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.