TrashedHouse.com

Part 5: Moving back into our home

At long last the day came and we had the keys to our own home. We had no idea what we would find but Patricia Shepherd had warned us that the place might be a bit messy as Karen Holliday had kept two dogs. Oh, and there had been some other people living there. Not least the brother who had stood as guarantor - a now bankrupt publican, allegedly.

All the horrors were starting to emerge and the neighbours helped to fill in the missing pieces of the jigsaw. We had initially let the house to a single mother with three children. The mother, Karen Holliday, had since had a baby with a new boyfriend and he and the baby had also been living there. Her oldest daughter had also had a baby, so her baby and its father were living there. Then there was the brother. The two dogs. And who knows who all else.

We were disappointed to find a wasteland where we'd once had a garden with trees, an archway, lots of pots on the patio, a brick-built BBQ, and a thriving herb garden. All gone. That all went in the first month, according to the neighbours. Evidently too much trouble for the Holliday parents to take care of. If this was how they behaved in full view of others outside, we need hardly explain what the inside was like.

We'd been warned by Patricia Shepherd's staff member that "one of the standard lamps appeared to be missing". In fact, anything of any value was gone (even the dimmer switches from the walls) and most of what remained was broken or in such poor condition it was fit only for the local dump. The mattress looked as if someone had pissed on it every night (it had been in new condition when we left it). It added insult to injury to have to also pay to have our destroyed property taken away.

And to make matters worse, it turned out that many items had been left off the inventory, which we had entrusted to Patricia Shepherd RMLS to carry out. This added to the difficulty of making insurance claims when we discovered the full extent of Karen Holliday's depredations.

Not only had Karen Holliday and her extended family destroyed or stolen most of the furniture, they'd even managed to do fairly substantial damage to the fabric of the house. Thus Kay found herself having to learn plastering skills while David fitted a new kitchen. It took us several months to get the property in a fit state to put it on the market for sale.

Oh yes, this was the place which had been regularly inspected and pronounced as being well looked after by Patricia Shepherd's agents.