Since other people are talking about student houses...
I'll chuck in my experiences.

My block in my halls of residence was built on a spring (clever builders!). Damp all along the hallway and in most bedrooms, worst affected one was slowly turning black and the guy left as soon as he could after less than 2 terms.

Student house no.1 was actually alright. Furniture and décor pretty shabby and the bathroom was out the back on the ground floor so cold and a bit mildewy but nothing that a bit of elbow grease couldn't shift. Then the cooker broke. The landlord investigated the strong gas smell emanating from the back of it with a lighter, whilst casually explaining to my housemate that it was a silly thing to do and she shouldn't try it. Err... yeah. I didn't return from work to the scent of exploded landlord so that was ok.

House no. 2 was alright except for the housemate with NO concept of personal hygiene, but you can't blame the landlord for that. Often wish we'd just evicted stinky guy and stayed there.

House no. 3 was better decorated and with better furniture but 2 of the bedrooms suffered quite badly from mildew which we later found out the landlady just painted over between tenants, so we wouldn't have seen it before living there a while. The bathroom had quite a chronic woodlouse problem, even in the summer you'd find the ugly little buggers all over the floor and bath. Then it got broken into and we moved out as soon as the contract expired.

Which brings us up to the current house. We are no longer students, but we are still poor so used student websites to find this place. We knew it was shabby but requested that a lot of repairs be done before we moved in to which the landlord agreed and wrote into the contract.
6 months in, one bathroom has been so badly affected by mould that it literally stunk out the whole house and because the ceiling is so high only the tallest housemate could clean it with a mop and standing on a stepladder. The other bathroom, which has been flooding on and off since we moved in, flooded really badly and we finally managed to get the landlord to look at it. He was horrified. There was 2 inches of black, scummy, sewagey water built up under the bath. The framework of the bath is like sponge it has rotted so much. The smell was indescribable. Did he clean it? Did he feck. There went my Friday night. He did get a drain man to sort out the overflowing drain outside which had caused the problem though.
Every bedroom bar one (there are 6 altogether) has damp one way or the other, but my housemate noticed last weekend that there seemed to be something weird going on with the back of his wardrobe. It felt damp and was dark and a bit whiffy. He pulled it away to reveal the worst damp imaginable. There was a part near the bottom of the wardrobe that was so thick and white that it looked like bubble bath. As he pulled the wardrobe apart, one of those little screw cover thingies flew off and embedded itself in the mouldy wall and sat there, held in place horizontally. We took photos of that so we have evidence for Environmetal Health if the landlord doesn't pull his finger out.

There are plenty of other minor things but I could write a novel if I kept on.

I'm female so no length jokes here.
(sanity challenged, Wed 23 Jan 2008, 22:31, Reply)