A landlord spent £450,000 buying a house at auction without setting foot inside it - and then discovered it was piled five feet deep in decades-worth of rubbish.
Property developer Mehmet Koch, 33, bought the terraced house in north London as an investment with his brother Abbas.
The elderly couple who lived there had not let him through the door, so when he finally got the keys this week he was shocked to discover the house was so packed, he could barely get up the stairs........ see more photos
Mr Koch, whose firm Kaya Properties owns 10 homes in the capital, was shocked by the scenes that confronted him when he opened the door of the house in Fonthill Road, Finsbury Park.
He said: 'I thought I was having a nightmare - I have never seen anything like this before.
'We just said "How on earth are we going to clean this up?".'
'How could anyone live like this in the 21st century?'
Neighbours said a reclusive couple in their 70s had lived in the house since the 1960s.
'We had come to see the property from the outside but the couple who live here would not let us in so we never saw inside,' said Mr Koch, who also lives in Finsbury Park.
'They had just been confined to one or two rooms and the garden was a forest.
'We're very worried we're not going to make a profit now because it needs so much work.'
Hal Davis, who owns clothes shop Guate Goat opposite the house, said he used to watch as the elderly couple got in and out of their front door.
He said: 'To get out she would have to move about 15 bags and stick them on the door step outside and then the husband came out.
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