A home seller is being asked to pay £160 after the buyer found six gnomes in the garden.
Paul Urch sold the bungalow in Wrington, Somerset, which belonged to his late father, through Debbie Fortune Estate Agents.
Urch said that the new owner, Nick Walters, had given him 12 hours to clear the gnomes, but then charged him the removal costs.
Urch said: “The whole thing to me is totally ludicrous that anybody should make such an issue about it. Some people leave houses and take the light bulbs, and I didn’t do anything like that.”
He said: “On completion day he [Mr Walters] was in France and then I got an email that tells me to remove them.
“Next thing he tells us he is threatening to take me to court if I do not pay this.
“Haven’t people got better things in life to do than moan about a gnome?”
A day after completion Mr Walters paid for the gnomes plus a sundial, bench and television set to be removed and dumped in the driveway of a neighbouring house that Mr Urch was also trying to sell following his father’s death.
Mark Hayward, a negotiator for Debbie Fortune Estate Agents, said the reaction was “a bit extreme”.
He said: “I must say I haven’t come across this before. The purchaser took occupation and was a bit miffed that there were some gnomes still in the garden.
“As a result they collected all the gnomes together and put them in the vendor’s drive.”
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Comments
Technically that's not vacant possession then is it? Even if she'd been reduced to ashes it was a person over the age of 18 (presumably) who remained in occupation. Vendor was lucky that completion was not delayed.
Some years ago a vendor left the ashes of his late mother in the property, the new owners bought them in and they stayed under my colleagues desk for a few weeks waiting for the vendor to call in and collect them
After several phone calls and a couple of letters the owner did finally come in and collect them
One of our vendors had just left a quiche lorraine in the fridge for the purchasers. It was still in date.
I had a vendor who’s tortoise would burrow under the garden to hibernate – my memoires as a child watching Blue Peter are that you can also put them in the airing cupboard?
……………anyway, at the point of completion the tortoise had ‘done one’ and was somewhere snoozing away under the garden and not due back out for a few weeks or so, the vendor and purchaser agreed that once he was ready to come out of hibernation and make and appearance the former owner could have access to collect his fully refreshed tortoise.
No one sued anyone, the tortoise turned up and they all lived happily ever after.
Jonnie
The best one I ever had was the house I sold for an elderly West Indian gentleman. His best offer was £25k less than he wanted. He dwelled on this throughout the buying process. After exchange he decided to have the £20k kitchen he had installed removed (no-one but he know this) and replaced with a cheapo from Magnet. Between exchange and completion, as advised by the solicitor, the buyer visited for a final inspection prior to completion.
Funny or what...
The Gentleman had to put the old kitchen back. Cost him fortunes.
Silly Billy.
the way some people treat gnomes is terrible. Not one mention about how they felt :(
……..lets have some more stories of the public being daft, AC’s carpet one below is not an uncommon one and im sure many of us have had a similar situation.
I sold an old bay fronted place a while back and the vendor wanted to include some bloody awful leather sofa at huge cost, buyer didn’t want it, vendor dropped his price a bit, buyer still didn’t want it (it really was some hateful jobby the thick and tasteless get from DFS) so the vendor dropped his demand again / offered to leave it for free, buyer still didn’t want it.
……………..turns out the vendor got it in when the bay window was being replaced / re built, the hall was to skinny so it had to be sawn to bits and carried out in lumps, not sure if he had finished paying his £12.80 a month for it.
Jonnie
P.s – have you heard the one about the bloke that built a garage to the side of his house but didn’t move his caravan out of the garden first, big crane + consent from the council to shut the road = big bill.
£26.66 per gnome.
They probably cost less to buy.
Vacant possession is exactly that though.
And as a new house owner, why should he have to pay for them to be removed.
That said of course, what a complete ass.
I have dealt with people like this over 20 years of being an agent.
My particular favorite was a vendor that demanded money for his 10 year old ratty carpets.
The buyer said no thanks.
The owner then said he'd leave them.
The buyer said no thanks.
On the day of completion the carpets were, of course, still there.
The buyer refused to complete until they were gone.
It cost the owner over £1500.
That'll learn him to be greedy.
what a silly little man
Pathetic. I am glad not to be neighbour to this chap ... who is doubtless a pillar of society, good deeds, high moral fibre and yellow jacket brigade speed cameras. No, I'm probably wrong as gnomes are very sociable, rarely commit crimes against morality & certainly don't speed. So, I'm flummoxed as to why Mr Walters is so lacking in humour. Did he pay too much, that's the usual reason for a ratty buyer.
The best thing for the vendor to do, in the circumstances, would be to acquire as many more gnomes as he can (donations anyone?) and set them up in serried ranks in the next door garden, all "looking" over the fence into the buyer's property; over time more and more gnomes can be bought until the new owner's home becomes surrounded and entirely overlooked by gnomes. That would serve him right!
Mark Hayward.
Mr Urch was no longer a vendor of that particular property. Mr ,Walters had no right to place them on another property. It is all a bit silly, however, the facts should be in the contract of sale?
No homes for the gnomes!
and they all lived happily ever after