House hunting has been a fun adventure and, like any adventure, it took some weird twists and turns. So we figured since we highlighted some of our close-but-no-cigar finds (here, here, here, and here) we should take a second to share some of our no-way-no-how finds as well. Because they were actually pretty darn entertaining.
First, we encountered a mammoth split level. From the outside it looked like your usual split-level home. Until we got inside and realized it had SIX floors. Yes, six. That’s six times the number of levels we’re currently used to. Granted the top (attic) and bottom (basement) weren’t entirely finished, but still – wow. You can thank my brilliant artist’s rendering below to roughly show you how it was laid out:
Then there was the dark house. Not “this doesn’t get very much natural light” dark. This was “um, there’s no electricity” dark. When we arrived the realtor discovered that the power wasn’t working – whether from the owner not paying the bills or from a storm earlier that day we’ll never know. But bless her heart, the agent was determined to show the house to us anyways. So we busted out our cell phones as flashlights (it was about 6pm on a cloudy day, so there wasn’t much natural light to speak of) and we walked through carefully. In the end, we think the darkness probably did the house a favor because it didn’t appear to be very clean.
And speaking of clean… there was also the house where the owner’s idea of staging was to leave her shoe collection scattered across the master bedroom floor. Picture piles of high heels everywhere (sort of like the pic below, but not running shoes and not nearly as orderly). We couldn’t even step into the room because of the mess. Maybe they were trying to impress us with how many shoes they could afford?
Now I’m sure we’re not the only ones with crazy house hunting stories, so we can’t wait to hear what you guys have encountered. Isn’t it amazing what some people consider “designed to sell”? What craziness have you seen? And have you checked out this site? Oh the hilarity.
Dark room photo from here, shoe photo from here.
Psst- We announced this week’s lucky Target gift card giveaway winner. Click here to see if it’s you.
Janet says
We recently bought our first house. During one house tour our realtor went to open the door, only to find out that someone was still at home. A man stepped out on the porch and started ranting about how we couldn’t come in because the house was infected by African Measles that his ex-wife brought back and passed along to his son when she recently adopted children from Africa.
Needless to say, we didn’t buy that house. We did buy just one street over several months later and walk by the house all the time. Its still for sale.
Emily says
One house we looked at seemed great at first — 5 bedroom short sale with a pool. We went in and the owner had just walked in the door with a pizza. Obviously not planning on leaving. She started throwing things everywhere, and our realtor said “Oh, don’t worry, you don’t need to clean up.” She glared at us and said “I’M NOT.” Ooohkay. So then we walked upstairs and found The Jesus Room. This bedroom had literally hundreds and hundreds of pictures of Jesus. On the walls, on the knickknacks, everywhere you looked. Not in a good religious way. In a there-might-be-human-sacrifices-happening kind of way. We went down to the basement and it was decorated with disco balls and Chucky dolls. Went outside, and the owner was in the pool. Left that house completely freaked out.
We tried to give it another chance. I mean, it was a nice house if you took out all her crap. We tried to set up another appointment and specified the owner not be there. We were told she didn’t have time for that. Okay then.
Courtney says
We went to look at a house and in the front window, pressed between the glass and the blinds, was a “Jason” mask–I could NOT look past it.
DJ says
Other weird ones were the house where the seller’s agent told us it was empty until 5 PM, so go ahead on through before then. But when we got there, the owner was home (owners at home, generally a big turn off in my experience) and she shouted at us for coming by though we apologized and explained her realtor had given permission. YELLING at potential home buyers.
The BEST house we saw was totally ancient granny with doilies and crocheted animals with bobble eyes in the upstairs. But in the basement had been tricked out by Grandpa as a 1940s era tiki bar. Complete with built-in stereo system circa 1968. I’m sure it was top of the line then. There was fake bamboo, fake palms, a little mini-waterfall in the corner. Tables and chairs. Board games. A bar with a fake frond cover… it was so amazing. We almost made an offer just because we found the basement so bizarre that it was captivating. But we came to our senses. We told ourselves all kinds of made-up stories about the couple who lived there.
Ellie says
In my early 20’s I’m afraid I may have been the cause of one of those “crazy” stories… I was renting a house with two other house mates and I guess you could consider us a bit hippyish in our decorating style; psycedelic tapestries on the walls, mismatched second hand furniture, dining room transformed into a DJ haven. When our landlord told us he was selling our house we took it in stride and just figured we find a new place, never giving thought to the fact that the house would be getting “shown” while we were still living there… So the day I got a call at work informing me that an agent wanted to show the house that afternoon I freaked! Called DJ house mate and told him to straighten up (wishful thinking) and be out of the house by 4:00. When I came home at 6:00 that evening I found a Realtor’s card on the kitchen counter, so “Yes” the house had shown. How did roomie straighten up? Emptied the garbage cans (which was the only explicit instruction I had given). Dirty dishes in the sink, dog doo all over the back yard and Yes, oh Yes, the house reeked of POT!!! Our landlord must of gotten word on how poorly the house had shown because we were promptly asked to be out in 30 days and no more showings were planned until after we had gone :o)
Rebecca says
While we were looking for a house, the one we wanted ended up falling through. The sellers agent felt badly that her client backed out, so she recommended another house listed with her to our agent. Our agent agreed to look at the house with us, which was listed as cozy, charming, and had lots of play room for children. We had two kids, so we thought it sounded worthwhile. It ended up feeling like a dollhouse! Everything upstairs was in miniature, including the room sizes. We would never have been able to even fit our queen size bed into one of the three bedrooms! There was no dining room, and the “eat in kitchen” wouldn’t have even been able to fit 2 chairs! There was no backyard, either! We immediately crossed that one off our list!
Candace says
Ooo, can there be a prize for best (worst) story??
When I was house-hunting, I must have seen over 60 houses (we’d see 5-10 in a day)- this was in the fall of the real estate market, so they were all short-sales or bank owned. I would have LOVED it if no electricity was the most of my worries! But no, here’s what I got (each represents a different house):
1) Houses with mis-matched tiles/flooring. As in, 1/2 the kitchen in black marble and 1/2 in a basic tan tile.
2) Wide open doors or windows.
3) Vacant house that had been winterized… but a toilet that was left un-flushed.
4) Cockroaches.
5) Owners just chillin. You know, making dinner and watching tv. Don’t mind us.
6) Renters who left their doors padlocked. Again, sorry to inconvenience you.
7) [I’m really sad I didn’t get a picture of this] A farm scene on the wall in the kitchen. Chair-rail & below was paneling to represent a fence. Then there were rolling hills and a barn and pond painted on the wall. Then, animals GLUED onto the wall, as if they were living in the “mural”. And they were hodge-podge figurines at that! Some were magnets, others were zoo-animals, and others were freakin’ dinosaurs!! Come on! At least be realistic!!
And, for the finale. The story that takes it all…
8) Poop. Smeared. On. The. Walls.
Kate says
Eek, the first few houses we looked at were downright scary. One was totally fit for the hoarders show; the people refused to leave when we went through it, and I had to shimmy sideways down the hallway; there was stuff stacked on both sides all the way up to the ceiling. One bedroom upstairs was so full of stuff we could only open the door about 8 inches to peek in. Everything was just filthy – and every inch of the kitchen counter tops was covered with something.
Another house we looked at scared the bejeezus out of me – I opened a closet door to see a devil/corpse Halloween decoration thing hanging right inside the door – it was put there on purpose, not just stored there.
Jill says
We saw one house that seemed OK, just totally 80s decor. Then we went upstairs and down the very loooong upstairs hallway were about a thousand photos of and pieces of memorabilia about the couple’s son. It was like “here’s little Greg as a first grader, second grader and so on. here he is in his band uniform. here is his award for flute in high school. here are pictures of him camping. and on and on and on. The entire timeline of Greg’s life was on that wall. We were cracking up. By the time I left that house I felt like Greg was my child, I knew so much about him! (PS Greg’s name has been changed to protect the innocent child of slightly obsessive parents!)
emily@thirtyeight20 says
We toured a bunch of condos in Miami when we used to live there and encountered some serious issues. Though otherwise pretty nice, one ended up being right off a major highway, so the owners had a high-powered fan running to drown out the traffic noise.
Another had some sort of water leakage problem that led to a mold infestation. The mildew smell was so strong that we all ran back outside after about 10 seconds, fearing for our health, and the real estate agent tore up the listing.
The house we ended up buying (in Maryland, not Miami) was probably the worst of all — too many funhouse features to name — but we bought it with the intent of gutting and rebuilding, and we’ve been battling the craziness ever since. It will be worth it in the end though.
Lauren says
We saw several trashed foreclosures when we were house hunting, but the worst had every single fixture/appliance/toilet removed. Several of the kitchen cabinets were also missing. The icing on the cake was a hefty mound of dog poop on the floor in the dining room. Sick!
A different house we went to looked pretty nice, but when we went to the master bedroom there were two very large pictures on the wall of the woman of the house dressed provocatively and in skanky poses. That was a surprise, to say the least.
Molly Payne-Hardin says
I don’t know if I should admit this in such a public forum ;) butthe “scary house” is the one we bought. My husband gives me all the credit for seeing beyond the… well… I’ll just hit the highlights. The scent of pet urine about knocked us over as we opened the front door. Nearly every inch of floor throughout the house was covered with the home’s contents (plates, figurines, accessories, etc.) because they were in the midst of the estate sale. We tiptoed into rooms around plates/figurines that were stacked end-to-end. In the den and sun porch, the vertical blinds were rusted shut so we couldn’t see out any of the windows (which = all three walls of the sun porch). The backyard was a matted jungle of overgrown southern natives. But, we found hardwood under the scary carpet, it had gre-eat bones, and was a *steal* in one of the city’s best neighborhoods. It worked out great in the end :). Molly in Florida
Katie says
My husband and I looked at a house in our neighborhood that had been on the market for a while. The price seemed really low so we thought perhaps it just needed cosmetic updates that we’d be willing to tackle. We walked through the house and were blown away – everything looked great. The rooms were updated, it was pretty clean, lots of space, etc. We were so perplexed about why it hadn’t sold until…. we got into the basement. We opened a door that we thought would lead to a bedroom. Instead it was a 10ft x 10ft room, walls and ceiling completely covered in mirrors and a huge heart shaped jacuzi on a platform in the middle. Ugh – we couldn’t get out of that house fast enough!! It’s almost 2 years later and the house is still for sale… I can’t believe the owners don’t realize why?!
Shannon says
We looked at nearly 40 houses when we bought our last house. We saw one that we now call the “Haunted House.” The first room we entered was the dining room (I think). I tripped and nearly landed face first because the wood floor was buckled up about 2 feet. In the center was a HUGE and LONG chandeleir that looked like it was made of rusty pipes with holes all over it. We looked at the bedrooms and realized that there was mold from the floor to 3 feet up the walls.
We ran out of the house when an animal fell from the ceiling in the kitchen. Later we realized that the house was being sold “as is.”
No thanks! We ended up buying a 50+ year old house with lots of character. But EVERY switch plate and outlet cover in the entire house is crooked. I want to mail the previous owners a level with their un-forwarded mail.
Sarah says
When we were looking at houses, there was one in particular on a nice cul de sac with bigger square footage than normal for our price range. The catch – the house was built into a ditch. The second floor of the house was on street level where you had to cross a short bridge with a huge drop off on either side (no fence or anything) to get to the front door. I was going to post the link but I think it may actually be off the market now after 2 years!
Kate says
When we were looking for our next home we saw one that really stuck out. It was a nice house, nice floor plan, in a nice neighborhood. Until you got inside! It just smelled dirty… the kitchen was a disaster – not a square inch of counter space showing, overflowing litter box in the mudroom (there was literally cat poo on the kitchen floor), we stepped over dirty boxer shorts to get up the stairs…. and to top it off the owner was home, sitting on the couch in his sweatpants and white tank top watching TV. Telling us to look around and make ourselves at home. We could NOT get out of the house fast enough!!!
Another house we went to was normal, but the entire family (I’m talking like 8 people) were sitting down to dinner. At that point they had probably had the house on the market so long they didn’t care anymore… but we didn’t even bother to go upstairs, that was awkward!
carole says
love all the great stories, creepy and funny at the same time…
my story has to do with an odd interaction with the buyer of our old house…during the home inspection, we were called back home because the inspector couldn’t get access to the attic (the door was in the closet ceiling)…
when we walked in, it looked like the buyer had invited a whole crowd of friends and family for the inspection–they were all sitting on our sectional, laughing and drinking, watching TV, and having a grand old time!
EngineerMom says
Hubby and I bought our house in December of 2009. I did most of the house-hunting (I’m a stay-at-home mom), and then presented him with a reduced list. In short, he didn’t get to see the really weird ones. :-)
House #1: Slab ranch (no basement) with a sunporch and 2 bedrooms. Sounds great, right? The whole house was decorated a la Florida (in Ohio), and there was a hot tub taking up most of the sun room, plus a tanning bed, and robes. All of which was staying with the house.
House #2: Cute little cottage-style home, 2BR, kinda close to the highway for my taste, but the neighbors were friendly and nice – nice enough to tell me that the woman who owned the place had died, and her vidinctive nephew was living there for free and didn’t want to sell. Oh, and I almost got stuck trying to get to the garage at the back of the house – the “alley” was only about 2 feet wider than my mom’s PT Cruiser, with stone and brick walls on both sides.
House #3: Lovely old Victorian – bordered on all 4 sides by jerks who owned really annoying barky dogs. Every single neighbor just stared at me with hostility while I looked around the outside of the house and their dogs barked their heads off. yeah.
House #4: Nice neighborhood, looked cute from the outside, maybe needed a bit of work. Go inside, and the place is totally destroyed. Like, people-sized holes in the plaster, pipes ripped out of the walls, etc. And the house was NOT priced in such a way as to expect this kind of damage!
House #5: This one I didn’t actually go see because the layout was just so weird. Gigantic kitchen, 10+ ceilings on the first floor, but the lot was really narrow, so the house was only one room wide. One room wide, but 4-5 rooms deep. It just looked so strange, especially since it wasn’t a brownstone or other city-type house. Just built on a narrow lot.
sarah says
The very first house we visited while house hunting had dead cockroaches on the floor. Another had a sweet friendly golden retriever in the kitchen, but when we walked upstairs and opened the master bedroom door we were greeted by an enraged/growling/barking German Shepherd. Hint to owners: if your dog bites off a visitor’s hand, they’re unlikely to buy.
Connie says
Um – ours isn’t a story about a house we encountered while house hunting, but instead about someone encountering our house. While my fabulous hubby (“Katdaddy”) and I were out, a realtor called to advise that she would show the house later that day. Katdaddy came home from target shooting and neglected to check messages. Katdaddy laid newspaper on den floor and proceeded to clean guns. While naked.
Upon hearing a key in the front door, Katdaddy realized what was happening, and it took him a moment to determine whether he should (a) cover all of the weapons on the den floor, or (b) run for cover himself. He chose “(b).” That couple did NOT buy the house.
We kept the ironing board set up in a spare bedroom on the other side of the house from the master bedroom. Several weeks after the naked gun cleaning showing, Katdaddy was ironing. While naked. (It’s a coincidence – he really does NOT run around naked most of the time.)
You guessed it – Katdaddy heard the key in the front door and again ran for cover. That couple did not buy the house, either.
After the second incident, I believe that Katdaddy began wearing short and a t-shirt at all times. Even in the shower.
House finally sold shortly after the second incident.
Marci says
Ok, I just remembered one other creepy showing we went to. I swear these are true (we’ve moved A LOT).
We saw a bungalow in the Chicago suburbs that we really wanted to buy. The whole house was empty except for a queen mattress in the master bedroom and on the wall where the headboard should be was a photo canvas (mounted on the wall so I know it was intentional) about 4 X 5 ft. Do you want to guess what the photo was?
The Jack Nicholson scene from The Shining where he is bursting through the door with the axe.
I kid you not. My husband will back me up on this story, I swear!
Carley says
We house hunted for nearly 2 years before buying our house this summer. We encountered some very interesting homes.
One home looked like an episode from hoarders, and because of that was being sold for almost half it’s worth. We considered it, because once their stuff was out and we had it cleaned and painted, it would be an amazing buy, but we couldn’t get past the disgusting appearance.
We toured a few foreclosures (houses that had literally been abandoned!) that had everything stolen from them of worth. Bathroom fixtures, heating vents, pipes. There were holes in the wall. One house had a pool with an amazing build in deck and they took the pool so there was a deck with a huge hole to nowhere in it!
We looked at another empty house after the crazy snow last year and no one tried to scrape a walk way so we walked through almost waist high snow to get to it…only to find it was the house where horrific colored, poorly done sponge paint had come to die.
Probably the funniest experience was when we and our realtor showed up at a house where the person living in it was the daughter of the owners. They were tired of her “squatting” and decided to sell. They had pictures of what the house had looked like 2 years before she trashed it. There were PILES of garbage all outside the house. Beer cans, rotten food. Her parents had locked her out of the house and she broke one of the glass panels in the door where she crawled in and out. We peered in and um….well, it was bad!
We also saw a lot of lovely homes whose owners had obviously put a lot of care into..including the house we ultimately bought!
bria says
at one house the listing boasted “2.5” baths…
the .5 was a rather large closet with a kids potty training chair and bucket. and a towel rack.
yikes
Katherine M. says
I love these stories! When my husband and I were house hunting a couple of years ago, we made an appointment to see a house that was occupied by tenants. We arrived a few minutes early (10 or 15) and were told that we couldn’t come in until our appointment time. We waited in our real estate agent’s vehicle until we were allowed inside. The family was cooking breakfast so we didn’t get a good look at the kitchen. The bedrooms smelled like the sheets hadn’t been changed in months.
cappy says
I remember this one house we liked and decided to put an offer in. But during the showing it smelled so bad of cat urine. The realtor insisted that it was probably due to a dirty litter pan and that the smell would go away. So we sat at their kitchen table and as we are signing our names, one of their six kittens came into the kitchen and started to pee on the nice tile floors, then another one came in, sniffed at his brother’r markings and decide to join in on the fun. Apparently, there was NO LITTER PAN! Free will and go as you please was the mantra in that house. Needless to say we pass on the house.
heyruthie says
once, when we were house hunting, we came across this pretty cool house. it especially had a really neat addition off the back that gave it kind of a “tree house” vibe with a beautiful, secluded backyard. we were really digging it…..until….we noticed a bug crawling across the carpet….and then another one….and then another one on my pants leg, and before we knew it, we realized that the entire home was completely infested with several different types of bugs, including cockroaches. it was a short-sale, so it was no huge surprise, but we suddenly became SO creeped out by it, that we kept thinking bugs were crawling all over us! we eventually just looked at each other and said, “Let’s get out of here!!!!” and we never even considered going back. with 4 small children, we knew we didn’t have the heart to deal with a major infestation issue, and we also felt like it was just a bad sign about the condition of the property in general. that was a bigger DIY than we could handle.
then, there was also the time that we *almost* put a contract on a house, when we checked the Megan’s Law website and discovered that the “nice” old man across the street had been jailed multiple times for heinous crimes against young children–and we have 4 young children! Lesson? ALWAYS check your local Megan’s Law registries!
Nichole@40daysof says
When I was in college, my mom decided to buy a new house, and therefore sell ours. Apparently, my little sister (9) was NOT happy about moving. Unbeknown to us, she made her own fliers for the sale of our house and inserted them towards the top of the realtor’s pile of professionally made ones. They said, “BEWARE! IF YOU BUY THIS HOUSE YOU WILL DIE!” The realtor had some interesting things to say to my mom after the open house. We still tease my sister about it to this day! :)
http://40daysof.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/easily-influenced/
DemMom says
Pammy, we have one of those built in record players in our house, a 1960 Richmond ranch! None of my house hunting stories are this good, but I love the idea of another one of these record players!
Samantha says
Before we bought our house, my husband (boyfriend at the time) was searching for a rent house. We went to get the key from the rental agency and drove over to the house.
DOG CRAP EVERYWHERE!!! In every room of the house there was dog poop on the floor. Oh and empty cages everywhere. We didn’t make it into a single bedroom or bathroom before we left.
So gross.
Caryn says
When we were searching for a house over 2 years ago, we looked at 32 houses. #32 was the “oh this is it!” the second we walked in. But along the way, we discovered some, um… gems. My favorite still was one where the owners were still there when we came with our realtor and they decided to just have a smoke on the back porch while we walked through. Would have been nice if they had warned us though that their teenage son and his buddies were all dead asleep in the finished basement after having a party of some sort the night before. Yup, we totally walked in on a roomful of half-dressed sleeping guys. It was an experience. Can’t believe we didn’t buy that one…
Rebekah says
I don’t have any funny house searching stories, but OMG all these stories in the comments are hilarious!!
Amy Andrews says
I was house shopping with my folks several years back, you know they bought their dream house after my brother and I were gone for good. I guess they didn’t trust us? :) Anyway, we arrived at this one house to the craziest realtor EVER. She proceeded to take us up to this house that looked like it was the bad neighbors house is that movie The Burbs. Besides the strange odors, the random mattress every so often, AND the strange toilet closet that was in the kitchen (with no sink whatsoever) it was completely infested with these little nats / buggy guys. They absolutely attacked my father and he was covered in a strange rash for the next three days. Needless to say, they didn’t choose that “charming 4 bedroom”.
http://blog.purehome.com
Nicolette @ Momnivore's Dilemma says
The Sneaker Pimp Photo was HILARIOUS.
Like Imelda Marcos as a marathon runner.
Don’t these people watch Designed to Sell or read ur blog???
Grrr…
Jessica says
Just curious! When you guys found “the one”, did you know it immediately or did you have to sleep on it and play around with ideas before realizing its full potential? And also, did you look at any other houses after deciding on “the one” or did you stop hunting and start the paper work?
YoungHouseLove says
We knew the moment we opened the front door. It felt open and light and had some killer built-in bookcases. Our first thought was “this is too nice” but the price was great and we found lots of things we could redo, from the kitchen to all three bathrooms and lots of fun projects to take on like opening even more walls, switching the function of a few rooms, adding french doors, and creating a double sided fireplace. We were literally running from room to room concepting ideas and gushing about how perfect it was. We just knew. It was the same way with our current home. We just walked inside and something grabbed us.
xo,
s
GreenInOC says
I was looking at foreclosures about 14 years ago (our county went bankrupt and so there was a localized recession).
The one condo that stands out most was one in which EVERYTHING that had once been attached, was now gone.
All of the kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanity, door frames, switch plates & sockets, etc… were all in a heap, smashed into pieces on the living room floor. There was no carpet or padding. All of the appliances, bathtub/shower, toilet, sinks – all gone.
Sounds bad? On no, it gets better!
They apparently had used the entire house as a toilet. The subfloor had what appeared to be pee stains.
It reeked like you can’t believe.
If I was handy, like you I would have probably bought it. It was $30K!!
Kathy says
About 9 yrs. ago I was house hunting for our current home and went through a house where every room had a different piece of a car in it! It was dark outside and as we went from room to room we’d turn on the lights and discover a red car door here a windshield there, etc. Besides the fact that it was obviously not staged and equally obvious that no female lived there, it was kind of a fun ‘treasure hunt”! And when we finally arrived at the garage door and flipped on the lights…lo and behold, there was the entire body of a red GTO up on blocks!!
Lyndsay M says
My husband and I looked at approximately 50 houses in two weekends this past February. By far, the worst house we went into, was dubbed: The Poop House. The house was disgustingly dirty…so dirty that you didn’t want to touch anything. we are talking stinky, bowls of crusted food everywhere, and DOG POOP on the carpet…piles of it.
We were all so disgusted and horrified, we didnt make it to the upper level.
Melissa says
While searching for our first home in 1997 our realtor had warned us before touring one of our first prospects that it was a bit “out dated”. She should have used the word “Shagadelic!” Shag carpet everywhere, even on some of the walls and the master bedroom boasted a raised alcove with a built in floor level waterbed with those weird gold veined mirrors covering the ceiling and the two walls that would have been the head and foot boards??? Someone had put in some serious work to make this house truely awful.
amy goodhouse says
We went to an open house about 1 1/2 years ago. The house was cute on the outside, and dated and dark on the inside. But in ok shape to do renovations, etc.
EXCEPT, in their back sunroom, they had a huge full-sized BANK VAULT. Complete with gigantic foot-thick metal door and huge combination lock in the middle of the door. It was open and inside, there were empty shelves. You could walk right in (I did not). Weird!
Julie says
Laminate installed over carpet. Really?!
Jess L says
We looked at one condo that was neat but just full of stuff. Not staged at all. The closets didn’t have any doors so we could just see everything. At one point my husband opened the door to the 3rd bedroom and 2 cats bolted out, one out the front door! The realtor started freaking out about how we weren’t supposed to open the door etc etc. Um, how are we supposed to view the house if there are off limit rooms?
Stephanie says
Some other comments reminded me of this story. When we got to the house our realtor met us outside and told us there was a “situation” inside. It seems someone had used the toilet and then realized afterward the water had been shut off. So the deposit had been just sitting there. It was summer. The smell was…about what you can imagine.
We bought the house anyway.
tarynkay says
We once looked at an apartment up for rent. It backed up to some nice woods. The landlord was setting up a video camera at the back-window. I asked him if he was trying to photograph wildlife. He said, “Wildlife? Uh, no. Actually, criminals come out of these woods and break into the building all the time, so I’m setting up this security camera to help the cops out.” At least he was honest!
LittleMissEclectic says
We have also looked at a dark house with no electric on a rainy day. Also when you look in a certain price range every house smells like cat pee (ahem).
Funnelcloud Rachel says
OMG – these stories are hilarious and almost all of them sound too weird to be true! The truth IS always stranger than fiction!
And I promise my story is true – when we were house hunting for our first house 2 1/2 years ago, we went into a house which the owner had “staged” with CONDOMS in the master bedroom. In plain view all over the bedside table! And the bedroom next to the master was clearly a child’s bedroom. OMG.
Our hilarious realtors noticed but were too polite to say anything until my husband started laughing his butt off and then we all had a good laugh. That house definitely made our “no way, no how” list and we found our dream house a few weeks later.
April z. says
When we were house hunting several years ago we had an unpleasant experience. One home we went through was not clean at all. I can’t imagine how the owners thought they’d sell it in that condition. The worst part is they had left their dirty underwear on the floor for everyone to see. They even knew we were coming to look at the place!
Elaine K says
When we toured the house we bought there was a huge snake in the bedroom my daughter was in. We knew there was a snake, but it was still fun to see our realtor run out of the room.
Nikki says
We recently went into a home that the owners left a stack of letters for potential buyers, pleading with us to buy their perfectly lovely home?!?!? Err, I spent the whole time reading the letter.
Jessica says
We bought our house a little over a year ago and were on a pretty tight budget. I was especially excited to go see one particular house as it was near a park, had a large lot and was a cute older bungalow style that I was excited to “fix up.” When we went inside (with our two young children) to look at the house, we were taken through a crazy 70’s paneled “den” with no windows and hideous (and dirty!) green shag carpet. Next came the completely dirty kitchen that led into the front room which was FULL of dirty bird cages with signs posted to “watch out! Birds bite!” Needless to say, we didn’t look much further and rushed our kids out post haste to avoid pecked fingers.
The next house we saw was lovely (if small at a little under 1000 square feet) but in comparison to the first house was clean, bright and perfect. It’s sometimes a struggle to fit four people and their stuff into such a small space, but we still love our little house!
Brooke says
My friends just bought an amazing house with a sweet updated bathroom and upstairs. When I went to visit I noticed in the basement an entire wall filled with outlets and another room down there with a ton of outlets and a shower fixture but with no shower head. Apparently the people that lived there before got busted for growing marijuana. As in police did a raid of the house in the middle of the night. My friends are so lucky though because since the old owners are in prison it went into foreclosure and they got it for about 100k less than what it was sold for previously.