Strange Homes: 25 Oddities of the Real Estate Market

From a ranch where aliens visit to a gigantic nuclear missile silo, these houses will have you scratching your head and imagining a strange new life.

Strange Homes: 25 Oddities of the Real Estate Market

If price were no option, what would you buy?

You could go for the more traditional luxury home with all the normal bells and whistles. Or you could have the most peculiar property in town.

From a ranch where aliens visit to a Hobbit house to a gigantic nuclear missile silo, these houses will have you scratching your head and imagining what life there might be like.

A Ranch Haunted by Aliens and Ghosts

There’s nothing exceptional about this 10-acre plot of land and 3,436-square-foot ranch in Buckeye, Ariz. Not unless you know the backstory, which is apparently popular among paranormal enthusiasts and those that believe in visiting aliens.

See, the owners of this property, John Edmonds and his wife, “insists the reason the couple wants to move is because extraterrestrials have been trying to abduct his wife” and that he has “killed 18 of them so far,” according to West Valley View.

The ranch is known as both the “Alien Ranch” and the Stardust Ranch, and it’s listed at $5 million — although there’s no earthly reason to justify that price tag. According to the West Valley View, the local assessor’s office has put a value on the home at $356,100. But the property barely doubles that price: Zillow’s current estimate bumps the entire property to just $613,000.

Edmunds has also claimed to have seen ghosts on the property and the Alien Ranch has been featured on the Travel Channels’ “Ghost Adventures” and several other paranormal podcasts and documentaries.

Maybe the new owner can make up that lost revenue by telling new ghost stories and selling alien pelts?

Eagle Eryie

Perhaps one of the most eccentric places currently for sale, Eagle Eeyrie is a vacation manor located in Cloudcroft, New Mexico.

Built in 1897, the five-bedroom looks like it’s made entirely of handcrafted wood, from the porch beams to the staircase railing. The exterior and portions of the interior are made from logs that still have the bark on them.

You can purchase Eagle Eyrie for $199,000, or you can spend the night for about $125.

A Castle in the Bronx

Start your own Bronx tale with this brick-and-stone French provincial castle.

The 1926, 5,158-square-foot home features five bedroom, five bathrooms, plank oak flooring and a kitchen breakfast nook located inside the castle’s turret.

It can be yours for $3.2 million.

The Majority of a Condominium Complex

If you’re looking for a business endeavor — or just really want to sprawl out — you can own 19,364 square feet of this condominium complex in Asheville, North Carolina.

The property has 16 bedrooms and 16 full bathrooms and is up for sale at $5.55 million. You won’t get the entire thing — the price tag only includes eight fully furnished two-bedroom units.

Also of note: The complex was built in 1931 and is listed on the National Historic Register. It used to be a hospital before a 2005 renovation.

Use Bitcoin for this Boise Castle

We have a few castles on this list, but none of them are quite like this. Known as the Boise Castle and located in — you guessed it — Boise, Idaho, this 5,845-square-foot behemoth is listed at $2.775 million.

Its torch-lined battlement rooftop is lined with torches, but not for keeping cauldrons of boiling hot oil. Instead, they light up a rooftop spa and outdoor grill area.

Past the gargoyle and through the medieval-looking front door, you’ll find some touches from the Middle Ages, like a suit of armor, custom furniture and medieval-looking walls, but this five-bedroom, seven-bathroom castle is very modern.

There’s radiant heat flooring, multiple fireplaces, a wine room and a sprawling kitchen. The seller even accepts Bitcoin.

A Home with Your own Private Nightclub

You wouldn’t know it from the road, but this unassuming townhome in Collegeville, Penn., has a bumping basement.

Below the 2,692-square foot Colonial Revival is a full-on nightclub with a warehouse-like beam ceiling, theater seating, full bar, overhead spotlights, game room and disco ball. It’s up for sale at $289,999.

Arizona ‘Step House’

This custom home has four different levels, separated by four small stairways made up of four steps.

This was an architectural design to complement the hillside terrain, and creates an illusion of ‘climbing’ the hill while you’re inside.

The 4,714-square-foot Spanish style house has been specifically colored to match the surrounding desert terrain, allowing it to blend into the hills. It’s up for sale at $1.453 million.

This CGI house

Listed for $4.5 million in Venice, Calif., this luxury property looks like it’s still being computer generated.

The ultra-modern five-bed, five-bath home is built with mesh-shaped steel, glass, and incorporates wavy lines, patterns and textures on the interior, giving it a special effects look.

This Absurdly Large Castle

We all know everything’s bigger in Texas, but this is ridiculous.

Clocking in at a whopping 19,673 square feet with eight bedrooms, eight full bathrooms, a car collector’s garage, personal theater, wine room, libraries (plural!), and four outdoor patios, this castle in Southlake, Texas, must be one of the state’s largest residential properties (although to be fair, it’s less than half the size of Texas’ largest mansion).

However, considering the wealth of features, the property isn’t absurdly priced at $3.75 million.

A House with a Mind-Blowing Sports Room

While this house in Reunion, Florida, sold a few months ago, we had to include it because of its insane entertainment setup.

The house itself is cool enough — it’s a 12,982-square foot modern with a huge open floor plan up top — the basement is the home’s key feature. The sports/gaming room has eight HDTVs, with four of them mounted stadium-style on the ceiling. Several gaming tables, a bar, mini fridge, sink and a football mural are also included.

But if it’s the off season and you feel like watching a movie, there’s a separate movie theater with tiered seating that can comfortably sit 12 people. A buyer picked this home off the market for $2.85 million.

A Home for Hobbits

The architect of this home in East Jordan, Mich., took inspiration from JRR Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” according to Zillow.

To create the home’s most striking feature, its roof, cedar shakes were steamed in order to bend and shape them to form the wavy, fantasy-like shape. Inside you’ll find more unique woodwork, like a bear-shaped bedframe and table legs shaped like rooted tree stumps.

The 3,913-square-foot, six-bedroom house is listed for $1.299 million.

This House with an Insane Indoor Pool

If a house has an indoor pool, it had better be worth a homeowner’s trouble. And this one just might be worth it.

Located in Nederland, Texas, this luxury estate has a huge indoor swimming pool with its own little bridge. There’s also a second-story slide — and the second story is where you can find the standalone spa. In fact, the whole pool area is like a hotel-style pool room.

Throughout the main 6,362-square foot, eight-bedroom home, you’ll find several other unusual features like a sunken living room area with a bright green carpet and a kitchen with stonework arches on the counter. This Texan beauty can be had for $695,000.

A Huge Converted Church

If you’re looking for a divine home buying experience, look no further than this 5,349-square-foot converted church in Reedsburg, Wisc.

The seven-bedroom home still has original stained glass windows in several rooms, and it comes with the original church piano and organ.

Listed at $284,900, the seven-bedroom home is apparently a hot Airbnb rental, so you can spread the good word while making bank.

Tennis Court House

Feast your eyes on this $40 million architectural exercise in excess: A nine-bedroom, 25-bathroom, 51,000 square-foot Spanish estate that has not one, not two, but three tennis courts.

One of those tennis courts is located indoors, surrounded by second-story balconies and ironwork rails.

The listing boasts that the property took 17 years to finish and is the 36th largest residence in the United States.

Be Your own Boxcar Willie

Ever wanted to live out the dream of a traveling boxcar vagrant, only without the hassle of catching trains? Consider this stationary single-room tiny home made from an old train caboose.

At only 270 square feet with an old iron heater, it might not be the ideal place to live out your days, but it is an awesome place to go hunting.

The tiny train home is located on 74 acres of woodland “loaded with deer and turkey” in Verona, New York, according to the listing. You can have it for just $81,700.

Anne Rice’s Vampiric Victorian

Just outside of New Orleans’ Garden District, this classic New Orleans Victorian-style mansion comes with a hefty $4.5 million price tag ($514 per square foot!).

But for Anne Rice fans with a few million lying around, the price might be well worth it. The five-bedroom, five-bathroom center hall was once owned and painstakingly restored by the queen of the Vampire Chronicles.

Originally built in 1886, the home has retained most of its Southern charm — including a cypress staircase, working pocket doors, ceiling medallions, and the original stained glass. Of course, there’s also plenty of riches for the rich, including a mega-sized, completely covered in marble master bath complete with soaking tub, walk-in shower with stain glass features, fireplace and a gold chandelier.

There’s also a walk-in closet big enough to put your bed in and an outdoor living space complete with another fireplace. The new owners also get two balconies overlooking the famed, oak-lined St. Charles Street.

Oh, and if that isn’t enough, Rice wrote about the home in the novel “Lasher,” the second installment of Anne Rice’s “Mayfair Witch” chronicles.

360 Degree Water Views

If you prefer being on the water — and we mean on the water — then consider Wolf Trap Lighthouse, a unique fixer-upper opportunity where you can live several miles from land.

Located in Chesapeake Bay off the coast of Matthews County, Virgina, this 1,500-square-foot, three-bedroom lighthouse is in need of some TLC — which is not surprising once you learn it’s been around since 1894.

The lighthouse, up for sale at $249,000, also comes with a 0.68-acre waterfront lot to launch off from.

The Goldberg Mansion

There aren’t many true Gothic mansions around —and we’re betting even fewer in Milwaukee — but the Goldberg Mansion fits the bill, and it is up for sale at $1.695 million.

Built in 1896, this Dark Shadows-esq seven-bedroom home is pretty much the perfect example of Gothic greatness. Outside, the home is a gorgeous maze of gables and many, many turrets. Even the driveway has an ornate covered drive-thru leading to show-stopping courtyard and garage.

Inside, the home has a grand entryway, a seemingly-endless amount of formal parlors, dining rooms and studies, and of course you get a chef’s kitchen. But the real stand out in this house is in the details. The hand-carved millwork looks more like the set of a movie than reality.

From the highly detailed carvings on the stairwell to the ornate fireplace mantles to the window trim, every room has something unique to offer.

A Converted Chicago Firehouse

Anderson Cooper lives in a converted firehouse, and now so can you. Located in the Lincoln Square area of Chicago, Illinois, is a fantastically modern conversion of an old firehouse.

The 3,800 square-foot home has been renovated and reimagined. The gorgeous front swing doors are still the vintage originals, but the hose room has been turned into a foyer and the firehouse has been opened up with walls of glass. Lots of stainless steel in the kitchen and a red brick-tiled bathroom are throwbacks to the building’s original use.

The four-bedroom conversion can be had for $1.45 million.

Some Ancient Ruins

Perhaps the strangest listing we’ve yet seen. Located in the Virgin Islands in Frederiksted, this listing has been up since early 2017 but has recently been removed. However, we’ve been able to hunt down the original listing through the web — it speaks for itself:

“Historical Ruins once owned by Danish King Christian. Former sugar factory & rum distillery. Remains of overseer house/windmill, lime kiln, well tower, animal pens, steam engine, boiler room. Natl Register of Historic Places. Historic American Engineering Record.”

The pictures showed crumbling stone and a door, so we don’t think you’ll be able to get a traditional mortgage for this one. It was originally listed at $289,000.

The Tiki House

Do you like Tiki–styled stuff? Like, really like them? Then this house in Palm Springs, Florida, is for you.

Just about everything in this 1,289-square-foot home has been designed, modeled or etched in the Tiki style. Custom wood columns have Tiki faces and the walls have been fitted with bamboo façades.

There are Tiki-style wood etching, Tiki masks, Tiki art, Tiki bedframes, Tiki statues and even Tiki lamps. It’s a condo, but according to the listing the home’s owners did the Tiki outfitting by salvaging woodwork from closed-down Tiki-style businesses.

The two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo can be yours for $419,000.

Tim Burton’s Post-Modern Beach House

If Tim Burton ever ditched his drab colors for whites and baby blues, and became an architect, he might design something like this. This beachside horseshoe-shaped house in Destin, Florida, is a three-story spec build of curvy steel and glass.

Priced at $8.8 million and still not-yet lived in, this nine-bedroom, 10-bathroom, 9,000 square-foot beach lover’s dream is certainly unique. The listing is a wall of text outlining this home’s extensive features, but we only have room for a few.

In the middle of its C-shaped design is a small circular pool with a fire pit sitting area in the middle. Each level has walls of glass and lounging chairs to soak up the sun, and in total there are 5,000 square feet of balconies and outdoor living areas. The furniture is decidedly post-modern, from the pool table to the outdoor dining areas to the free-form wood-and-glass staircase.

There’s even a pirate ship-shaped bunkbed for the kids. And there are 19 Smart TVs to be found throughout the home, plus a 119” projection screen in the personal theater.

An Oregon Ghost Town

Why limit yourself to just one house when you can buy a whole freaking town? Located in an incorporated area of central Oregon lies the town of Millican, which had a population of four in 2011 — most likely the owners of the entire place.

Millican was always a small town, though — the population was 60 in the early part of the 20th century, but had declined to a single person by 1940 when Millican literally became a one-man town.

The town itself is little more than a few abandoned buildings and a 74.54 acre lot. But for those with the imagination who can meet the asking price of $1.499 million — plus a lot more for renovations — you can become this town’s new supreme ruler.

Or Go (Partially) Underground

If the open sea isn’t your fancy, perhaps something more sheltered? Check out this earth-sheltered home in Gamerco, New Mexico.

An earth sheltered (or earthship) home is an eco-friendly house where part of the structure is made up of stuff called rammed earth, which is usually bulldozed earth and stacked car tires squeezed together to make a rather impenetrable wall that also naturally cools and traps heat.

This one-bedroom 1,163-squarefoot earthship is ready to take off for $139,500 — but be sure to bring your checkbook because most mortgage companies don’t like to finance these unusual properties.

Or Wait Out the End of the World in a Missile Silo

If being only partially sheltered isn’t enough, consider going far underground. Really far underground... like 18 stories underground. That’s what you get if you purchase this $3 million Atlas F missile silo in Lewis, New York.

According to the listing, the owner can live in the launch control center and then build out from there into the 18-story main silo area. So it’s not exactly comfy just yet, but for those who want to have the ultimate “Fallout” LARP game or simply want to seal themselves in behind the fully functional blast doors, this place is perfect.

The listing also says this place is the “most electronically advanced property in the country.” Can we get a background check on its next owner?

This property has recently been taken off the market, but it was too good to leave off this list.