s/o shit people say - Worst house you've seen?

[wawa]

So we've talked about stupid shit people say when they look at your house...So now what have been the most ridiculous things you've seen that made you turn around and walk right back out of a house?

Valid reasons or weird nitpicks on your part equally welcome.

[emoflamingo]

We looked at a house in a small town south of where we live (like small enough that they have no grocery store) and the house was converted to be 2 living spaces, so the upstairs had a stovetop and to get to the next room, you had to walk through the room before it. There was no hallway, you just went through the circle of rooms.

[wawa]

I've got tons. We looked at a truly ridiculous number of listings (50+ go ahead and feel sorry for our realtor) and some of them were horrendous.

Like the house with the super steep back yard with a poorly maintained above-ground pool at the tippy top. The entire yard was dirt and badly eroded. It had a decaying railroad tie walkway that zigzagged up the hill goat path style. And the pool at the top was full of dark green water, and the side of the pool was bulging out. The whole thing was on the brink of failure, and when it went, it was going to flood the basement of the house with a landslide of green pond scum, water and mud. We ran. Literally. We were afraid the hillside was going to collapse while we were standing there.

Or the house where every.single.room had a different pattern of wallpaper (all of them. Bathrooms, hallways, bedrooms - every wall was papered) and the entire place smelled like mothballs.

Or the house with original 1960's pink shag carpet throughout and no back door. You don't realize how weird that is until you're trying to get out of the house to see the backyard and realize there really is just no back door. Front door only.

Or the house that seemed like it was on this awesome expansive lot...until the next door neighbor came out and told us that actually the property line was about 4 feet off the back door and the rest of the field was his. And he owns a shotgun. Just a friendly FYI.

Or the townhouse we looked at that seemed amazing at first. We could not figure out what it was doing in our price range. Absolutley stunning high end kitchen, beautiful custom built-in breakfast bar, custom bookshelves/entertainment center, huge amazing master bath and closet...and then we realized there was only a master bedroom. They had knocked down the wall between the master and the 2nd bedroom to make the closet and walled over the original bedroom door in the hallway. But it was still listed as a 3 BR house ("third" bedroom in the basement).

[lightbulbsun]

There was this one craftsman bungalow that we looked at that had a bedroom upstairs. The house was obviously owned by an old lady because there were dolls and doilies everywhere and everything had super flowers wallpaper.

We went upstairs and there was a kind of long hallway with these little 4' tall doors on either side. It totally freaked me out. Like, it was some haunted dollhouse or something. I realize that's completely ridiculous, but I pretty much wanted to leave immediately after that. (we would not have bought the house anyway because of other issues).

[darthxtater]

We looked at house that had the master bath on the second floor surrounded by large four foot windows with no curtains. So all your neighborhood ors could wave. Best part is it backed up to aweek grade school!

[sierramist03]

We saw a house that the floors had pet urine spots all over them and they were very dirty the vinyl floors had hair dye on them the kitchen cabinets had a layer of greasy film inside them and the molding was covered in paint where they touch when painting the walls

[mrs.jacinthe]

We have looked at some real winners, but my favorite here was a house where it was listed as 3-4 br and 3 ba. Except that two of the bedrooms were connected with no door. And in order to get to the family room, you had to either walk through both of those bedrooms or go into the garage, down a little walkway, and back into the house. It was really weird. The whole house was dated, too, and not in a cute vintagey sort of way.

[housegeek]

One of my " favorites" was a flat level brick house that had a 2 story vinyl add on attached. They didn't even cover the previously outside brick wall, it was just turned into the inside wall of the new add on. And it had a creepy gutted " mother in law" shack in the back...

[natablue]

One house we looked at had 70's psychadelic wallpaper in EVERY.SINGLE.ROOM, all with a different pattern. The one in the dining room literally made me dizzy. Plus the people who lived there were smokers, so the smell of cigarette smoke was like a punch in the face when you walked in the door. You would have had to replace the flooring in the ENTIRE house, not to mention all the work to remove the gross wallpaper. No thanks.

[kaylie]

I think our search area just attracts people who are terrible decorators. I kind of laugh when I see posts about crazy paint because it seemed like that was the least of the problems we encountered. The ones below are ones we saw that are still on the market, but there are some so crazy that we didn't even bother. Like this one, where the old pictures have been taken down but there are bedrooms with neon green plaid carpeting: www.zillow.com/homedetails/78-N-Kitty-Knight-Dr-Churchville-PA-18966/9073583_zpid/

There was this house that had bright blue tile in the kitchen, oddly shaped soffits and extreme popcorning all over the ceilings: www.trulia.com/homes/Pennsylvania/Newtown/sold/451594-97-Justice-Dr-Newtown-PA-18940

This house where the photographer worked magic because it's dirty as hell, the carpet is matted and brown, and the fixtures they put in the master bathroom are so large that you can barely move around: www.zillow.com/homedetails/64-Copperleaf-Dr-Newtown-PA-18940/9060437_zpid/

This house, where a child eating a corn dog followed us around during our showing and there was a dilapidated patio/swimming pool out back. The newly remodeled kitchen is fugly as hell: www.zillow.com/homedetails/496-Cambridge-Ln-Newtown-PA-18940/9057670_zpid/

This one, another wonder of photography, was also disgusting and poorly maintained: www.zillow.com/homedetails/24-Jericho-Rd-Holland-PA-18966/9074305_zpid/

[minniebee]

We looked at one place that was listed as a 4bed/3bath. As it turns out, the 3rd bath was a toilet randomly placed out in the open in the unfinished basement. No sink, no tub/shower, just a lonely toilet hanging out in the basement. Um, that's not a bathroom. And how awkward would it be to use that toilet - totally exposed - with no place to wash your hands. Ew.

We looked at one foreclosure and were so horrified we couldn't bring ourselves to look at any more. The owners had left behind a lot of stuff when they moved out, including some pets that we found dead in the house. There were some decomposing guinea pigs and rabbits we found. So sad. And gross. I can't fathom how people think it's okay to leave behind pets inside a house where they have no access to food/water. It's cruel. I hope that no one had looked at the house in awhile, otherwise, it's terrible if other people had been in the house to see the pets left behind and did nothing to save them.

[aweilba]

One of the houses we looked at had vinyl flooring on the deck outside. What made it even better was that it almost looked like the vinyl went seamlessly from the kitchen to the outside. Gross. It also had 6 different carpet colors, all of them bad.

Another house we looked at was a foreclosure. It totally would've been the house if not for one thing: the previous owners, once notified that they were being foreclosed on, turned on all of the faucets full-blast in the house and left the home. When the bank came to look at it the following day, they found it totally flooded. If the price were low enough, we would've gutted the water damaged areas and fixed it up. However, the bank wasn't willing to budge on the price, and it would've cost more than we could handle to fix it.

[setsail1999]

We went to one foreclosure where the neighborhood kids used it as a party house and completely trashed it. There was spray paint on the exterior, broken glass everywhere, trash. We actually decided to go in and it was okay until we noticed someone broke out a back window and we found more trash and apparently the partiers and squatters just used to the floor as a toilet. It was so nasty and I'm not easily grossed out.

Another house had such bad cat urine stains that we smelled it outside from the driveway. We didn't even bother going in.

[FoxInFiji]

Jun 29, 2012 11:32:21 GMT -5 minniebee said:

We looked at one foreclosure and were so horrified we couldn't bring ourselves to look at any more. The owners had left behind a lot of stuff when they moved out, including some pets that we found dead in the house. There were some decomposing guinea pigs and rabbits we found. So sad. And gross. I can't fathom how people think it's okay to leave behind pets inside a house where they have no access to food/water. It's cruel. I hope that no one had looked at the house in awhile, otherwise, it's terrible if other people had been in the house to see the pets left behind and did nothing to save them.

OMG that is horrible! :-(

I don't have any real horror stories because we didn't have very many homes to look at. We house hunted for a year any only saw 3 houses before we found ours. There was very little available in our price range and location with land at the time. The house we thought we wanted had 4 offers before it was even listed online because it was such a good price. It was a 70's split level with 4 different levels and wood paneling everywhere. It was on 5 acres of heavily wooded land on top of a hill. The biggest disappointment was that it had a 75' tall tower just outside the master bedroom window to pick up satellite TV. With 5 acres of land you don't think you could move that over 15' so it wasn't blocking your view?! We were bummed to find out there was already an accepted offer but it all worked out in the end because that is how we found our house just down the street. Way out of our price range but be we eventually got them down to something we could afford. Now we're friends with the guy that bought the house we wanted and went to his house party to see all of the finished renovations he's done.

[ktzmoh]

Jun 29, 2012 13:29:20 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

This isn't my house, but a friend of mine bought her first home probably about 10 years ago. It was a little 3 bd ranch, very cute. But the prior owner had decorated each room in a "theme." So there was a Florida bedroom where everything was teal and pink and there was lattice hot glued to the walls painted teal. The kitchen was a soda shop with red walls and blue cabinets. Master bed was a cat room complete with leopard print wall paper. It was pretty bad. They DIYed the entire thing fixing it up and are now selling it. I suspect that even in this shit economy, they will make a handsome profit. The place was a train wreck when they bought it.

That sounds like it was a brave thing for your friends to buy! It reminds me of the early years of those trading spaces type shows when they always did super theme-y rooms.

[bethaboo]

I have not been on my own personal house search, but I visited quite a few with my friend when she looked. The worst house was also my favorite.

It was a tiny 1000 square foot house and my friend (who had seen the house before) warned about the animal smell before we went in. I thought that she was exaggerating for dramatic effect. I was so wrong. The minute the door opened, you could smell the animals that used to live in the house. The carpets were so stained that it was rare to find a clean spot. The walls were covered to about halfway up with muddy paw prints and brown smudges from where animals had clearly rubbed against it.

The weirdest part was how much care the owners had put in to it before they were foreclosed on. Each room had a very deep paint color in the wall - some with treatments and some not. The kitchen was white with black cow spots painted all over it. It's hard to describe just how awful it was, but man! that house had good bones. I am still sad that their offer fell through.

P.S. Minniebee, I am not sure if any house can top finding dead animals all over a house.

[ihatethenest]

We looked at one foreclosure that was pretty bad for many reasons but the best part was that the house was filled with lamps and lamp shades. Every single room. There were hundreds of them it was so weird. I'll try to post the picture I took.

[auntie]

Back when we were looking for our starter, we toured a 1800 stone farmhouse with tremendous curb appeal. The owner had a glass shop and had covered many of the paster walls with mirror tiles. He lined the butterfly staircase with red shag carpeting (walls, treads and ceiling); it was like reliving your birth experience.

House #2 was an adorable 2 up and 2 down stone farmhouse built in 1776. It was perfectly restored. The ceilings were rather low as folks were smaller back then, but when DH walked through the kitchen and ended up with dried herbs in his hair I knew I wouldn't get the house.

The house we bough was on a creek and had been part of a scout camp. The garage had the sewer hockups for three toilets and 2 showers. I only know this because my oil burner service man had camped there as a kid.

[vanillahip]

The house we're currently trying to buy (if the bank will quit being a jerk and accept our offer) was a rental before being foreclosed on. The carpets covering the original hardwoods are SOAKED with dog pee, there's crayon all over- srsly all over every wall, and the entire kitchen- floors, counters and cabinets- is covered with some mysterious sicky but not smelly..... something. Like, STICKY, floor at a stadium sticky ::hurl::. OH and one upon a time there was a clawfoot tub but that was ripped out and replaced with a lovely avocado green ceramic tub, and they just tiled the walls around it. Except they didn't bother moving the heat register so it's smack in the middle of the shower. Awesome.

I've seen a shocking number of homes where the foundation sunk, floors became uneven or support columns were failing so previous owners jacked up the house to repair it and went wayyy too far! There's one that I really love, it's a 100 year old eclectic... something. Not quite bungalow, not quite colonial, very different for this area. But the gutters are failing so the foundation is sinking on one side, and the floors were jacked up way way way too much on the other side so there's a 4" bow in the floors, plus one side of the house is 3-6" lower than the other! Oh and we saw another where some idiot just tore down walls willy-nilly, and ended up taking out load bearing walls without installing support beams. Pretty sure that house is going to fall down sooner than later!