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Some people like the idea of buying a cheaper home that needs updating or reselling it one day for more money. But when one woman bought her first home last year, she quickly discovered it was completely uninhabitable.
Hannah, who goes by the username @it_is_hannah_banana on TikTok, recently detailed the “nightmarish” discovery she made in her own home. “The story of how cat urine destroyed my house,” she captioned her video at the time.
She began by showing several photographs of the house, while telling the heartbreaking story through text on the screen. The house was first purchased in July 2023 with a furnished basement, but shortly after moving in, her cat “noticed something was wrong.”
Hannah's cat found “dark stains” on the wooden floor and started “spraying” the living room, something cats often do to mark their territory. The TikToker decided to ask her father to come over and remove some of the floorboards with dark stains, assuming they would need to be replaced.
After removing them, it was discovered that all the skirting boards and floorboards were “soaked in cat urine.” Not only were they darker than usual wood, but they were also visibly rotted. They decided to investigate further throughout the house and found similar skirting boards and floorboards in the bedroom covered in cat urine.
“We found floor joists soaked in what appeared to be many months or even years of cat urine,” a text on the screen read, showing more rotting wood. “The smell was putrid and the room was unbreathable without an N95 mask.”
Eventually, they discovered there were dark stains all over the house, making the problem “much more serious than we thought.” They then found cat urine in the vents, prompting them to isolate all their belongings in the kitchen before they began “tearing the house apart.”
“There was so much cat urine that it soaked the ceiling below the bedroom floor,” she continued. “My beautiful first home became my worst nightmare.”
Her video received over two million views and many people took to the comments section to express how bad they felt for the first-time homebuyer. Meanwhile, others assumed the house was a “home remodel” gone wrong.
“It was a resold house, right? They knew and hid it. I hate resellers,” read one comment.
Another commenter agreed, writing: “There must have been a hoarding situation before the house was resold. I am so sorry.”
Responding to the comment, the TikToker revealed that the previous owner of the house had many cats when she passed away and they were left alone “for a while” before being found.
Other commenters noted that she could possibly take legal action if she wanted to. “I’m not sure where you are, but in the states you can sometimes sue the people you bought your house from if they deliberately failed to disclose damage to the house that an inspection wouldn’t normally detect,” one person suggested.
Another commenter wrote: “Please file a non-disclosure suit. It’s worth the effort.”
Since posting her original video, Hannah has posted several videos updating fans and showing other areas of the house affected by cat urine. Earlier this month, Hannah revealed in a follow-up video that she and her family have finally moved into the upper floor of their home after 10 months of renovations, as they work to remove cat urine from the basement.
“We still get cat pee out of the basement, but we’re so glad we’re back upstairs!” she replied to one TikTok user.
