Two-bedroom house on the market for just £80k looks ordinary from outside – but hides a ‘disgusting’ secret
IF you are trying to climb a property ladder, a two-bedroom house for just £80,000 sounds like a dream bargain.
The cheap property looks ordinary from the outside but the unbelievable price tag arouses suspicion.
The three-storey house in Coundon, Coventry, West Midlands is going under the hammer on July 11 for an estimated £80,000 to £100,000.
But inside the seemingly regular property, buyers are met with a shocking hoard of junk and abandoned belongings.
Almost every inch of the house is covered with boxes, plastics, clothes and stomach-churning objects.
The bathroom has been left in a revolting state with the broken toilet filled to the brim with nauseating mess.
The walls, floors, and wallpaper look intact and in good condition, but are hidden behind the mountain of junk covering every room.
The property also boasts a small grass area in the front, a garden, a garage and an allocated parking – although they’re crowded too.
The listing read: “The property requires clearance and modernisation and is located within a popular area of Coventry.
“To take part in the auction, you just need to turn up with two forms of ID (no need to pre-register) or register via our website for online, proxy or telephone bidding.
“This house is an Ideal investment opportunity.”
People online couldn’t contain their bewilderment as they flocked to Reddit.
One person commented: “That toilet needs to taken out back and shot to take it out of its misery.”
Another one wrote: “The collection of cleaning products on the cistern is… Optimistic.”
A third person said: “Sadly poetic in a way. Hoarder spends years amassing all this stuff they value so deeply, then in the blink of an eye, someone comes along and sends all of it to the tip to be destroyed.”
Inside UK’s ‘worst’ hoarder house
By James Halpin
MUMMIFIED cats were found by cleaners who were sent to clean a house stuffed to the rafters.
In fact, the Lancashire house was so cluttered cleaners needed a ladder to climb through a second-storey window to reach the upper floor.
It took cleaners 45 hours to clean the house from all the rubbish, in a “worst-case” of hoarding they had ever seen, using dozens of skips.
The teams were tasked with clearing the home after the homeowner, a man in his 70s, had died.
Much of the house was jam-packed full of old phone equipment as the man wanted start a phone exchange business, which is where the hoarding began in the 1990s.
“Over the years he collected mounds of telecom technology. He began storing these telecom artifacts in containers.
“Then, when they were full he began filling under the floorboards,” a Blanchards spokesperson said.
The only space in the house was an armchair next to the cats, where the man spent all of his time.
The man had a hoarding disorder after analysis of the trash revealed he had been unable to throw anything away for upwards of three decades.
While someone else wished to unsee some pictures of the house: “Some house listings don’t have enough photos. This one could have stopped after one or two.”
A fifth person left a cheek-in-the-tongue question: “How can the garage be the tidiest space?”
Hoarders’ houses often thrive with bacteria and vermin as they are left unattended for months or even years.
The properties usually end up in a desperate condition due to its owners suffering from hoarding disorder.
While it has become more widely known about through reality TV shows, hoarding is actually a recognised mental health condition.
It receives less attention than mental health issues as sufferers are often embarrassed of their surroundings and can keep the extent of the issue quiet.
No-one knows exactly what causes the disorder but it has been linked to trauma and loss, difficult feelings, childhood experiences and a family history of the condition.
According to mental health charity Mind: “Many of us have belongings we consider special and things we save. But this is different from hoarding.
“When you hoard, it’s because you might have emotional connections or beliefs about all your things.
“This makes it very hard to get rid of anything.”