July 25, 2025
I saw a thread on Bluesky this evening talking about the weird stuff people saw when buying houses. I bought my house during the crash of 2008-09, in northern Virginia. I wrote about it a little bit at the time, but I'm putting down as much as I can remember before I forget again. People do some weird things to houses, man.
The Barracks: One of the first houses I looked at was in Sterling. It looked innocuous enough from outside; inside was a different story. The house was bought for (what I assume were) day laborers, each of the three bedrooms had either two or three bunk beds in them. There were signs all over not to park too close to the house to avoid pissing off the neighbors by monopolizing the street parking. Everything else was about what you'd expect to see in a three-bedroom house being lived in by a dozen and a half people. Nothing was wrong exactly, but since it was at the upper end of my price range I figured I'd look for something that I wouldn't have to worry about evicting a dozen people if I bought it.
DIY Hell: One house in Manassas looked from the outside like it could use a little attention, and was priced accordingly. The interior had gotten a little too much attention. The owner had installed a less-than-legal mother-in-law apartment in the basement, including a kitchenette and full bathroom. Unfortunately the only place they could find to stuff the bathroom was where the landing for the stair well was. They shark the landing as far as it would go, and when that didn't leave enough room they disconnected the stairs and tilted them downward to save space. Each and every step was on a slope. Couple that with the fact that the door to the outside didn't shut and this was another house I passed on. And felt kind of sorry for the mother-in-law.
The Hazmat Site: There's not much to say about the house in Herndon: It had been abandoned, presumably when the owners could no longer make their payments, and there had been either a burst pipe or a roof leak. The entire house was musty, and there was a good amount of mold on the walls and floors. You couldn't have paid me to live in that place.
The Tile House: Back up in Sterling, I found a house (again near the top of my price range) that was clean and looked to be in good shape. It had some nice-looking tile... everywhere. The bathrooms and kitchen were tile, but that makes perfect sense. The living room? Tile. Master bedroom? Tile. The garage? Tile. I kid you not, they tiled their garage. In addition to not being a great price for me, I decided there were probably some things there that I didn't want to know about.
Y'know, after that, my complaints about this place seem kinda weak in comparison. Especially since almost all of them are the result of me ignoring things or not having the money to do them.
