50 Real Estate Listings From People Who Clearly Didn’t Design Their House To Resell

People have varied or even unusual home design choices for a myriad of reasons, often very close to identity, taste, or simply a desire to make the house their own. A home is one of the only areas where people are free to be as expressive as they can with no limits, and that expression can lead to bold decisions: theme rooms, strange color schemes, unusual materials, or even architectural changes that benefit only the person who lives there.

Whether it's a jungle bathroom, a medieval banquet hall dining room, or a staircase bookshelf-climbing wall, these choices reflect creativity, sentimentalism, and sometimes even a sense of playfulness or rebellion against plain conformity.

For other homeowners, nonconformist design choices are a way of escaping the cookie-cutter appearance of mass-produced houses. In an era when so many of the suburban complexes look so much alike, the need to stand out and individualize a house can become overwhelming.

For others, there will be inspiration through nostalgia, cultural preference, or hobby,such as converting a garage into a home brewery or setting up a shrine room according to their faith. In other cases, one-of-a-kind features result from amateur fiddling that has gone awry or penny-pinching by trying to manage on unconventional materials or methods.

Though these choices may bring more joy to the homeowner, they can become a significant hindrance to selling. Real estate is a more rule-bound business than taste: individuals purchase homes that they can live in, think about living in, and which will be pleasing to a broad audience. A house filled with strong personal marks,say, a black-and-red painted kitchen with gothic chandeliers, or walls covered in artificial grass,is difficult for purchasers to see past. The more unusual or offbeat the design, the fewer pool of customers will be there to embrace or overlook it.

These unique flourishes can also trigger alarm bells in buyers' brains about the quality of the renovations. Nonstandard changes, like idiosyncratically placed walls, custom furniture incorporated into the residence, or bizarre plumbing arrangements, can cause buyers to question building codes, permits, or how much it will cost to return the house to a more standard form. Even if the house is well-constructed, purchasers will automatically deduct thousands from their offer, knowing they'll need to "fix" what the former owner saw as an upgrade.

From a valuation perspective, quirky designs lower the resale value of a house. Homes that sit on the market because of unusual characteristics end up selling for less than market value, especially when individuals employ the novelty as a negotiating chip. Sellers may even need to invest in making their home neutral, repainting, removing decor, or even fully renovating, just to put it into a saleable state. Realtors normally recommend depersonalizing a home prior to listing it for sale for exactly this reason: it lets future buyers envision their own lives within the home.