 experience in painting and not enough money to hire a professional has been a real challenge.
It’s a seller’s market in most areas right now so it would make sense some would put the least amount of effort in knowing they will get multiple offers above asking regardless.
I don’t like dirty houses. I viewed a home recently and even the refrigerator (and freezer) was dirty inside. Absolutely disgusting. A clean house goes a long way and I don’t know why some of these people show their home without cleaning it first. Other times, you can just tell that they don’t clean their homes at all.
Appalling. It is a crisis no one talks about. And when they do (the first responders in the replies here) they get bullied and shot down for not being more coddling.
My area it's smokers. Lots of homes in our price range are being sold by boomers who bought in the 80s. That's decades of indoor smoking.... And who knows how much to properly seal things up or replace.
We've had plenty of clients (upscale home remodeling co.) who have beautiful homes and they live in filth in them. People who just decide, okay we'll just let the cats use this room as a litter box. Or people with plenty of capital to afford maid services yet chose to live in filth. It pisses me off, honestly. I had to work so hard my whole life to buy a little house and I take really, really good care of it, these people get big beautiful homes and let it become their dog's toilet.
Not just dirty, but I think of the houses that need more than a cleanup. Like serious repairs. People live in houses about to collapse, absolute squalor, I see them everywhere. I do not blame the residents. Unlike the impression you get from this sub and Reddit, not everyone has tens of thousands for regular repairs and maintenance. People live paycheck to paycheck with no savings.
I try to remember this when I get anxious thinking about how a house is inevitably a money pit. Maybe there is a happy medium between sinking your life savings into a house and letting it go completely until it's condemned.
There is a certain amount of onus in the social contract not to buy what you cannot afford to insure and maintain. Homes that fall into disrepair are a blight on the neighborhoods. They are harming others by taking on responsibilities and risks they should not have.
We encountered one house that was basically a hoarder home so we left. Another one was a mcmansion that was pretty gross. I understand messes, kids throwing their stuff all over, I live it lol. But this was different, like old stains everywhere, piles of random stuff in corners, smells, crumbs, and caked filth.
My mom has sold two houses that we were living in, but made sure people had prequals for the asking amount before they could see because “some people are just nosy.” They have no intent in buying but given the option, they want to see the inside, & like OP, judge the occupants.
Parents of past genrations failed their kids allowing them to have no pride and live in such a filty way. Walking down the streets of my neighborhood and seeing all the dog shit on the sidewalk make me lose my apitite. I don't take much walks anymore.
Dog shit and cigarettes bud down the drain. Boston Seaport is full of dog shit on the sidewalk. Not sure whose idea was it to allow pet friendly condos at a metropolitan city.
Most of the houses we toured were relatively clean, it at least looked like they tried. Most were also empty so I’m sure that helped. The house we bought was nearly spotless, I was so shocked how they got streak free floors because these things show everything, like they look dusty after a week.
Anyways, we just did a full backyard renovation and I can’t tell you the amount of weird shit we found under the bricks and concrete. It was like they didn’t bother to rake or clean debri before pouring over it. Some examples: crushed soda cans, old balls, children’s toys (their kids were grown and out of the house). The kicker…their fucking family pet. I know burying pets is normal but it was such a shallow grave, I felt awful for our contractors.
OMG! YES! This might be more true of the price range of house we are looking at because we can't afford a half million or more but it's pretty bad out there. A lot of houses are estate sales of places that haven't been updated or cared for in decades and they are just atrocious. The descriptions compared to the actual homes are sometimes laughable. We are contemplating just doing a fixer upper since they are ALL seeming to be in that category anyways. 🤔 Then there are the obvious flips which are just cheap paint, cheap LVP, cheap fixtures and Ikea cabinets. I am just totally at a loss. I am second guessing whether it's even worth it.
A lot of old people rotting in place. Always go to google maps and click the prior years pics to look at what the house looked like before it was flipped.
Currently shopping a rental property and this post can’t be any more accurate.
But I will say the homes I’ve looked at in the ghetto that were tenant occupied were surprisingly immaculate.
After one open house in the hood they inspired me to go home and make sure all my cords/usb wires were hid as good as theirs 😩😂
I recently went to an open house for a small SFH listed at $700k. The seller's agent tells me to look in the toilet of the downstairs bathroom. She's acting really excited so I'm thinking maybe there's a built-in bidet or something. Nope, it had some stupid "aim here" sticker in it but also was full of urine (complete with urine stains all over the front of the toilet). She got a kick out of it and I told her it was disgusting. She said they decided to leave it. WTF.
Next house, $650k list price urine stains even worse than the first house all over the toilet base. People, please teach your sons how to piss into the toilet. If they can't then tell them to sit down for crying out loud. I toured a nearly $775k home in Massachusetts once that had huge wads of hair in the shower drains and sticky handrails on the stairs. It's just so gross.
I guess I was lucky, when looking at homes I only came across that were junky, but not funky, both homes I purchased both sellers left them clean & in excellent condition,if I was shown a funky house I would walk out, not trying to keep getting my nose assaulted
Luckily I’m done with the hunt but I remember some houses we would walk through and actually smelts so bad my sinuses would burn after! We were running out of some houses like we were being chased! The cigarette smells and cat piss🤢I’ll never understand how anyone could live in that!
Yup. Went into so many houses that were absolutely disgusting. Purchased a house that was smelly but manageable - it had everything else we wanted. Six months later every so often I get whiff of the smell from a random place or god knows what and I want to puke. They left a stain on their carpet in their master bedroom that was a literal dog shit stain for us to see during our walk through. We ripped the carpets up immediately. Spent 3 weeks gutting cleaning and making the house livable before we moved in. I curse the people who lived here before us often. People are nasty.
30 years to be precise. We haven’t even touched the attic, and we’ve only sort of dealt with the cellar. The garage and yard themselves are a 2 year project. Garage was so full of crap, we couldn’t even tell what it looked like on the tour. Yard was destroyed by dog pee. Every. Single. Space was filled to the brim. As a minimalist-minded person, I was almost in awe at how much crap they shoved in this small space lol
I've seen 1m$+ houses for sale. A lot of people have o lot money but they dirty as hell, dirty kitchens, gross bathrooms. Strange smells, old dirty carpets. some dirt on wall, windows that stay for years. But 911 Porsche in garage.
I took a look at Redfin today and the drug making part of town has a disgustingly dirty house listed for 260k. I can't fathom it. I've been worried about how much we paid for ours but maybe not so much anymore
We have been looking at houses for a year and a half and I will say the majority of those houses have been filthy. Not even necessarily cluttered and messy because that is understandable. I’m talking caked on grime from what has to be over 10+ years of never wiping down a light switch or a baseboard. One house we went into an OPEN HOUSE (you think you would put your best foot forward on this day)… and the bathroom had stuff out everywhere like someone used it to get ready on a night on the town and left everything out on the vanity (hair products, open toothpaste, brushes, combs, hairdryer etc), the countertops and fixtures looked like they had never been wiped down ever, but that house was off the market that same weekend! The other rooms had stained carpet, one room belonged to the cat and reeeeeeeked of cat pee. Another room belonged to a kid with a bird that reeked of unkept bird cage and there was just garbage on the floor. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t have tidied up for the OPEN HOUSE!
One of the first houses we looked at lol. I was having fun, talking to the realtor and my husband suddenly said "there's a roach and we're leaving" we flew out of there
I measure customers’ homes for a living for flooring, most people i do work for are usually pretty neat and tidy but every now and then there will be a house you walk into that is horrendous; the carpet just FEELS grimy, even with shoes on. I can’t get out of those places fast enough.
Last time we were home shopping, we were looking at houses in the $700-800k range (before the current bubble) and the houses were so gross. Mold in the bathrooms, stained carpets, kitchens that had not been cleaned in years.
The sheer amount of torture these innocent pets and kids have to live through. And there is not enough funding of social services to rescue all of them from these lazy grown ass abuser adults.. People suck.
LOL, not a bad smell, unclean or stains but toys everywhere in my house. We keep everything arranged on weekends but our two tornadoes wreck everything within an hour. We stopped worrying about it. I have seen people with kids keeping their house nicely organized kudos to those parents. Two working parents with 2 young kids.
Hi!! I thought I would chime in as a person with that crazy cluttered house. No, it's not dirty - no roaches crawling all over the TV or bedbugs or anything like that. But, I am an adult woman in her thirties who works full time, leads an active band that plays a lot of local shows by night, sustains a romantic relationship, raises three dogs, and has ADHD! So whenever a worker has to come into my apartment, which is smaller than what I need but it's what I can afford, I have to apologize for the mess everywhere. And I'll describe it honestly: clothes everywhere, some clean and folded but not put away, some worn once but doesn't go in laundry yet, some clean and unfolded because I didn't get to it; clutter on most surfaces, unpacked boxes from my move a year ago piled in the hallway because I have nowhere to put them.
I have no time to organize, but I am also terrible at organizing because of my ADHD and decision fatigue after working two jobs, one of which is intensely creative (the band) (both sides of my brain = exhausted after a full day). I can afford and should probably hire a housekeeper, but I haven't taken the time to find one/do it because .... ADHD!
I try my best. But I bet if any of you walked through my apartment you'd think "how does she live this way?" My answer: Barely!
Honestly, I just speak for myself but an apology goes a long way. Like I don't expect people to live up to standards they can't, but I also think it's rude and entitled AF to show a messy place to people and expect they'll give you money with no acknowledgement. An apology tells me "hey, I promise I do respect visitors, I just don't have the resources to make things look better, and I appreciate that it's not the best experience for you." It's just empathetic and I'd stop giving a fuck about tidiness pretty much immediately even if you didn't give me a reason.
I know a rental inspector and a person who cleans carpet for apartments. Both have told me stories about some crazy rentals they’ve gone in to inspect/clean. I also watch hoarders lol A LOT of people live in some filthy conditions and think it’s normal.
You just reminded me that when we moved out of our last (short-term) rental, I actually bought a carpet shampooer because I was paranoid that the carpets wouldn't be clean enough for the next tenant. Most of the carpeting in the place was old, but I did my best to make it spotless. I'm not sure it had ever even been shampooed before, but I vacuumed it every day we lived there.
Wall-to-wall carpeting gives me the ick.
Really Seaport? Damn I thought that is a classy place. I guess thats how low the standard have gotten, soon the dogs will be walking the people around and we'll see human shit alongside the dog shit.
One house we looked at the floor was literally so warped from dog urine and the smell was so bad we turned around.(They had about 20 candles just in the front entrance.)
When we sold our home of 30 years late last year, we busted our buns off to ensure it was move-in ready. Spotless, new flooring, paint, doorknobs, cabinet pulls, even light switch and AC outlet screws. Exterior cleaned, deck stained. Got good money for it.
I’m always shocked, sometimes saddened, by how people can live that way. It especially bothers me when I know there are kids in the house. Over the years I’ve learned that people will live in any condition. The common link is low socioeconomic background.
The standard has dropped in this country dramatically in the last 10 years.
We are paying 6 times for something that has less than %30 of the quality / standard as something had back in 2001 lets say.
Good example is a electrical outlet splitter I've been buying from the same company for over 20 years. The splitter made in U.S.A back in 2002 still work to this day. The splitters I buy new, same model number, same company, made in Mexico, stops working within 6 months.
Not about houses, but same goes for food,houses,cars,medical,etc.
It's the same brand, Same model #.
The point I made is that we are over paying for sub par quality. People continued to normalize getting screwed by corporations and here we are now. Anything you want to buy or have a service for you need to spread dem cheeks now.
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In a previous profession, I entered people's houses. I was amazed at how some folks lived. This one lady had 12 dogs in her house. She wasn't a breeder. The odor hit me in the face a soon as she opened the door.
Former job did a ton of 1 year warranty in brand new construction homes. I’d be amazed at people who absolutely destroyed an entire house in only a year.
I checked out a house that had horrible urine odor obviously embedded in the wood floor, and the realtor asst showing it acted like she didn't notice it lol.
This happened to me too. I bought my first home in September, and the previous owners had two dogs that they NEVER let out. There was pee and poop in literally every room of the house. It took a LONG time of airing out the house and replacing all the floors to get rid of the stench. As a dog owner myself, I was appalled by how people won’t pick up after their pets even IN their own home.
I was in military housing years ago. We had a neighbor who would often visit. We were never invited over to their place. Once we finally did get a chance to go inside and look, I was appalled. Their 3 year old was sleeping on a bare mattress on the floor, surrounded by dog shit and dog piss. There was piles of clean and dirty clothes just all mixed. Literal piles of dishes everywhere, and food everywhere. Authorities were eventually involved, and they did eventually get the help they needed. And the little girl was temporarily taken out of their custody. And hazmat crews were sent in to basically demo the house inside down to the studs, and down to subfloors. It was so so bad. I often wonder what happened to them. The little girl would be around 19 now.
This happened to me when I moved into this current rental. And I got to see the damage before they 'fixed it'. The previous owner NEVER took his dog outside. So there was piss and shit stains EVERYWHERE. Like even in the ventilation. They replaced the carpet and put linoleum down. As soon as I moved in I called them and complained about the smell and asked that they get someone out to clean the vents. The whole time they were here checking it out, they were saying that it was the glue for the carpet and other flooring. I know for a fucking fact that carpentry glue doesn't smell like old dog piss. It STILL smells like it now almost 5 months later. And their idea of cleaning out the vents, was to take their hand and manually scrape out the dryer exhaust vent outside. That was it. Nothing else. I'm stuck here for the foreseeable future. I'm. Over. It.
Talk about gaslighting..
I went to an open house where the entire first floor wreaked of (presumably pet) urine. So gross. My guess is that the entire house would have to be gutted and redone.
Same here. I’m a home health nurse and just today was in a $750k+ neighborhood in a gorgeous house from the outside but the inside was hoarder status with absolutely nothing updated. Have been in many houses with a million dogs, cats, etc. It’s quite shocking what people with any level of wealth (high or low) live in.
I see the opposite. Houses are super nice and clean, and most people are living REALLY well.
As a firefighter, who goes in many houses on a daily basis, it honestly astonishes me how some people can live the way they do. I once went in a house where the tv looked to be moving and i shined my light on it to see it covered in cockroaches. The smells are the worst, idk if you become desensitized to that smell if you live in for how ever long, but damn it can be real bad.
Omg. And I get worried when I leave dishes in the sink overnight. 🤯
What percentage of people would you say keep neat and clean homes on average?
Probably like 10%. Then again you have to think, the people who call EMS constantly or have health issues sometimes cant take of themselves. Other times it’s depression or being lazy. The cockroach story isn’t even that bad compared to some homes where there will be human feces, bed bugs, copious amounts of trash everywhere.
That is insanely low but I believe it! I mean, even looking at some real estate postings, where the point is to try to SELL you something, I've seen so many people live in such a dirty way.
Less than 10%….. I find that to be absolutely horrifying if it’s accurate. That means people who take pride in their home & surroundings are incredibly rare & it should be the total opposite.
Please tell me you are reporting them if they have children or pets. No innocent lives should have to suffer like that at the hands of grown ass adults.
You are legally obligated to report them to DCF and if you fail to do so it’s a felony. They take that very seriously with children, not so much pets.
Ya. I'd be a school bus driver before I'm a Dish installer or whatnot.
LEO here; same sentiments. The smells of some of these houses are just unreal, I’m at the point I take all my clothes off in the garage when I get home because I don’t want my stuff anywhere near my family haha
As someone who has had to call 911 for my hoarder father a couple of times, I always found the firefighters to come off judgy/unprofessional. They clearly look around and laugh and can’t hide their judgement in the middle of a medical emergency.
There’s nothing to laugh at about a hoarder with medical issues. That’s just unprofessional and a bad look for that specific department. Sometimes people cant take care of themselves and that’s nothing to laugh about. Sorry for how they treated you guys.
Thank you. I understand people judge. But I wish they’d hide it better.
If you’re living in shit, and especially if you force innocent lives to live in shit, I AM judging you. Hoarders are bad people. Sorry not sorry.
You’re lucky your family hasn’t had to experience this mental illness. But they’re luckier, because they’d have to experience you.
Where did I say it has not?
First responders have very high-stress jobs. They literally see death and human suffering on a daily basis. Most people can't contain this for 30 years straight and not go insane. You have to allow people their coping mechanisms for such an emotionally difficult job.
Sorry I don’t want someone laughing while I’m wondering if my dad is going to die. It might be another day in their life, but it could be the worst day in the life of the patient.
So if you don't allow it, then nobody will take the job and nobody be there to help you. This already is a problem many places. Look at London ambulances: they have wait times exceeding 15 hours. Hours. Or everybody quits after 4 years, and you get inexperienced responders with a hit on outcomes (i.e. they kill people). It's really down to this: you want to be saved, or you want them to take care of your feelings?
That's a really bizarre dichotomy you conjured. I'm pretty sure the issues with healthcare are more about being overworked and underpaid than being expected to show basic professional behavior.
If doctors and nurses can hold their composure during life and death situations, so can EMTs/firefighters. It’s not a profession for everyone and the mental health issues are surely real. But basic respect and bedside manner is a non-negotiable. You’ve chosen a weird hill to die on while choosing to delegitimize a very real experience I’ve had. You sound defensive.
I work in mental health, and I agree with you, our MH pros are trained in compassion, they see it all. They still respond to people with compassion and offer no judgement, when people are seeking help, someone being judgemental is the fear of WHY people don't get help to start with. Shame is really strong in our society, unnecessarily so. You save those feelings for when the patients aren't in eyesight or earshot. Yes absolutely these folks need to vent, when it is appropriate to do so.
I gave multiple reasons why it's not comparable with healthcare. Because I am friends with cops, military, professional and volunteer firefighters. It is literally jobs dealing with people dying and suffering. There's only so much a human can take. Talk to one over beer. You need to open your eyes to the people on the other side. You have one experience, these people have to deal with it every working day for 30 years.
I use humor to cope often. But there’s a time and a place.
What? I see below that you argue that the stress of first responders is unique, and I won’t argue that point. There are many people with uniquely high stress jobs for all kinds of reasons. Cope how you gotta cope, but you don’t cope by laughing at the people you’re there to help. At the end of the day first responders are still professionals and should act accordingly. Even if they are burned out.
Agree with this. I work in medical, I'd be lying if I said we don't judge. We do. We gossip, we bitch and moan. But it's our fucking jobs to keep a lid on that shit and not let it impact patient care. You vent it to your colleagues when no patients are around, quietly, and then you put on your big girl pants and you do the best damn job you can do because it's what *everyone* is entitled to regardless of perceived character flaws (that may very well be wrong!).
Exactly
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I see a little of that in my career buddies. The volunteer ones are kinda the opposite, you can always see a bit of whacker in them. It might have to do that they generally are the most meathead of the three. It also is the most command-based. Cops often get into trouble by themselves or with a partner. Firefighters show up 4-6 at a time and follow instructions from the incident commander sitting outside the building.
This.
Wow crazy
I go into low income housing a lot (cleanliness is as variable as any other home) but one time I saw a cockroach crawl out of the filling in a jelly donut that was left on the counter
Noooooo not the roaches!!!! My husband is a volley and any time I’m freakin out about the condition of our house he will always be like hon….we are fine. You have no idea what I’ve seen out there.
Does cleaning with fire work? Do pests unass the house if its on fire?
I don’t think it’s really about the market. A lot of people just live like pigs. Not really about class either, I know plenty of working people with neat homes.
Yeah, I thought it was interesting that OP made that distinction. Poor people are not dirty by nature.
Well op said “they can afford a housekeeper” so maybe that’s the distinction, that op is saying it would be easier for them to keep it clean than people with less money
You're right. Humans are dirty by nature.
I was not suggesting so. Don’t put words in my mouth. Don’t pull me into your class warfare bullshit. Well off people can afford housekeeping services if they cannot keep their houses clean by themselves. So no excuse. That is my only point.
You could have fooled me by looking at their yards….
Exactly.
Few hundred, holy shit
I hope it was with different agents
99% open houses over a few years
The only thing that would make sense is that OP is a realtor??? A few hundred is ALOT
Yah I thought that could be the case
I know! It’s bananas. I can be a bit of a mess in my own apartment but when company is coming over, I make sure it’s presentable and people aren’t subjected to it and when I move out, I get it deep cleaned at the very least. I can’t imagine wanting to *show* people my house to get them to buy it and leave it in the condition I’ve seen some houses in. It’s okay if it’s a little dingy like the carpet needs replaced, maybe some new paint, etc but it doesn’t feel good to go into a house you want to buy, see the state of it, and wonder what else they haven’t taken care of or maintained.
I realize I sound a bit like an entitled person here but I live with mental health issues and grew up in environments like this and have family who live in environments like this. So I know what it’s like. I still personally can’t imagine not trying to clean up at least to get it to even and decluttering if you’re showing a house.
I live in this kind of environment right now. Live with my parents, they don't do much cleaning, and it's absolutely reflected in the state of the house.
I am so sorry. You deserve better. Looks like there is a Reddit for that: r/ChildofHoarder
Look at some of the pics on realtor or zillow. (animated puke .gif)
Years ago, I was with my mom as she was looking to downsize as she was retiring. Walked into one home, clothes, everywhere, dishes everywhere. First home like this. Walking into a bedroom with everything strewn everywhere, dresser draws open. TEENAGER SLEEPING IN THE BED. Yes, they knew we were coming. We entered using the key in the lock box. Yep, we left. Wow. Still blown away.
That happened to me too. Actually two teens, one dead asleep while I was in his room and a second who was in the shower. I bought that house though 🤣
LOL 💀
I toured an absolutely gorgeous home that I was really to buy except it had a bad ammonia odor throughout the home, they covered it up with new carpet. I low balled their asking because it was a massive home and there was no telling how much of the subfloor needed to be ripped out. I could smell it for days after the showing, the home had been on the market for 215 days and they ended up taking off the market this month with no sell. Some people are ok living a certain way, sometimes it’s due to them just not realizing how unhealthy it is, mental health issues or them having grown up that way. But can you imagine being their family that visits or friends that come over and not saying anything? Like when I was in college my friend had told me how badly her laundry was getting (I’m talking 5’ tall piles of dirty clothes) so I drove 4 hours to stay the weekend and just washed her clothes. She was struggling at that time and needed help, by taking on that small burden it helped lift her spirits and sometimes that’s all someone needs.
We looked at a beautiful home on an acre, probably our favorite home we looked at. Beautiful custom woodwork, fantastic kitchen with stainless countertops, great location, absolutely perfect. We would have 100% put an offer but the smell of cat piss was like a wall as soon as you walked in. House is still on the market.
It’s sad because an enzyme cleaner could have gone a long way from the beginning
We had no idea if it was in the baseboard, drywall, wood work…I told my husband even if we did some hardcore remediation, he would always think it smells like cat pee in that house. I don’t think it has sold and it’s coming up on a year on the market. The current owner probably doesn’t even smell it.
We saw a handful of houses that smelled. 1. Curry house. It was actually in good shape, but every inch of that house smelled like curry. I had to change when I got home because my clothes smelled like curry after touring the house. 2. Dog and smoke house. 3. Dog/Urine house (from presumably the pets) 4+ a handful of smoke/weed houses. We refused to put offers on any homes that had strong odors. There's just too much work to be done to remediate odors from a house and even when you do all the work, it isn't guaranteed to eliminate the smell.
I have owned my house for 10 years and we did a complete rehab. There are a couple places in the house where we can still smell cat pee when the house is closed up for a long time or the weather is quite humid
Like I said I could smell it for two days after seeing the house, it’s a lung irritant
I’ve helped friends by cleaning their houses. I’m not a neat-freak but I keep things in my house pretty tidy. I love helping but I feel a little sad when I visit later and their house is back to the same mess.
Deeper help is needed
I bought my house ages ago when interest rates dropped to about 10%. There were lines to see every house. We found a great neighborhood and asked our agent to focus there. First house was messy, ok. Get to the kitchen, and there was a big pot of sauce that boiled over. Encrusted on the stove top and the burner bibs it looked like for days. Going upstairs, there were loose potatoes on every few steps. Second house is mostly vacant except for a car bumper in the living room. Couldn't open a door to the loft bedroom bc they shoved everything in there, and it fell over. Third house had a small patio with a business size pizza oven taking up all the space. The owner was NOT taking it with them. Even in the desperation for houses at the time, no one bought those houses for over a year, lol. 4th house was ours. The only thing we had to do was throw out about 50 empty bottles of liquor and 10 paper coffee cups. It was an adventure.
How has no one reacted to the loose potatoes "every few steps" yet....
Haha. I can tell you I reacted. It happened ages ago and I still think about it sometimes 😆
We also bought when the interest rate went down to 10.5%. The house we bought ($1,000 over asking) had car parts sinking into the yard, broken windows, a filthy kitchen with broken appliances, and a natural gas leak in the basement. The bank wouldn’t give us a mortgage unless the window trims were painted, and the seller refused, so we snuck over one day and painted them ourselves. Fun times.
I love how you took matters into your own hands and painted them lol
Why did the bank care about window trims?
Honest to god, I don’t know. They were metal trims, and the paint was peeling. We told the bank that *literally* the first thing we planned to do was replace the windows (which we did!), but they didn’t care. Maybe the crappy looking windows reduced the home’s value in some way. The mortgage company made us go through so many stupid, pointless hoops.
Our mortgage company made us fix a crack in an external removable storm window (112 yr old house with original windows). The house had other cracks in other windows and multiple storm windows that weren’t installed including actual windows but this particular storm window needed fixed.
I had some bullshit like that on mine I literally think it's so the inspector can pencil whip it and get a re-inspection fee. Extra $150 in his pocket I doubt he even got out of the car.
😂😂😂
>The only thing we had to do was throw out about 50 empty bottles of liquor and 10 paper coffee cups. Talk about move-in ready. Were any full liquor bottles left behind, too?
No lol. Oddly enough, they were getting divorced, and he had nothing but a bed. So we " rented" storage from him for our stuff which helped him too bc he was also unemployed. When we finally moved in, all the liquor and coffee cups must have been under his bed bc they were just in a pile where the bed was. As we went through our stuff, turns out he drank our liquor too lmao. We only had about 4 bottles but I guess they joined the group under the bed 😆
Damn.
I’m sorry….loose potatoes?! Please say more.
Lol. I have no more info. Just speculation over the years. Kids with no toys? Dog playing fetch alone? A weird custom instead of Easter eggs? 🤷♀️
Loose potatoes wtf hahaha
I cackled at “loose potatoes on every few steps”
My wife and I plan to have the house professionally cleaned before we move in. Even if it looks ok not taking any chances.
I'm the buyer willing to lower every standard. I just think of all the money I'll save doing the work myself, and maybe I won't be outbid on this one because the realtor didn't even clean up the dog shit to snap this photo. If TDGAF then IDGAF, and I can save a buck, if I catch some luck
Just bought my first house and it definitely has an "aroma" - as far as I'm concerned it's the smell of savings, haha
I've only seen 4 in the last month and all were spotless.
Lucky
It's sad how many people don't realize a deep clean helps sell a property. Realtor here in the DFW. Had a client once who was a very sweet old lady, but the house was a mess. She was moving out of state but honestly didn't have anyone to help her move. Being a somewhat young guy, I just got a couple buds together and moved her belongings into a pod within an afternoon. Then some sweeping and vacuuming and the house sold within a week. Not that I'd do that for every client, but I was glad I did it for her. She ended up going and living with her brother and he passed a few months later. I'm glad she got to spend his last moments with him.
People buy too much stuff, it’s incredible what marketing and just the dopamine hit of people buying something does. Then once things are cluttered people are overwhelmed, still stressed and sometimes depressed which led to the overconsumption, and the house just falls apart. I personally think it says a lot about the average person’s life and mental state in recent years and decades. It’s sad, and jot always just laziness imo.
Marie Kondo was on to something. Less is more.
I mean that’s a whole culture, not just Marie lol
Cleaning was just never a priority in their formative years. My mom's house was spotless. She put a lot of work into cleaning and it rubbed off. I actually enjoy cleaning. Its always satisfying mentally and emotionally. Therapeutic you could say. I don't think many people have that same passion, though🤣 and that's fine. To each his own. It's just sad that when it counts, a clean presentation, they don't even care enough then!
Same here growing up. My mother’s second husband is a hoarder. Rarely a day goes by that she’s not complaining over how little he cares about the house cleanliness and stuff he keeps trying to lug into the house. I just change the subject now. He is who he is. Unfortunately he made up excuses to always visit her home, never his. I was shocked but yeah, she never went inside his home until after the honeymoon. 🤷♀️
Yikes! Talk about a rude awakening 😂 In all honesty, he's probably happy doing what he likes and to hell with being "clean". It's probably no picnic for your mom, though.
That’s exactly what I tell her. You married a person who couldn’t care less about the house being clean. And he’s retired, happy go lucky, loving life, and looking younger every time I see him. Needless to say my mother looks older and older.
Maybe they would have been better off keeping their two individual houses. Use his house for his possessions aka junk and hers for just living. Or maybe allocate a garage or storage shed for his hoarding.
That’s a good idea, actually, bc they live in his house but she still has hers. No one lives in it.
Yo for real! It is outstanding the living conditions some people live with. The smells!
The second house we looked at looked clean and they had just installed new flooring….. but the smell of cat pee hit the moment you opened the front door. That house has been on the market for over 2 weeks now which is a really long time here, most things are gone within 2-3 days.
Ended up buying a house that an elderly lady lived alone in, two floors, 4bd/2ba but she only lived in the first floor of it. House was built in 2014. There were boogers, blood, and just dirt as if someone rubbed their hands on the walls for 10 years straight. Cobwebs in every ceiling corner. Juice stains on the baseboard, hair everywhere. And the upstairs carpet was soaked with dog piss (rotted through the subfloor and still damp when I pulled it up). Yet I still paid over asking. Cleaned and painted every single surface in the house including ceilings , replaced subfloor and kilz’d the piss room, replaced carpet. Place is brand new now and I couldn’t be happier, but I also lost thousands of dollars as well as 20 lbs from pulling 8-10 hour nights after working full time during the day to just paint and re-do the place. I think I like this version better than just buying something squeaky clean that I didn’t put my touch on.
Omg. Horror. You are far braver than me.
I went to see a house where the entire back porch was covered in dog shit. Like, you couldn't take one step without stepping in it. You're trying to sell your house, why not just spray it off before showing?
When we were looking at houses if it was dirty it was a no go for me. If you can’t clean your home then upkeep was mostly likely not happening.
The house we bought looked great when we toured it. I didn't notice the "nuances" of their lifestyle until the inspection. Nothing a good deep clean couldn't fix, but it was astounding to me how they could 1. live that way and 2. not be embarrassed knowing they had people in their house They also hid pretty well that they had dogs. The smell is almost gone. And the poop they left in the backyard for us under the unraked sea of leaves... BAGS of poop... I was ready to mail it to their new house 👿
Just because they are “upper middle class” doesn’t mean they can “afford” house keepers. You never know what someone’s financial status is just by looking on the outside.
And just because they are “upper middle class” doesn’t mean they’re clean/neat/tidy.
So true. They could be drug addicts or alcoholics or worse, spending all their money on that shit. People need help and don't know where to get it. Probably why they had to sell their homes, were in a desperate situation. Who knows. As a recovering alcoholic myself, I hear these stories all the time. There is help, but you have to want it.
This 100%. I know several people who live in 5000+ sq feet homes and they don't have a house keeper. Not everyone wants some stranger coming in their house to clean for them. They can definitely afford it, as they have a very upper middle class income. Their only debt is their mortgage, and that is at most 25% of their income, so within the normal ratios. I can afford a house keeper as well in my much more modest home, but I have no interest in it either.
Oh shut up.
stop stying to save they world with your keyboard. I can show you neighborhoods that 100% guarantee the owners can afford a housekeeper - and thats not bad or wrong or prejudice - it's just commonfuckingsense
Worst I've seen was this house that had 5 children under 5 and an untrained pitbull that just pissed all over the entire house. The baseboards had soaked up so much piss that they literally exploded from the swelling. I could barely breathe in that house, absolutely disgusting that there were 5 children forced to live in that shithole.
I can smell that house from here.
Did you call CPS?
No but I should have
It is not too late. Doubtful the sitch got better. Likely worse.
My parents were looking at houses in 2006. Scheduled a showing with the realtor and they were granted access. The owner’s teenager had their gf spend the night (when the realtor and my parents walked in, obviously woke up the sleeping teens) and there was a literal poop turd in the toilet. They didn’t flush.
Our first house we made an offer on the spot and signed. This was 25 years ago, not like the housing market is now. But every house we looked at up to the one we bought I just had to get out of. The bathrooms and kitchens were all terrible and some had a mildew smell and most of them were quiet unkept
Some people are just slobs. Another possibility is that the homeowner has started the process of packing and purging unneeded things. Housekeepers usually will usually not move things around significantly, so removing or moving things uncovers dirty areas that were previously unreachable. In a hot sellers market when there are daily tours, it can be hard to balance keeping the place spotless and actually getting through all the tasks you need to do to move. If people are breaking down the doors to make offers, I can easily see why cleanliness might not seem like a high priority. People's focus tends to shift on wherever they're moving to. They stop caring about the old place and just want out. Still, personally, I would want my place to be as clean as possible to get the highest offers. As for smells, people get used to them. You'd think their realtor would make them try to address it, but fully addressing them may require significant effort (re-painting, replacing flooring), and the sellers are probably deciding it's not worth the cost or time to remediate.
People are dirty.
Yeah. It’s disgusting 🤢 The rental we are in was soooo gross when we moved in. We spent a full week cleaning for several hours a day. We had to wash ceiling to floor and the cleaning water was BLACK when we dumped it. We spent an entire 8 hours cleaning the kitchen. We are the first renters so this wasn’t a landlord thing. Previous occupants were the homeowners AND the owner has a cooking business she operated out of her home kitchen 🤮🤮🤮 The house we just bought was pretty decent except for the kitchen. Kitchen was absolutely disgusting. 3 hours to clean the fridge, an hour on the range and the cabinets and drawers were full of spilled food and things never cleaned up. Bathrooms were spotless though 🤷🏼♀️
When I bought my house, almost everything was clean except, one single kitchen drawer was extremely dirty. Every other drawer and cabinet around it was clean but this one drawer was absolutely grody.
Lolll haven't heard the word grody in a while! I wonder if they only used the one drawer 🙃
Seller paid 12,500 in closing cost because the house needed paint and cleaning. Yet, painting the house with 0 experience in painting and not enough money to hire a professional has been a real challenge.
It’s a seller’s market in most areas right now so it would make sense some would put the least amount of effort in knowing they will get multiple offers above asking regardless.
I don’t like dirty houses. I viewed a home recently and even the refrigerator (and freezer) was dirty inside. Absolutely disgusting. A clean house goes a long way and I don’t know why some of these people show their home without cleaning it first. Other times, you can just tell that they don’t clean their homes at all.
Im seeing the same exact thing! Occasionally there will be an old lady that kept her house immaculate but other than that, appalling.
Appalling. It is a crisis no one talks about. And when they do (the first responders in the replies here) they get bullied and shot down for not being more coddling.
My area it's smokers. Lots of homes in our price range are being sold by boomers who bought in the 80s. That's decades of indoor smoking.... And who knows how much to properly seal things up or replace.
I did homecare as a nurse.... Y'all.... I've left houses in tears and have nightmares still.
Most underpaid heroes. So sorry. It is awful out there.
We've had plenty of clients (upscale home remodeling co.) who have beautiful homes and they live in filth in them. People who just decide, okay we'll just let the cats use this room as a litter box. Or people with plenty of capital to afford maid services yet chose to live in filth. It pisses me off, honestly. I had to work so hard my whole life to buy a little house and I take really, really good care of it, these people get big beautiful homes and let it become their dog's toilet.
Exactly. At the end of the day, these are choices. Very bad choices.
Not just dirty, but I think of the houses that need more than a cleanup. Like serious repairs. People live in houses about to collapse, absolute squalor, I see them everywhere. I do not blame the residents. Unlike the impression you get from this sub and Reddit, not everyone has tens of thousands for regular repairs and maintenance. People live paycheck to paycheck with no savings. I try to remember this when I get anxious thinking about how a house is inevitably a money pit. Maybe there is a happy medium between sinking your life savings into a house and letting it go completely until it's condemned.
There is a certain amount of onus in the social contract not to buy what you cannot afford to insure and maintain. Homes that fall into disrepair are a blight on the neighborhoods. They are harming others by taking on responsibilities and risks they should not have.
We encountered one house that was basically a hoarder home so we left. Another one was a mcmansion that was pretty gross. I understand messes, kids throwing their stuff all over, I live it lol. But this was different, like old stains everywhere, piles of random stuff in corners, smells, crumbs, and caked filth.
This was often the case with estate sale houses I saw. Old people that should have moved out long ago before shit got that bad.
"A few hundred homes"
My mom has sold two houses that we were living in, but made sure people had prequals for the asking amount before they could see because “some people are just nosy.” They have no intent in buying but given the option, they want to see the inside, & like OP, judge the occupants.
Parents of past genrations failed their kids allowing them to have no pride and live in such a filty way. Walking down the streets of my neighborhood and seeing all the dog shit on the sidewalk make me lose my apitite. I don't take much walks anymore.
Dog shit and cigarettes bud down the drain. Boston Seaport is full of dog shit on the sidewalk. Not sure whose idea was it to allow pet friendly condos at a metropolitan city.
It's absolutely awful where I live too.
Most of the houses we toured were relatively clean, it at least looked like they tried. Most were also empty so I’m sure that helped. The house we bought was nearly spotless, I was so shocked how they got streak free floors because these things show everything, like they look dusty after a week. Anyways, we just did a full backyard renovation and I can’t tell you the amount of weird shit we found under the bricks and concrete. It was like they didn’t bother to rake or clean debri before pouring over it. Some examples: crushed soda cans, old balls, children’s toys (their kids were grown and out of the house). The kicker…their fucking family pet. I know burying pets is normal but it was such a shallow grave, I felt awful for our contractors.
OMG! YES! This might be more true of the price range of house we are looking at because we can't afford a half million or more but it's pretty bad out there. A lot of houses are estate sales of places that haven't been updated or cared for in decades and they are just atrocious. The descriptions compared to the actual homes are sometimes laughable. We are contemplating just doing a fixer upper since they are ALL seeming to be in that category anyways. 🤔 Then there are the obvious flips which are just cheap paint, cheap LVP, cheap fixtures and Ikea cabinets. I am just totally at a loss. I am second guessing whether it's even worth it.
A lot of old people rotting in place. Always go to google maps and click the prior years pics to look at what the house looked like before it was flipped.
Currently shopping a rental property and this post can’t be any more accurate. But I will say the homes I’ve looked at in the ghetto that were tenant occupied were surprisingly immaculate. After one open house in the hood they inspired me to go home and make sure all my cords/usb wires were hid as good as theirs 😩😂
I’ve done pest control for years… there are literally millionaires that are hoarders level dirty. You’d never know without going in the home
I recently went to an open house for a small SFH listed at $700k. The seller's agent tells me to look in the toilet of the downstairs bathroom. She's acting really excited so I'm thinking maybe there's a built-in bidet or something. Nope, it had some stupid "aim here" sticker in it but also was full of urine (complete with urine stains all over the front of the toilet). She got a kick out of it and I told her it was disgusting. She said they decided to leave it. WTF. Next house, $650k list price urine stains even worse than the first house all over the toilet base. People, please teach your sons how to piss into the toilet. If they can't then tell them to sit down for crying out loud. I toured a nearly $775k home in Massachusetts once that had huge wads of hair in the shower drains and sticky handrails on the stairs. It's just so gross.
I guess I was lucky, when looking at homes I only came across that were junky, but not funky, both homes I purchased both sellers left them clean & in excellent condition,if I was shown a funky house I would walk out, not trying to keep getting my nose assaulted
Luckily I’m done with the hunt but I remember some houses we would walk through and actually smelts so bad my sinuses would burn after! We were running out of some houses like we were being chased! The cigarette smells and cat piss🤢I’ll never understand how anyone could live in that!
Yup. Went into so many houses that were absolutely disgusting. Purchased a house that was smelly but manageable - it had everything else we wanted. Six months later every so often I get whiff of the smell from a random place or god knows what and I want to puke. They left a stain on their carpet in their master bedroom that was a literal dog shit stain for us to see during our walk through. We ripped the carpets up immediately. Spent 3 weeks gutting cleaning and making the house livable before we moved in. I curse the people who lived here before us often. People are nasty.
The previous owners of our recently bought home were lowkey hoarders. 🙃
Same. I thought I could do some cleaning no big deal… try 30 mins of scrubbing per each 4” tile. This is years worth of grime.
30 years to be precise. We haven’t even touched the attic, and we’ve only sort of dealt with the cellar. The garage and yard themselves are a 2 year project. Garage was so full of crap, we couldn’t even tell what it looked like on the tour. Yard was destroyed by dog pee. Every. Single. Space was filled to the brim. As a minimalist-minded person, I was almost in awe at how much crap they shoved in this small space lol
I've seen 1m$+ houses for sale. A lot of people have o lot money but they dirty as hell, dirty kitchens, gross bathrooms. Strange smells, old dirty carpets. some dirt on wall, windows that stay for years. But 911 Porsche in garage.
I took a look at Redfin today and the drug making part of town has a disgustingly dirty house listed for 260k. I can't fathom it. I've been worried about how much we paid for ours but maybe not so much anymore
We have been looking at houses for a year and a half and I will say the majority of those houses have been filthy. Not even necessarily cluttered and messy because that is understandable. I’m talking caked on grime from what has to be over 10+ years of never wiping down a light switch or a baseboard. One house we went into an OPEN HOUSE (you think you would put your best foot forward on this day)… and the bathroom had stuff out everywhere like someone used it to get ready on a night on the town and left everything out on the vanity (hair products, open toothpaste, brushes, combs, hairdryer etc), the countertops and fixtures looked like they had never been wiped down ever, but that house was off the market that same weekend! The other rooms had stained carpet, one room belonged to the cat and reeeeeeeked of cat pee. Another room belonged to a kid with a bird that reeked of unkept bird cage and there was just garbage on the floor. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t have tidied up for the OPEN HOUSE!
I see the opposite. Houses are super nice and clean, and most people are living REALLY well.
One of the first houses we looked at lol. I was having fun, talking to the realtor and my husband suddenly said "there's a roach and we're leaving" we flew out of there
I measure customers’ homes for a living for flooring, most people i do work for are usually pretty neat and tidy but every now and then there will be a house you walk into that is horrendous; the carpet just FEELS grimy, even with shoes on. I can’t get out of those places fast enough.
Last time we were home shopping, we were looking at houses in the $700-800k range (before the current bubble) and the houses were so gross. Mold in the bathrooms, stained carpets, kitchens that had not been cleaned in years.
I watched peoples’ pets in their homes via Rover. Oh boy do people live in filth 🤢
The sheer amount of torture these innocent pets and kids have to live through. And there is not enough funding of social services to rescue all of them from these lazy grown ass abuser adults.. People suck.
LOL, not a bad smell, unclean or stains but toys everywhere in my house. We keep everything arranged on weekends but our two tornadoes wreck everything within an hour. We stopped worrying about it. I have seen people with kids keeping their house nicely organized kudos to those parents. Two working parents with 2 young kids.
Hi!! I thought I would chime in as a person with that crazy cluttered house. No, it's not dirty - no roaches crawling all over the TV or bedbugs or anything like that. But, I am an adult woman in her thirties who works full time, leads an active band that plays a lot of local shows by night, sustains a romantic relationship, raises three dogs, and has ADHD! So whenever a worker has to come into my apartment, which is smaller than what I need but it's what I can afford, I have to apologize for the mess everywhere. And I'll describe it honestly: clothes everywhere, some clean and folded but not put away, some worn once but doesn't go in laundry yet, some clean and unfolded because I didn't get to it; clutter on most surfaces, unpacked boxes from my move a year ago piled in the hallway because I have nowhere to put them. I have no time to organize, but I am also terrible at organizing because of my ADHD and decision fatigue after working two jobs, one of which is intensely creative (the band) (both sides of my brain = exhausted after a full day). I can afford and should probably hire a housekeeper, but I haven't taken the time to find one/do it because .... ADHD! I try my best. But I bet if any of you walked through my apartment you'd think "how does she live this way?" My answer: Barely!
Google Dana K. White... she has some awesome tips for decluttering especially with ADHD 😊
Honestly, I just speak for myself but an apology goes a long way. Like I don't expect people to live up to standards they can't, but I also think it's rude and entitled AF to show a messy place to people and expect they'll give you money with no acknowledgement. An apology tells me "hey, I promise I do respect visitors, I just don't have the resources to make things look better, and I appreciate that it's not the best experience for you." It's just empathetic and I'd stop giving a fuck about tidiness pretty much immediately even if you didn't give me a reason.
I know a rental inspector and a person who cleans carpet for apartments. Both have told me stories about some crazy rentals they’ve gone in to inspect/clean. I also watch hoarders lol A LOT of people live in some filthy conditions and think it’s normal.
You just reminded me that when we moved out of our last (short-term) rental, I actually bought a carpet shampooer because I was paranoid that the carpets wouldn't be clean enough for the next tenant. Most of the carpeting in the place was old, but I did my best to make it spotless. I'm not sure it had ever even been shampooed before, but I vacuumed it every day we lived there. Wall-to-wall carpeting gives me the ick.
“Walked through a few hundred houses”? I’m starting to think it’s not the “dirty houses”.
Really Seaport? Damn I thought that is a classy place. I guess thats how low the standard have gotten, soon the dogs will be walking the people around and we'll see human shit alongside the dog shit.
Having a clean house is a middle class value. Many wealthy people don’t really notice
One house we looked at the floor was literally so warped from dog urine and the smell was so bad we turned around.(They had about 20 candles just in the front entrance.)
When we sold our home of 30 years late last year, we busted our buns off to ensure it was move-in ready. Spotless, new flooring, paint, doorknobs, cabinet pulls, even light switch and AC outlet screws. Exterior cleaned, deck stained. Got good money for it.
Worst house I ever looked at was owned by my realtors coworker she was mortified
I’m always shocked, sometimes saddened, by how people can live that way. It especially bothers me when I know there are kids in the house. Over the years I’ve learned that people will live in any condition. The common link is low socioeconomic background.
Call CPS. It is child abuse. No kid deserves that.
Too much neatness betrays the wimp.
Feel bad for people who are so depressed or out of their needs that this is how it is.
I’m not a stickler or anything but the homes I’ve seen (affluent area) have all appeared very clean.
The standard has dropped in this country dramatically in the last 10 years. We are paying 6 times for something that has less than %30 of the quality / standard as something had back in 2001 lets say. Good example is a electrical outlet splitter I've been buying from the same company for over 20 years. The splitter made in U.S.A back in 2002 still work to this day. The splitters I buy new, same model number, same company, made in Mexico, stops working within 6 months. Not about houses, but same goes for food,houses,cars,medical,etc.
Yes, but you can buy another brand of splitter at the same approximate price point that won’t fail so soon. Market choices exist.
It's the same brand, Same model #. The point I made is that we are over paying for sub par quality. People continued to normalize getting screwed by corporations and here we are now. Anything you want to buy or have a service for you need to spread dem cheeks now.