What is the strangest house you have viewed

Green_hopeful

We have viewed lots that have been unusual. One with the large living room entirely in a dark burgundy including the carpet, walls, radiators and ceiling. It felt like the ceiling was about to fall on your head. The house was pretty dated but trying to make a positive comment, I said the ensuite was nice. The Seller immediately said he was taking it with him. There was also a five metre high 'hill' complete with fake stream in the small estate garden.

We also went to one we called the witches house. My husband would not even view so I took one of the kids. It was a Victorian house with towers and turrets but clearly needed lots of structural work. The agent bravely showed us round passed endless full and very smelly cat litter trays. We were nearly sick from the smell.

Didn't buy either. I can see passed most things but they were awful.

Natbag

When we went to view our first house, the living room had dated dark blue and beige striped wallpaper and a huge framed picture of the Titanic above the fireplace. It was grim! Oh, and artex on almost every wall. No idea why we bought it, other than that we were poor and it was cheap.

EssexGirl

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.

That reminds me of a flat we viewed. There was such a slope on the floor a ball would have rolled across the room with no help. The estate agent wouldn't admit it though.

seven-day-weekend

When we were house-hunting in Spain, we viewed one village house where you had to bend double to get through the passageway from the living room to the bedroom, and where the existing owner would still have access to the roof terrace.

Also in Spain, I know someone who viewed a house with a dead dog in the kitchen.

Murphybear

cjmillsnun wrote: »

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.

This reminds me of a bungalow we bought a few years ago. It was owned by a lovely old couple who couldn't manage the large garden, which was fabulous and reminded me of the garden in Alice through the looking glass:D. It was very old fashioned and in need of updating. There was a whole wall covered in pine panelling which was the first thing to go. The carpet was taken up and revealed the beautiful original wooden flooring which we had renovated and was a talking point.

I still miss that bungalow and wish we could have transported it with us when we moved to Devon:rotfl:

Davesnave

Too many to list! Viewing houses with land, we soon realised that anything we could afford with a reasonable house was going to have terrible land, or the land would be lovely and the house a complete wreck.

For example there was the cottage owned by a plumber who'd seen too many episodes of Grand Designs. His genius stroke was to remove the original staircase and reposition it in the middle of the house, which was potentially a good idea, but with his ground floor layout, the only way to get upstairs, or from one end of the ground floor to the other, was via the conservatory, which he hadn't built.

As he'd had run out of money, the en-suites the plumber had created in all the bedrooms also hadn't been kitted-out, so the sole washing/toilet facility was on the ground floor, only accessible at night by going outside through the unbuilt conservatory.....

We offered £260k for that one, originally marketed at £335k. It was a good, sound shell with new windows, but virtually everything else needed to be re-done.

Our offer was rejected. We breathed a sigh of relief. While the house had enough woodland to see us in fuel for the rest of our days, it would have been quite a project sorting it all out.

Six months later, it sold for £240k.

Davesnave

Green_hopeful wrote: »

We also went to one we called the witches house.....

Yup, had one of those. Old property done out downstairs with green snot-coloured tiles and a witchy/occult theme in every room. Both owners were ill.... hacked and chain smoked throughout. We didn't get into two bedrooms because their teenage children scowled fiercely at us when their door was opened....but by then we didn't care.

There were 9 dogs, most of which jumped up at us with muddy paws, the land was horribly steep and very boggy where it wasn't, the drive was owned by someone else and the access was dangerous. All in all, we felt sorry for the delusional pair of sick weirdies.

The property sold the following week for £450k.

tori.k

I feel quite left out we've not seen anything to strange, the oddest being the pine clad house normal looking on the outside yet the older sellers had clad the whole of the downstairs in Orange pine cladding, the lady of the house liked her tan and was almost the same colour as the walls and ceiling so kinda had a chameleon effect going on it was quite a distraction.

Fosterdog

I viewed one that was originally a two bed but the changed to a three bed, really good sizes for all of the rooms but to make the conversion possible they had to move the stair case close to the front door, it was literally the door swung open and had at most an inch gap before you reached the stairs, which they had also added a turn at the bottom so you walked in to be face to face with the banister. Fine for every day but getting furniture in and out would be a nightmare.

Then the second double bedroom was in the centre of the house so had no window, not the end of the world, they added a skylight. Except it was almost like a chimney going up through the attic in the centre of the room with the skylight at the top. I never understood why they didn't just go for a loft conversion like other houses in the street had, it must have cost them more to do it the way they had.

cloo

Probably the oddest one was a house it took us a little while to find of the road... you actually had to drive under an archway in some flats to the back, where there was a surprisingly nice, large 2-storey cottage adjacent to the flat's garages (which were to the side, out of view of the house)

The owners had bought the old caretaker's bungalow for the block and built the house there. It had a lovely and large walled garden, a slightly odd layout with a study at the front, a long narrow kitchen leading to a utility lean-to, and a large lounge/diner that took the whole width of the back of the house.

There were 4 good sized bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs, but there were all in the eaves due to the cottage-style design.

My husband was very taken and given to making an offer. I was less sure given the loss of potential storage due to the eaves and the odd position. Indeed I started a thread here pondering whether it would be impossible to sell on, especially after another agent told us that this house had been on and off the market for a few years. The poor vendor had been trying to move since his wife had died. I hope he did manage to sell up eventually! It is a rare detached house in the area and very close to a good primary school so it will hopefully make someone a nice family home.