just posting this for fun, some of the oddest things I've seen:

a fireman's pole to slide from a closet down into basement;
a couch that had fabric that was painted over with a brush;
a bedroom you could only access by walking through another bedroom;
a water heater installed in the kitchen next to the stove;
a garage with 2 side walls, a roof and garage door, but no back wall;
a washing machine installed 6 inches from the front of a toilet (no room for feet);
a "closet" that was 9 inches deep and 2 feet wide;
about 200 framed photos and pictures hanging on every inch of the walls from floor to ceiling;
a "bathroom" with toilet only, with the sink located in the bedroom down the hall;
a home with 6 bedrooms and 1 bathroom;
a large motorcycle disassembled in the living room, with dried pools of oil in the carpet;

A motercycle assembled in the basement and not way it was coming out of the basement.

6 BRs and a bathroom downstairs is not unheard of here.

A two unit with a wall broke out to create once house with twi kitchen, 2 batch, etc, struck me as odd.

I once owned a house like that. It was built when people had few clothes and the hung the few items they had on hooks around the perimeter. They hadn't invented hangers yet for us'ins with wardrobes. My Wife and I installed rods in the middle; but the hangers had to be hung on a diagonal so as to allow the door to close (I guess we were lucky to have a door !)

One of the oddest things I've seen was a Tanning Bed down in a semi-dark basement bedroom. The Owner used to have a Beauty Parlour with a Tanning Salon. When bad news about Ultra Violet Light hit that industry, she had to shrink and put the Tanning Bed in my listing (with a mannequin inside and the lid propped up partway) just to scare the bajeebers out of prospective house lookers down in her poorly lit basement.

Plenty of inner city row houses or semi-detached that originally had 3 bedrooms and an attic, then the attic became 2 more bedrooms. Had to go through one to get to the other. And one bathroom.

House advertised as 1.5 baths, half bath was a sink and toilet in the basement at the bottom of the steps, not enclosed.

An exercise bicycle, not too stange except when the owner is a 300 pound woman.

Vermont, I totally love that client! What a great prank!!!

When I was a child we lived in a nearly 100 yr. old farm house. No basement. The water heater, and clothes washer, was in the kitchen along with the coal stove. Hey, we were modern though - my aunt gave us her old portable dishwasher (probably was new in 1968.)

The oddest things I've seen in houses:

A working toilet right in the bedroom, out in the open.

A bedroom that had walls completely covered in a medieval print fabric (with matching orange shag carpet.)

An all in one appliance: Electric stove, with an oven above, and dishwasher below. The thing has to be 40 years old.

A bedroom with the walls and ceiling "carpeted" with assorted sample carpet tiles, like a giant, shaggy patchwork quilt.

A "built-in" refrigerator that hung on the wall.

A hot tub in the master bedroom.

I've seen some really weird homes. Mostly REOs that the banks can't get rid of.

Doors that open to solid walls

A laundry room that was converted to a full bathroom-in the garage

A half bath that was converted to full with shower stall stuck in a closet (really small shower!)

Every room covered in 70s wallpaper. Even the doors (which were almost invisible when closed)

Fireplace in a room not much bigger than a walk-in closet.

Bandstand in a foyer.

Small rooms in the middle of houses (obviously converted for bedrooms, but you could hardly get a bed to fit in them they were so small).

Laundry rooms converted to bedrooms (so you have the water heater, furnace and washer/dryer in your bedroom)

The list goes on.

Forgot about the back yard.


Twice I've shown homes that had old travel trailers in the backyard. Problem was, they must have been put there before the home was built because there was no way you could possibility get them out. They took up so much of the yard, you would have had to cut them into pieces to remove them.

I had a listing that had one wall that had a build in stereo. With a push of a button the 8 track and cassette tape players came out. Another button revealed the real to real system. The entire bathroom had green shag carpet (floors, walls and ceilings.)

I found it odd though that the master bedroom had 2 wetbars and an ISDN box installed. Each bedroom had a wetbar and speakers were wired into every room.

I always assumed it was used as a brothel, it was not set up as a SFR. In the day though, WOW, I can only imagine the parties that occured.

A trapeze over what I will assume was above the bed in master and shackles bolted in the shower...

Human poo-poo in the pantry. Also smeared on the pantry wall. This in a 900k home that has been empty for 2 years.

600k foreclosure in and nice upscale neighborhood. Owners let 3 dogs live in it and never took them out or cleaned up.

All 3 stories the white carpet was brown and there were literally thousands of terds everywhere. They had to go in with hazmat suites to clean it up and clean out the air registers and sell it as only a cash sale.

Flocked, gold-highlighted paisley wallpaper on the ceiling and about 15 inches around the top of the wall. People who toured the house literally could not keep from looking up as they walked across the livingroom, and more than one nearly bumped into the opposite wall. It was actually funny to watch the open-mouthed people shuffle across the room. Tragic funny, though, since it was my listing.

These are some awesome posts!!

Here in Minnesota's real estate market, agents on our team have seen just some crazy of the craziest!

Whether it's the dogs who have made a mess of an entire house, homes and listings that have not been cleaned in years...you name it really.

I enjoyed reading this post!! We have to have a little fun in real estate right !

I have a friend in Belgium who just had a house built over the last year. I looked at the floor plans and he has a similar set-up, toilet in one small room, then you have to walk back out into the hallway and through a bedroom to get to the sink and shower. I asked him about it and he didn't see a problem with it. The master bath is what we'd consider normal, toilet, sink and shower all in one room. Also, no bathrooms on the 1st floor. Goes to show the difference between America and Europe.

I've sold a few One Room Schoolhouses. It was common to have Two ¼ Baths . . . . one for the Boys and one for the Girls.

What's that mean ? Well, a Full Bath is 4 Appliances: Tub; Shower; Wash Basin; and a Toilet. A ¾ Bath has no Tub or no Shower; while a ½ Bath usually has neither Tub or Shower.

So, a ¼ Bath is only One Appliance - Only a Commode in this case.

You'd figure that the sum of the two ¼ Baths was a ½ Bath; but they were separated by a wall. I would usually put Two ½ Baths in MLS; but that was a total exaggeration.

I don't know how the Pupils were expected to wash their paddys ?

I guess you'd flush first, and wash afterwards ?

They must have developed good immune systems.

I just showed a REO and it was completely empty, but it had a frog in the basement. I figured there must've been water somewhere. Nope, no water. We went upstairs and back down, the frog was gone.

Did you offer the FROG cash for keys? Did the FROG get hostile and say they would wait on eviction?

I once showed a house that was "gangster" themed: posters of Scarface and Al Capone everywhere, the toilet seat and cover were made of clear plastic with currency embedded in it (dollar bills and coins), gangster posters everywhere. And this house was occupied by the owners.

When owners clear out, they don't always know where little Johnny hid his porn. As a buyer's agent, I've found it - WITH buyers along. "What's this in the basement crawlspace?" "Strap-On Girls 10" "Nevermind."

^^That reminds me - I found old reels of porno films in a house I was cleaning out. They belonged to the ancient uncle of the owner - the owner bought the house from his aunt after the uncle died. Or vice versa...anyway, I saw pics of the old geezer around and he totally didn't look the type. LOL

So Perky, where do you have those films stored now ?

I once had to sell a mobile home that had been the "Life Estate" of an elderly woman.

She had a Boy Friend (about 75 years old) who lived in the mobile with her . . . . and somehow thought that her Life Estate would continue on after her death and give him a place to bunk down forever. That's not the way it works !

I had to give him the bad news and warn him that the Sheriff would have to be called is he didn't move out . . . . which he did. After his departure, I went in and found the place was piled high in every corner with thousands of issues of PlayBoy; Hustler; and other less tasteful publications dating back about 30 years . . . . it was a real fire trap.

Vermont, they actually went to the dumpsters with all the other crap, though I contemplated giving them to a guy I know who does eBay stuff, but I didn't want him to think they were MINE, so I trashed 'em.

Just checkin' ! You made them sound like such collector's items.

Being on reels, I don't suppose you can really tell what they are until you watch them.

Oh, I could tell. I had to investigate. It was not hard to figure out. tee hee