Home Buyers Are Sharing The Most "Zillow Gone Wild" Things They've Seen On The Housing Market
Recently, I rounded up some of the wildest home features people saw while house hunting. In the comments, members of the BuzzFeed Community shared even more ridiculous ones they've seen.
Here are 16 of their top responses:
1."A house we toured said it had a half bathroom by the kitchen. You opened up one of the cabinets, and there it was!"
"No thanks."
2."House hunting in New Mexico. A beautiful Southwest home built with thick walls made of adobe bricks on a large five-acre mountain property in a gated community. The original owners wanted peace and quiet, but as New Yorkers, NM was too quiet, and they wanted to return home. Not familiar with Southwest style, they had wallpapered some of the lovely adobe walls and, in one room, had installed wainscoting! But one weird detail was that the large living room was at a slant. The agent even had a marble to roll across the room to demonstrate."
"At first, it was not a big deal, but as we walked through the house and chatted with the agent, it was super annoying. That was just too much stuff to fix when other, not-so-funky homes were available."
3."A house that I looked at in 2019 had been used as an assisted living home for adults. The house had beautifully stenciled Bible verses in the blackest, boldest paint on every wall. But not the nice ones. These are all in the tone of, 'if you sin, you will go to HELL, and God will hate you.'"
"The bedrooms had verses against masturbation. The kitchen had threats about what happened to gluttons.
It was terrifying. We passed on that house. It would have taken way too much money to scrape off the stenciling and then paint all the walls."
4."We bought a house in Chicago that turned out to be a speakeasy. In the basement, there was a very thick metal door leading to the back garden with a very large metal crowbar-type thing you lifted to let people in, and there was one little room that was so cold and creepy you couldn't stand to be in it."
"Sadly, I could find no historical information."
5."Not a home, but an apartment. The color and overall scheme were like a coastal village in Greece. 900 square feet, one bed, one bath. Very nice updated kitchen and bathroom. Lovely little dining nook and spacious living room. The problem? My husband and I couldn't fit inside the 'bedroom' standing side by side. There was zero room or space for a bed. Instead, there was a 6x2 space IN the floor."
"I wish I was joking. The lady was so happy to show off the 'bedroom,' saying it was so innovative and small.
I looked at her and said, 'How in the hell are both my husband and I supposed to sleep together?!?' Yeah, that was a hard no, LOL.
Oh, and a 6-year-old child wouldn't have been able to fit inside whatever she considered a closet."
6."When I was looking for my first apartment, there was one that had all carpet. ALL carpet. The bathroom was entirely carpeted. And if that weren’t bad enough, it also had no sink. I asked the realtor what was up with there being no sink, and she happily pointed to the one in the carpeted kitchen."
"I pointed out there was no bathroom sink, and she seemed shocked and utterly confused and said, 'But, there’s one in the kitchen. You can just use that one.' With a tone that implied I was some kind of snob for wanting a special sink just for the bathroom.
No thanks. Not only would I need to wash my hands after touching the doorknobs, but I wasn’t going to touch the sink in the kitchen with a handle covered in bathroom germs.'"
7."My mom and I toured a house that had a basement with orange shag carpet on the walls. Then, a room that kind of looked like a tool room was neon green with tables and shelves everywhere, and it just kept leading into another room and another room."
"It truly looked like a serial killer lair."
8."Whoever built my sister's first house used whatever they had laying around as insulation. Imagine tearing out a wall just to find newspapers, old dirty clothes, stuffed animals, and even old records. Not like historical records, but LPs/music records."
"Nothing like seeing a teddy bear with no eyes next to a record of Peter and the Wolf!"
9."My older sister and her husband purchased their first house in Cambridge, MA (it was a 100+ years-old rowhouse) in the early 2010s. The previous owners were elderly and had lived there for a long time. It had a random working toilet on the first floor in the middle of a small room with no doors. My sister called it the 'transit toilet' because it was randomly placed in a space that was clearly NOT a bathroom."
"They kept the toilet in place for a few months after they moved in, but they removed it during the extensive remodeling they did throughout the house.
They sold the house about 10 years later at a value almost 2.75x higher than what they paid."
10."We looked at a beautiful log cabin with a two-story stone fireplace. As we walked up the stairs in the great room, we found a handprint in the masonry. And from that vantage point, you could see into the bathroom through the rafters."
"Definitely creepy."
11."When my now ex-wife and I were looking for our first apartment, we looked at a large, older house that had been converted into separate units. Right in the middle of the living room was a plumbed claw-foot bathtub."
12."When I was a realtor a few years ago, we saw a house that had a toilet in the closet between two of the bedrooms. The closet had sliding louver doors on both sides so you could access the toilet from either bedroom."
13."My ex-wife and I looked at a newly built home back in 2004. It was gorgeous, and we thought it would be out of our budget, but it was just under our maximum budget. The large kids' room had a huge cubby/adjoining room to use as a play area. The realtor just kept saying that 'no space is wasted' or 'the builder utilized every inch of space.' Then I realized there were no closets in ANY of the rooms."
"No bedroom closets, no coat closet, not even attic or basement storage space. In a house in Minnesota, where you definitely need a coat closet.
My ex still wanted it until I explained that she currently had our walk-in closet and the guest room closet filled…..so where was her stuff gonna go in this house?? It took me 30 minutes to get her to understand that.
Once I pointed out there were no closets, the realtor looked defeated, as if EVERYONE noticed towards the end of the tour. But good lord, was it a beautiful home."
14."When my husband and I looked for our first house in the early 2000s, the place we picked had a TV on a large bulky media unit in EVERY room — yes, including the kitchen!"
"At first, we assumed it was a large family, but then we learned there were only two people who lived there, so I'm not sure why they needed quite so many TVs.
We liked the house, so we were thrilled to get it, but we were astounded by how huge it felt when those bulky TV stands were moved out."
15."The most memorable was a backyard. There was a vulture roost — two trees filled with around 60 vultures. We kept looking."
16.And finally: "I saw a house that was so wildly bad I left in shock. There was no parking. The primary bedroom only had a particleboard floor and could barely fit a queen. They had a deck over a hill that led into traffic and had no railing. They stored canned food in the bathroom. The worst is that they put an addition on and removed the foundation."
"They had the materials but no foundation. The addition wasn't even big enough to justify it. It was only as wide as a single bed and one nightstand. The door from the addition opened to the steps, but there was no landing, so you opened it to uneven steps. WILD."
What's the strangest feature you've seen while touring potential houses or apartments? Let us know in the comments!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length/clarity.
