This always happens on TV, I didn’t think it ever happened in real life! Years ago, I pulled up a corner of some ugly-ass carpet with hope in my heart, only to reveal…terrazzo. 
I put that carpet back.
Fireplaces Everywhere!!! House: The realtor helpfully told us that the previous owner of this place really liked fireplaces. No shit. There were 5 fireplaces in a small 2 bedroom house. The master bedroom didn’t actually have its own fireplace, so they had built in a balcony over the entryway to the house, that looked down over a fireplace that was in the entryway. Note that the entryway was literally a hall with a fireplace in it, maybe enough room for a small chair in the corner, not a living area. This might have been cool in a bigger space but basically it meant a huge hanging-over balcony right at the house entrance (it was about 4 feet from the wall with the fireplace and giving only about 6" clearance to walk under it, it was weird), plus no privacy in the bedroom of course since you have this big open balcony thing there.
The guy had also wanted another living area (with a fireplace) since the living room was pretty small, so he had helpfully built it into over half the garage. There was barely enough room to scrape a small car in there (though from the outside it looked like a 2- car garage, you opened the door to mostly a wall).
They also had converted nearly all of the (small) backyard to an inground pool. Inground pools are a beast to maintain here because of the hard winter freezes, so they just had let it go for countless years and it was completely unusable. The old liner was in there but completely detached and destroyed, and the underlying construction rent to bits. “Oh, but there’s a 5,000 allowance to fix it!” No way this was fixable at that rate, it was totally destroyed, and I’m sure they knew it. They had put a tarp over it, said the realtor, so no need to worry, you can just ignore it. Perfect.
Sinner/Saint House: As you walked around the upstairs, you could easily see that these were church-going folk. The praying hands on the wall, a copy of the footprints poem, lots of Bibles and “you’re blessed” platitudes laying about. S’OK, that’s not important, what does the house actually look like?
Downstairs was an entirely different story. Built in bar at the back of the finished basement, shuffleboard on the floor, and the thickest red shag carpeting I’d ever seen. Seriously, you sank in up to your ankles. We didn’t buy it - I could ignore the Jesus stuff, and a built-in bar is a bonus, but can you imagine what’s in that carpet? And replacing it is gonna be a bitch.
In my current house, the previous owners put carpet in both bedrooms. I knew the original hardwoods were under there because I had sneakily pulled back a corner of the carpet in a closet. To my great dismay, when I ripped out the carpet I found that they had painted the rooms without a dropcloth or any care at all. The floors are covered with drips and spills of paint and one corner was used to get the last bit of paint out of the brushes. I still haven’t decided if I want to refinish them, paint them, or just float new hardwoods over them.
**
Lock 'em up, Giant, Dwarf House**: My parents looked at a house that seemed very nice even if it was stuck in the 70’s. Then we found the bedroom neatly stocked with women’s clothes (professional type clothes) with a padlock hasp on the outside of the door. In the basement there was a tiny door, maybe 3 feet high with a padlock hasp on the outside. It led to a regular height, though small in size, fully carpeted room. On the other side of the basement was a regular size door which led to a short, narrow hallway and then a huge room with 12-15 foot ceilings. I couldn’t really explain it, but that house really gave me the creeps.
We were lucky with our hardwood floors - they were in great condition, having the carpet there actually saved wear and tear. We had 'em refinished anyway, to match those on the lower floor that were in less good condition.
Heh, your Lock 'em up, Giant, Dwarf House reminds me of my Boo Radley house … just how common are these bedrooms with padlocks on the outside? :eek:
A friend’s (actually acquaintance’s) home had a padlocked bedroom door. I found out via word of mouth that he had plants growing in there.
And I thought the previous owners of our house were overly security conscious, with the chains and locks on all 3 gates to the yard, key-locked deadbolts on the entry doors and the storm doors, bolts drilled into all of the window sashes, an alarm hooked up to the garden shed (activated by a switch next to the master bed) and a barrel bolt for locking the master bedroom from inside. They’d probably be aghast to learn that sometimes we forget to lock our doors…
Foreshadowing House: I’m not superstitious but it was all like the setup to a horror movie. The first thing we see is a nice, brand new detached garage – but there’s a padlock on it which is bent, twisted, nearly destroyed. The inside of the house looks like a zombie apocalypse movie: the bathtub pulled out and left in another room, floorboards ripped up, kitchen cupboards and appliances completely missing, toilet gone, great gashes in the walls and dark smears on the walls and floors, and so on. It’s honestly pretty dangerous even walking around the house and there is literally no room that would actually be habitable. Fortunately it was daylight because most of the light fixtures were removed, or at least not working, or the light bulbs taken. The realtor explained that it was destroyed by a person foreclosed on and then a flipper had bought it, but had lost the mortgage on that too within months. Okay, so it makes sense… then we go downstairs. One of those ancient basements, dirt floor, dark. None of the lights work. There’s a bunch of crap down there I can’t see, it smells and I’m sinking into the floor. Bug carcasses everywhere, it’s a disaster. I already know it’s a “no” so I insist we cut the tour short and not try to venture through the dark basement. As I step outside to go to the car, I nearly step on a snake and it hisses at me, causing me to shriek in alarm.
Thanks, universe, I can take a hint.
The realtor on the other hand thought it was a fantastic deal and was 10k under my budget so I’d have some money to make it ‘liveable’ (oh mercy, ten thousand whole dollars! I bet I could have a floor to put my bed on!), then I could just fix up the rest later!
Heh, I never thought of that one. 
Don’t think that the Boo Radley House was a case of the mini-grow-op, though - for one, it was carpeted.
Having been a renter while the landlord was trying to sell the house… they may or may not have been trying to sabotage it. They were probably annoyed and protective of their stuff.
The sale process sucks for renters. Strangers coming through my house and poking through my things. Agent constantly bugging me about last minute showings and expecting me to keep the house looking like a showroom. And the final prize of probably having to look for another place when the sale finally happens. We ended up moving out because it was such a hassle (and we knew we’d have to, sooner or later). I didn’t purposefully make things difficult, but I certainly didn’t change my plans for the agent. If I felt like sitting around and watching TV when she wanted to show the house, then I was sitting around and watching TV.
I would never try to buy a place with renters in SF. The tenants’ rights laws just make that such a terrible deal for the owner.
Not nearly as bad as some of these, but…
The divorce house - The realtor told us that the house was being sold due to a nasty divorce. We’d toured the house, which had kind of a strange lay out, and were standing in the kitchen talking, when I happened to glance to my right, at the door frame. The door frame was filled with all these long thin little triangular shaped holes, pointy end down. It took me a minute to reallize that I was seeing where someone had stood and stabbed a knife into the frame, over and over and over. That wasn’t the reason we passed, but it was a bit weird.
The boarding house - This one sounded interesting on paper. Suburban Chicago, 2 blocks from what was an old rail line, and is now a bike path. The listing made it sound like a long, thin house; I was hoping for something with lots of windows. Based on age, location and description, it used to be a boarding house. We never even got to see the house. Apparently someone toured it and found that it needed to be torn down. There was a 2 story tree growing out of the basement, up through the house.
I took my best friend on house tours with me. We still laugh about these two:
The Black Hole House - It had no yard. The back door opened onto a small deck with stairs down to the alley that also served as the driveway. Um, no. The house was a big brick thing with a beautiful porch out front. The dining room had embossed wallpaper that was put up sometime in the 1930’s. Fine. Built in seating and storage in the dining room as well. Very nice. There was the smell of cigarette smoke that got stronger as we went upstairs. One of the bedrooms was closed, when we opened it, we knew where the smell came from. Someone has clearly chain smoked in that room for years. But the real deal breaker for this house was the fact that on a bright sunny day in June, there was no light. At all. The house was south facing and curtains were open. No trees or buildings blocking the light. We could not figure out why the light died as soon as it hit the house.
The Death Trap House - We walked in the front door and immediately faced a bedroom door. As we walked through the living room, I noticed that the floor seemed bouncy. Weird. The bathroom had weird wiring and the screens on all the windows in the house had been cut horizontally. We went into the basement and found the source of the bounciness. A beam had been cut and supported, not well, on only one side of the cut. I looked at my friend and the agent and wordlessly, we all walked out. I think we only stayed as long as we did to find the source of the bounce.
The house I did buy was occupied by renters, they were present and unpleasant, but I knew that they and all of their overstuffed furniture and sick stinky dog would be gone by the time I moved in.
I’ll make sure to remove the locks from the doors in my house when the time comes to sell. My son was into everything, and it was easier to put locks on the door to the crawlspace, the linen closet etc than watch him every second. We had to devise a lock for his older sister’s door that could be opened with a key from both sides, because I didn’t want her locked in from the insde with no way to reach her in case of emergency.
One of David Sedaris’ stories is about how a stranger seeing the interior of your house makes you see all kinds of things in a different light - suddenly things that seemed innocous look evil or weird. Everyone go take a look around now.
Dang. I had forgotten about the orange shag carpet house. I actually liked the house quite a lot but was amazed by the amount of orange shag in the basement and a dormer room. In the dormer room, one wall had orange shag on it. How shagnasty can you get?
The “Fun” House: So the girlfriend and I were wandering through this four bedroom two bath cape cod in Bowie, Maryland. The suburb of Bowie was built by William Levitt with a mass-production turn of mind. Once you’ve seen one cape cod, you’ve pretty much seen them all.
I tell you that to tell you this. The real estate agent was walking us through the house pointing out closets, bedrooms, etc. and not really looking at what she was doing. Finally she opened one closet without looking and there hanging from a hook was a human skeleton.
As it turned out, this thing was real. When we asked the owners (who were home at the time) about the what, how and why, they allowed as how they had gotten it at an estate sale and would trot it out every Halloween.
The real estate agent was aghast. My girlfriend, the anthropology major, was fascinated and was given permission to stretch it out on the living room carpet for a closer look. (Like something out of CSI: “Male, about 23 to 28, generally good health except for the impacted wisdom tooth…”)
I didn’t buy that one because the layout wasn’t quite right.
What, like the Christmas gargoyle I decorated up all nice with his pretty bow?
Actually, our house is mostly decorated with pictures of cougars - we’d totally be The Cougar House.
Well that’s slightly more tasteful than The MILF House, I suppose.
I’ve seen variants on those two (although I called them “The Smokehouse” and “The Slanty Shanty”).
Also:
The Fryolator: Clearly, every meal served in this house for the past thirty years has involved deep frying. Every possible surface was coated with a multi-decade accumulation of grease, not to mention the aroma…
Hmmm. Maybe I’m showing my advanced age, but I’m not sure I’d count either of those as “duds”, exactly. 
Actually, I don’t remember the houses so much as the agent - my wife and I were looking here in San Antonio (over a year ago) and we got an agent, told him our requirements, and we went out looking one lovely Saturday morning.
He took us to 5 or 6 dumps - nothing to make you recoil in horror, mind you, just old dumpy houses that might have barely come within our specifications.
So he’s made sure to get us all distraught (well, my wife anyway… I thought from the 2nd house-on that we were being set up, but didn’t say anything as I was trying to be a nicer person back then. 
)
After visiting 5 or 6 homes that Dracula would feel uncomfortable resting in, he said “Well, I have one more place. A little over your budget*, but you might like it” as we drive to the last house.
He takes us to a brand-new KB Home development, dumped us at the model home they were using for an office, and had another agent take over the showing details.
Of course the wife and kid loved it - how could they not, given that they were led to believe that we would have to live in shitholes? So, when we left the KB Homes place and got back to his office, he asked us in to discuss what we’ve seen and how we can move forward. I responded “Jake, there’s no way in hell I’m getting in your office and I want to notify you now that I no longer desire your representation. Do I have to send a letter to your office manager and/or** corporate to make this official?”
“What did I do?”
Looking at him straight in the eye "You know what you did. My Dad sold real estate for 10 years, told me a number of tricks to watch out for, and you did trick #1. Do you prefer that I spell it out in my letter? I can be quite lawyerly and pedantic as I lay out the evidence and accusations, trust me. "
“No, that won’t be necessary.”
Didn’t buy a house - ended up renting one, and buying it a year later. Great home for an unbelievable price.
*If warning bells don’t start ringing in your head when you hear your agent say this, rent.
**Yes, I actually use “and/or” in conversation. Sue me. 