Homeowners - Do you know the names of the previous owners of your home?

[Cluricaun]

Just of of curiosity. Sometimes you meet them at the closing table, or maybe when you went to see the house they were there. Sometimes you still get mail for them. So that's it, do you know the names of the people who owned your home before you.

[EJsGirl]

Hell yes I know their names- we still get mail for them, years after they left. The immediate previous owners, the previous previous owners, and what we assume are the previous previous previous owners!

[XJETGIRLX]

The previous owner of our house wasn't at closing, but we know his name and we know a lot about him, too. He was an artist, and we specifically asked that the metal sculptures in the yard be included with the house in our offer.

He's fairly well-known in our town, and we are considering commissioning a piece for the living room from him if he'll do it.

[Jules]

Yeah, it was a repo but we had their names on the paperwork. And we still get mail. And someone who crashed with them long enough to get mail there turned out to be an acquaintance of mine.

[Johnny]

I bought my house from my best fiend.

[Zsofia]

Yes and they can come get their goddamned Mormon book catalogs any time they like, please.

I typoed that as "boot". I might actually read Mormon boot catalogs.

[troubleagain]

I know the last *two* owners of my house. The ones we actually bought from never got to live there. They bought while the original couple were still building, and rented the house to the original couple during that period. Then they got pregnant and had a family crisis back "home" in Georgia and moved away. They sold the house to us, the original owner's mother did the closing, and they rented from us until their new house (which is huge and beautiful) was finished.

[featherlou]

I know their names, but next to nothing about them, except they had kids and the husband was lazy (according to the neighbours). If they were responsible for some of the renos in here, then I also know that he's a crap carpenter and electrician.

[dread pirate jimbo]

I know their names, but next to nothing about them, except they had kids and the husband was lazy (according to the neighbours). If they were responsible for some of the renos in here, then I also know that he's a crap carpenter and electrician.

Don't forget that we still get some of their mail. We used to throw it back in the mailbox as return to sender, but quit doing that after about the first six months. If they don't have the sense to forward their bank statements and shit, it's not really our responsibility to fix it for them! Morons.

And yes, there's not a right angle in our basement, nor is there an electrical socket with the ground wire connected (aside from the one outlet I fixed). Very half-assed.

[EJsGirl]

Ours were similarly lame in the "keeping up the house" department. Let's see-

1. Dead rats in walls/ceiling, so put a smelly floral candle in the AC intake!

2. When painting the office, paint around the desk and hutch instead of pulling them out from the wall, thus ending up with a fucking silhouette on the wall!

3. Don't sink the fence posts in concrete. Hell, don't even sink them more than 6 inches into the dirt!

Believe me, there was LOTS more...

[BiblioCat]

And yes, there's not a right angle in our basement, nor is there an electrical socket with the ground wire connected (aside from the one outlet I fixed). Very half-assed.

What are you two doing living in my old house?

We knew the previous owner's name because their name was perma-bonded to the mailbox with those little metallic letters you can buy at Home Depot. They must have used some incredible contact cement to glue them on (and then shellacked over them!), because there was no getting them off, and we ended up putting black electrical tape over it till we bought a new box.
And yes, we got mail for them for a couple of years after we bought the place.
That house was sold a few months ago, and I met the buyer at settlement, but can't for the life of me remember it now.

[featherlou]

Ours were similarly lame in the "keeping up the house" department. Let's see-

1. Dead rats in walls/ceiling, so put a smelly floral candle in the AC intake!

2. When painting the office, paint around the desk and hutch instead of pulling them out from the wall, thus ending up with a fucking silhouette on the wall!

3. Don't sink the fence posts in concrete. Hell, don't even sink them more than 6 inches into the dirt!

Believe me, there was LOTS more...

That's not lame - that's so far beyond lame that lame is a dot to them. I may be a half-assed housekeeper, but if I do a job around the house, I do it right. One of my favourite sayings is, "If you don't have time to do it right, when do you have time to do it over?"

Five and a half years later, we're still getting mail for the last owners. They go straight into recycling at this point - if someone steals their identity from bank statements put into recycling whole, TFB, baby.

[wolf-alice]

Oh, EJsGirl, we’ve so been there.

1. Bedroom smells a bit damp? Install one of those vented brick things! Still have a problem? Eh, stick some foil under the wallpaper. It persists? Oh, don’t find out the actual cause, no, just paint over the wallpaper mould and crank up the air freshener before the nice couple come over to view. You’re busy people, I understand! You’ve only been here three years!
(When we moved in, we actually sorted it out in the first week – re-did the rendering and sealed the interior wall and - as if by magic! – no more damp. Fancy that!)
2. Roof tiles need a going-over? Just gaffer-tape them on!

3. No firewall in the attic? Eh, nail your attic trapdoor shut. Good enough.

4. Hot water tank starts to overflow on the day you move out and it’s pooling in the kitchen? Hey, as of 3pm it’s not your kitchen! Go ahead and look away until then.

5. Similarly if the soil pipe bursts in the week before you move and you need to store a heap of human faeces, no reasonable buyers would object should you ferment a few pints in the wheelie bin. Go ahead and cram your crap in on top of it so the lid breaks, too, we’re accommodating people.

6. No room for your two freezers in your godless and horrible Barratt new build? No problem, just leave ‘em in the garage and thoughtfully gift the new owners with either a shelf of deep-frozen trout or horse foetus fillet.

So to end hijack and answer your question, yes – they were called Rebecca and Michael, they were fuckwits and I hope their new build collapses round their ears. Obviously we still get their post. Obviously I am forwarding it all scrupulously. FORWARDING IT TO MY ARSE!

And breathe.

The old couple before them, however, were by all accounts lovely people, if rather too fond of Anaglypta.

[PapSett]

Heh... I sure do. My grandparents bought this house brand spanking new, then my parents bought it from Grandpa when Grandma died, and now it's mine.

[Diana]

I'm a renter, but I regularly get mail for the last two occupants of this apartment. I've been here for seven years. For one of them, it's not junk mail, either. Stuff from Social Security and other government agencies. You'd think that even if she never bothered to notify them, my relentless "no longer at this address" would make an impression on them, but apparently not so much.

That one was apparently a real winner, but I'm grateful to her for being kind enough to trash the place so thoroughly that the landlord had to completely renovate it before renting it again. When I moved in, it was freshly painted and tiled, with brand new floors and fixtures. Yay!

[TokyoPlayer]

We had the house built, so any and all problems are solely our responsibility.

[don't call me shirley]

Yes, we met them at closing and they are still friends with some of the neighbors so they come around from time to time.

Rather than go into the enormously long list of do-it-yourself projects gone horribly wrong that he did, I'll just tell you what he told me about wiring the phone jacks, cable jacks, and surround sound jacks: "One day I had all my buddies over, and we got a keg, and wired the whole house."

[Boscibo]

This house is actually my boyfriend's, but yes, we know the people who owned it before (they built it) and know they moved out when they couldn't keep up the yard anymore and moved into a condo a few blocks away. She died last year.

[tirial]

Yes. We met her briefly but are still getting mail for her (I think the post office's redirect isn't working as it should).

[Mama Zappa]

Yeah - we know their names - they're on the paperwork after all! (well, we don't know the kids' names).

In fact the owner popped by our old place one day shortly before we moved, to give us a list of things they were thinking of leaving behind and give us first refusal on them.

Odd, unfriendly people though - really snippy about some stuff, and apparently they really refused to have anything to do with the neighbors (who were glad to see us move in). Never did come by to pick up a few things we found hidden in cupboards, or the carved tiki-head thingy we found in the fireplace of all things!

[Eleanor of Aquitaine]

... Never did come by to pick up a few things we found hidden in cupboards, or the carved tiki-head thingy we found in the fireplace of all things!

A friend of mine used to hide her only truly valuable piece of jewelry, a ring she'd inherited from her grandmother, in a secret spot in her bathroom cabinet.

When she sold her house and moved, she forgot about the ring. It was months later before she missed it, and only after tearing apart her new bedroom did she remember where it was.

She called the people living in her old house and asked if she could come look for it, not giving away the secret location on the phone, of course, and she got it back.

[sublight]

My current place is new, so nobody was here before me. Before that, I once knew the previous tenant of an apartment I was living in, since the apartment was owned by the school I was working for and she had just recently quit but was still living in town.

[danceswithcats]

Yes, I met the original owner of my first home. He was the guy who didn't do a blasted thing to maintain the place after Bill Levitt packed up and left town in 1955. But, that's why I bought the house in 1983 $50K under adjacent property values.

For the second house, original owner sold it after his wife passed away, and the subsequent owners were in the midwest, so settlement was conducted via express mail.

ETA-I was thinking if I'd met the parties. Yes, I know the names of all prior owners. My bad.

[susan]

Sure. Property tax records are easily available.

[featherlou]

<snip> I'll just tell you what he told me about wiring the phone jacks, cable jacks, and surround sound jacks: "One day I had all my buddies over, and we got a keg, and wired the whole house."

You know, that would explain a lot about the electrical and phone wiring in our house. If any phone jacks work in the basement it's kind of a miracle. Our dream house for our next house is a 30 year old house that has had the plumbing, wiring, windows and insulation upgraded by a professional who knows what he's doing, and all the rest is left as is so we don't have to rip out someone else's crappy DIY jobs.

[Control-Z]

Yes, they get some neat catalogs (high-end home decoration type stuff.) I've met the guy once, I know the business he owns. He's supposed to come show me how to use the generator hook-up in the garage, doesn't look like that's going to happen!

[Campion]

I met the previous owners (call them the Smiths) during the inspection and continued to see them after the closing; their new home wasn't ready, so they moved in with neighbors down the street for a couple months. The Smiths had owned the house for about ten years.

On the day of the closing, I described the house to a coworker who lived nearby. After a few questions, he figured out that he'd been to that house before, when it was owned by a former coworker of ours. I emailed her to confirm it had been her house; it was a very funny coincidence. When I next saw the Smiths, I told them I knew half of the couple they'd bought the house from. They were very interested to hear that, because the couple at the time was going through a nasty divorce (precipitated by the wife's affair and ensuing pregnancy), so I was able to confirm that it all worked out okay -- they'd split up, she'd had kid, and all was well.

I know the names of some of the owners before that because there was a file handed down to me with information about the house (the plans for the extension, product manuals for appliances, etc.).

[Alien Crouton]

Oh yes I do know. They were pricks the whole time I was buying the house. Every single bill collector who calls, I cheerfully provide the previous occupant's new address. Lesson: don't be a prick when selling your house.

[maggenpye]

Yep, she was a friend - right up till her brother decided to get his court fines sent here (he'd moved out three or four years previously) - I got it sorted out, when he wouldn't. According to the guy on the phone, I was mere days away from a bailiff's visit for the unpaid fines. Which both my 'friend' and her brother knew, but forgot to mention. Like Alien Crouton, I cheerfully passed on the correct contact details.

My previous two places - I moved into B after the drug dealer moved out. I moved from A (next door), where drug dealer's girlfriend had previously sold drugs also. I had some very interesting visitors. The girlfriend was living in C (next door the other side) by that stage and finally got kicked out after accumulating six months worth of kitchen rubbish in her garage, because she 'couldn't afford' the rubbish bags that would allow the trash to be picked up from the curb ($1.20 for five).