The real estate world had its fair share of strange this year: from a Google employee camping in vans to a vegetarian landlord raging over meat-eating tenants.
Before the year ends, here is a look back on the wackiest, and weirdest real estate stories of 2015 that made us scratch our heads, Judy Dutton of Realtor reports.
# 1 A $350,000 shack in San Francisco sells over asking
While house prices in San Francisco are consistently beyond ridiculous, only a few listings prove this quite like the $350,000 shack in the Outer Mission neighborhood. The hovel will undoubtedly be torn down but almost 100 people came to the first day of the open house, ending with six offers, and a closed deal at $408,000 which is way over asking price.
# 2 Google employee evades rent by sleeping in a truck on company's parking lot
"Brandon", a 23-year-old Google employee shared how he was able to save $2,500 a month for rent by sleeping in a truck parked in the company's parking lot. Rent prices in the area can be exorbitant and if he could eat, shower, and workout for free in the Google campus, there's no point paying for a one-bedroom apartment when he won't always be there.
# 3 Vegetarian landlord offers discount to tenants who don't eat meat
Jinesh Varia, a landlord in Bothell, WA offers a $200 discount of the $2,200 monthly rent for tenants who will pledge to take part in his vegetarian lifestyle by vowing to get rid of meat in their diet. For Varia, his policy is not as different as other landlord's no-smoking policy.
#4 No takers for Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch
Bearing its new name Sycamore Valley Ranch, Sotheby failed to find a buyer for Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch when it listed it for $100 million in May. After which, a Chinese auction site Taobao Pamei conducted a one-day auction for the property in October with an opening bid of 500 million yuan, or $78.6 million. Unfortunately, only one bidder signed up who didn't really bother to bid.
