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 that was introduced to the UK by the Victorians 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 as 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.

That's not all. Damp can also scare off house buyers. In fact, 39 per cent 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. 

On the more extreme end, firefighters were called to this London street to find that one side of a six-bedroom two-storey 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.

Home builders often face difficulties during the 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. 

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 a bid of £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. 

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.

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 re-froze.

Looking for more great reads? These buildings are battling for survival against the sea – and there's only one winner.