What is the strangest house you have viewed

bap98189 · 13 September 2017 at 10:32AM

We've been looking at houses for the past 4 weeks or so and it has been a real eye opener. Some of the things people do to convert perfectly normal houses are just bizarre. Last week was a bungalow which had a loft conversion. Only they had put in a staircase and there must have been a beam they couldn't remove, because you had to duck every time you went upstairs. My OH is 5'4" and even she had to duck considerably.

But I think we may have seen the weirdest house yet last night. From the description it was a fairly standard bungalow which had a loft conversion. However, the owner was clearly in the building trade and had modified pretty much everything inside. The kitchen was now a very long, thin room. Almost like a galley kitchen, but so narrow, two people couldn't pass each other. Perhaps not the biggest problem in the world, but it did lead to the bathroom.

But it was the garden that threw us. He took us outside to look at the back garden and there were a total of 5 wooden sheds. The first contained the usual gardening stuff, but inside the next one was a fully fitted bathroom complete with tiled walls and a carpet. The other 3 contained a carpeted room with a sofa and a wide screen TV, and two were bedrooms complete with beds.

He proudly told us that because all these extra "rooms" were all in sheds, they didn't need planning permission, and he didn't have to pay council tax on them.

I doubt we shall be putting in an offer.

What's the weirdest house you have ever viewed?

CIS · 13 September 2017 at 10:47AM

He proudly told us that because all these extra "rooms" were all in sheds, they didn't need planning permission, and he didn't have to pay council tax on them.

I wonder what he was doing with the 'extra rooms'. He's potentially going to have a shock at some point.

[Deleted User] · 13 September 2017 at 10:51AM

We visited a house that was once owned by a middle-eastern royal family member.. it hadn't been occupied for years so was full of spider-webs (So was known as 'the spider house'). Whilst trying to leave, the door handle broke and we had to shout for help from an upstairs window. The house was a lovely size and if it had been done up as if it was a house someone would live in, it would have been a good option.

We also saw a house full of dead wasps - aka Wasp house

bap98189 · 13 September 2017 at 10:54AM

CIS wrote: »

I wonder what he was doing with the 'extra rooms'. He's potentially going to have a shock at some point.

They looked like they were used fairly regularly. None of these "rooms" were detailed on the house description, so I'm guessing his estate agent refused to list them.

ProDave · 13 September 2017 at 11:07AM

I am a self employed electrician so I get to see and work in a lot of houses.

The one I was in on Monday must come close to being the most unusual. It was an old stone cottage drastically altered in probably the 70's when it was probably quite contemporary (but it has not been touched since so is now in a time warp)

You enter at ground level into a (leaking) flat roofed extension housing a couple of bedrooms and the utility room.

You then descend half a flight of stairs into a semi basement (window cills level with the ground) housing the kitchen. From there you go up 6 steps then back down 2, to the living room not sunk quite as deep. finally up another stair to the upstairs bedroom suite (the purpose of the semi basement was to make enough headroom for the upstairs bedroom)

The overall feeling is a house that does not flow, and lots of up and down stairs to get to the same level. Why does Fawlty Towers spring to mind?

BorisThomson · 13 September 2017 at 11:38AM

Not so much strange but badly marketed, I viewed a beautiful house that had a brand new kitchen and bathroom. But when I arrived I found that these were all adapted for a wheelchair user, everything was at my knees! The photos had been taken to make everything look 'normal' height, and the owner couldn't understand why she was getting lots of viewings but no offers.

I did drop her a note later, thanking her for her time but also explaining that the agent was mismarketing the property. It would have been a perfect home for someone that required the adaptations. It must have fallen on deaf ears as six months later was still being marketed with the same pics and descriptions. Bizarre.

NelliePie · 13 September 2017 at 11:51AM

We walked into one house and the walls around the front door were covered in black mold and damp - we wondered if there was a leak of some description... As we looked around the house, every room, every wall was covered floor to ceiling in black mold and damp. And there were people living in it! I can't imagine that could have been good for their health. It was listed at roughly the same price as similar houses in much better condition, needless to say we didn't buy it.

ReadingTim · 13 September 2017 at 12:44PM

Not so much the house, but one of the odder sales tactics I've seen was the one my parents employed when selling the home my brother and I grew up in.

For some reason, they thought that rather than the usual unqualified, shiny-suited, hair-gelled, branded mini-driving spiv, their EA would be a sales professional, able to identify what was important to the buyer and highlight that in the property, rather than getting sidetracked by some bit of decorating or electrical installation that my parents were very proud of, but which wasn't important to the viewer. Needless to say, this wasn't the case.

Furthermore, rather than make themselves scarce when viewings were taking place, they just continued with whatever they were doing at the time, studiously ignoring the buyers and not even correcting the obvious mistakes or lack of information on the part of the sales monkey, for whom the house was a much of a first timer visit as it was for the viewers...

Car1980 · 13 September 2017 at 1:23PM

Probably the house where the corner of the lounge was about half a foot lower than the rest of the room. "There's no subsidence!" shouted the vendor, even though nobody had said a word.

Beanboysmum · 13 September 2017 at 10:06PM

Car1980 wrote: »

Probably the house where the corner of the lounge was about half a foot lower than the rest of the room. "There's no subsidence!" shouted the vendor, even though nobody had said a word.

Still laughing at reading this:rotfl:
thankfully I haven't viewed any odd houses however the house I've just bought the previous occupier really liked wallpaper as each wall in every room has a different paper.
What will be my sons room had Ben 10, 1direction and 2 shades of lurid green in a contrasting print.
Totally divine :rotfl:

cjmillsnun · 13 September 2017 at 10:23PM

For us it was the house we bought.

A fairly conventional 3 bed Radburn style ex council house that had been extended front and rear.

However the ceiling in the lounge was gloss plastic panels that looked like they had years of nicotine staining (they weren't stained by nicotine, that was just the pattern and colouring of the panels!), there was dark wood panelling everywhere on the walls and the electrics were visibly unsafe (exposed wires)

In all fairness it looked like a cross between a 70's pub and a tarts boudoir.

As you can imagine it was very cheap. Having ripped off all the wood panelling and the plastic ceiling we found plastered walls in reasonable condition. The ceilings needed a skim and there were some repairs required to small areas on the walls as well as some general filling. The electrics needed a full rewire, there was no getting around his bodgery as when we removed it there wasn't much of the original wiring left.

But all in all we found a lovely house underneath the rubbish. We're happy as it is massive, dry, and well insulated. With what we're doing to it (pretty much a full renovation) it will be how we want it.

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What is the strangest house you have viewed

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