From voracious vegetation to the power of Mother Nature, these real-life property nightmares will strike fear into your heart.

This real-life nightmare unfolded one morning in 2017 when blogger Denise was greeted by this troubling sight. The crack was growing before her eyes and she could see dripping, but when the builders looked at the bathroom there was nothing obviously causing it. 

Within a few hours, the ceiling had completely fallen in. A tiny pinprick hole in a piece of copper piping had been leaking for some time, slowly destroying the floorboards. Though annoyed, Denise was relieved that there was nothing structurally wrong with the bathroom above, which she'd recently had fitted. She wrote: "Pulling apart a bathroom only recently installed was not high on my current list of priorities." 

Japanese knotweed may look like harmless greenery, but the pretty plant has a dark side. The plant's roots are almost impossible to destroy and can cause structural damage. This can affect property prices, or mean that homes don't sell at all. 

Owners fear the plant growing between bricks is a sign that its extensive root system has developed within their property, and affected its structure. The plant, which is present in nearly every 10 square meters of the UK, is very strong and has been known to grow through asphalt and drains.

Getting rid of the weed is almost impossible, and demands professional help, which is both expensive, time-consuming, and sadly not always successful. If you want to find out more about this property nightmare, check out our essential guide to Japanese knotweed and how to treat it.

Damp not only stains the walls but can be bad for your health, causing symptoms such as shortness of breath, throat irritation, a runny nose and red eyes. This proved true for one woman...

Imogen Groome wrote in the Metro newspaper that damp in her rented property led to extreme symptoms, including throwing up blood. "I’d reached the point where I woke up every morning to a sore chest, and breathing felt like I was taking in air through a straw." Imogen was suffering from an allergic reaction to the damp in her home.

That's not all. Damp can also scare off house buyers. In fact, 39% of potential purchasers in the UK would withdraw an offer if it was discovered that the house they were going to buy suffered from damp, a recent survey found. 

Woodworm may seem harmless but an infestation can be a serious safety risk. The larvae of beetles lay their eggs in damp wood, burrow through and eat it. Once they have developed into an adult beetle they leave the wood, giving the timber a pockmarked appearance, and weakening the structure of your home.

Unsurprisingly, having woodworm can affect the price of your property, as the affected timber has to be replaced and the rest treated with insecticides that kill the remaining larvae. An expensive, but necessary, process.

Subsidence is one of the most serious problems that a house can suffer. It is caused by the ground underneath your property collapsing so the foundations of the property start to sink, creating a 'Leaning Tower of Pisa' effect that is structurally dangerous.

One of the key warning signs that your property maybe sinking is a huge crack in one of the walls. A crack that is wider than a coin that can be seen externally and internally suggests that a building could be at risk of subsidence.

Risk factors for these nasty cracks are houses that are built on clay soil, which shrinks and contracts in hot weather, or plants and shrubs planted near the foundations that can dry out the soil. Properties built in mining areas are also at higher risk.

This building in Lewisham, south London was spotted looking a little unstable by a passerby. Shortly after, the entire building – worth around $925,000 (£700k) – crumbled, with the roof falling in and the building collapsing in on itself. Neighbors described the noise as sounding "like a bomb had gone off", and people in the next house were evacuated amid structural concerns.

Local architect Ted Aston told the Evening Standard: "The roof of the building was leaning over the street, the corner of the road was cordoned off and they weren’t letting anyone near it." The reason that the house caved in, though, soon became obvious...

Ted explained that police had found all the internal walls had been removed prior to the collapse, adding: “These buildings are nearly 100 years old and even though some partitions appear to be non-load bearing, some of the partitions become part of the whole building."

At the more extreme end of the spectrum, firefighters were called to this London street to find that one side of a six-bedroom two-story house in West Hampstead had completely caved in, reducing much of the Victorian terraced home to rubble. 

The terrifying pictures support on-scene reports from the London Fire Brigade, who described the collapse as being from 'roof to basement'. They even evacuated 10 people from the surrounding houses.

The house was last sold for $845,000 (£640,000) in 2006 but was listed for sale again during 2013 as a six-bedroom home. Planning permission had also been granted to excavate the basement, though it's unclear whether this was even carried out or contributed to the structural failings.

Local residents said the house had been boarded up for a couple of years but, shortly before the collapse, builders had been seen going inside. It's still not clear exactly what happened, but it looks like the house had been gutted prior to the disaster.

Home builders often face difficulties during a project, with homes running into money problems or not being completed, but this has to be one of the saddest tales. This eco house that featured on the TV show Grand Designs burned down on New Year's Day 2018, leaving its owners in shock. 

The house was built entirely of reclaimed materials, including glass and timber and insulated with sheep's wool. But, crucially, it was also built using straw, so the fire, which was started by a freak electrical accident, was completely devastating.

The owners are hoping to rebuild their eco-house, which they had been working on for the last six years. They didn't have insurance as it was still under construction, so a kind friend has set up a fundraising page to help the couple raise funds for rebuilding.

The picturesque town of Cockermouth in Cumbria in the north of England has suffered several extreme floods in recent memory. The worst was in 2009 when the river Cocker rose by 8 feet (2.5m) when 12 inches (314mm) of rain fell in a single 24-hour period.

Many residents lost everything as flood waters destroyed homes and left silt and mud deposits as they receded. The freak flood led to an army of contractors and utility workers descending on Cumbria to rebuild the infrastructure and get people back into their homes.

These devastating floods completely destroyed the bottom floors of the worst-affected homes. There were 25,000 insurance claims following the floods, which helped to cover the repairs for some. Yet, for those who wanted to cut their losses and sell up, property values plummeted while insurance premiums for future flood cover reached almost impossibly high levels.

There's nothing more shocking than the ground swallowing up your home from under your feet. Ellen Miller, from Apopka, Florida, was shocked when a sinkhole formed inside her home. “I wasn’t sure what all the sounds were until I got up and saw the big, huge cracks in the walls, and they were just enormous,” Ellen, 69, told News 6.

Due to Florida's geological makeup of soluble limestone rock and limited drainage, the state is very susceptible to sinkholes. A 40-foot sinkhole opened up under Summer Bay Resort near Disney World in Clermont, Florida. Despite swallowing a huge portion of the building there were, thankfully, no injuries or deaths reported.

In November 2013 the rear portion of a residential home was consumed by a sinkhole in Dunedin, Florida. According to reports, the large sinkhole began to form between two houses and grew to about 30 feet wide by 30 feet deep. It even took a powerboat that was parked on the driveway!

It's not just Florida that's prone to sinkholes. This mega hole appeared in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, near to a subway construction site. It measured about 1,000 square feet across and was around 30 feet deep, swallowing several buildings but fortunately claiming no lives.

The devastation was huge, with three buildings totally destroyed. Five shops were lost and power was knocked out for many of the nearby residential houses.

Engineers worked through the night to resurface the area and the hole was filled in with concrete, but a second cave-in occurred just a day later, and the entire area was roped off as unsafe.

This home was drawn into the sea during a tidal surge at Hemsby, in the east of England, just before Christmas 2013. A huge storm lashed Britain, unleashing the worst tidal surge in 60 years. Three homes were lost to the sea at Hemsby and seven more were damaged.

Residents were evacuated from some of the worst-affected houses, but others chose to remain and have suffered further destruction from similar tidal events. The residents lost out on a bid of $3 million (£2.3m) for government-funded flood defences, but in 2015 they raised enough money for partial sea defences. Sadly, it doesn't seem to have been enough, as more buildings enter the danger zone. These buildings are battling for survival against the sea – and there's only one winner.

It's a homeowner's worst nightmare; when an act of God damages your property beyond repair. Hurricane Sandy left an aftermath of devastation after it hit the northeastern coast of America in 2012. This house, in Union Beach in New Jersey, was ripped in half as the storm passed through.

New York was badly hit by the hurricane and the damage took months to repair. This devastated house in the Rockaways area has folded in half under the pressure of the storm. All along the beach there were red tags saying 'Do not enter, dangerous', even months after it hit.

 

This picture shows a home damaged by Hurricane Sandy – now known as Superstorm Sandy, after it was upgraded in severity – along the beach in the Rockaways in the Queens borough of New York City. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the extreme weather caused an estimated $65 billion (£49bn) in damage across the US, making it the second-costliest weather disaster in American history after Hurricane Katrina.

 

A sprinkling of snow can be beautiful on a property but this deep freeze proved to be disastrous for local homeowners. A huge storm hit Hull, Massachusetts one weekend in late January 2005. The area was covered with ice, causing major damage to property as it melted and refroze.

Nearby in Scituate, Massachusetts, a row of coastal homes were covered with a thick layer of snow and ice thanks to the same major storm passing through. The buildings were completely iced over and, thanks to their traditional wooden cladding, were badly affected by the weather.