@Data10 no pictures of the living area…only the bomb shelter portion of the home. Betting that the house is not finished elsewhere.
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I think that is one of those fake houses they use to disguise telecom equipment.
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Zero bedrooms. One bath (well, that is a must). There is no living space in that “house.” It is a storage facility disguised as a house. In my neck of the woods, this would not qualify to be advertised as a home. Need a bedroom with a closet for that! 
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Speaking of telecom equipment… we once entertained an idea of building a house. Found what looked like a perfect lot with a builder “attached” to it and willing to build custom. Well… there was a cell tower in the corner of that very large lot. That would have not deterred us from going forward, but the builder got the land from the original seller on the condition that the rent paid by the cell tower owner went to the original seller! Nice… needless to say, we decided that we did not want to be stuck with the tower and no compensation for its presence.
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Apparently AT&T built the home to be a potential network site that could service the Dallas area, which AT&T says was never used. They seem to have made the facility look like a home from the outside, although it clearly stands out from neighbors. This partially relates to choosing to build in an inexpensive older neighborhood, with much smaller neighboring homes. It looks there there is something similar going on in a property across the street that is not for sale. AT&T sold the facility/home in 2011. At the time of a previous of previous sale, it was described as:
"(1) 250 KW Generator (2) 50 Ton Air Cooled Chillers (2) Air Handler Units 1200 AMP Breaker-Russ Electric Switchgear Addressable warning fire detection system Vesda Smoke Detection (2) #2 Low Sulfur Diesel Fuel Storage Tanks with with total capacity of 2,500 gallons… "
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Very odd.
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UPDATE: the house is still for sale (others are going fast) and at the same price. But I looked at the pictures posted and it looks as if some walls have been painted and the '90’s heavy drapes and furniture are gone. If I remember correctly, it looks like there is a new Realtor, too.
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Damn – I could have done that, only better!
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Not a house we looked at, but the house DH grew up in. His parents built the home - they called it a California ranch, kind of MCM. The oddities:
- the driveway from the road went around to the back of the house, where the front door was. (Or is that a back door??) So the entire area by the “front” door was a huge area of blacktop. Just odd.
- carpet in the entire kitchen, yuck!
- carpet in the bathrooms, not throw rugs, but wall-to-wall carpet, another yuck!
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Our first house together (rented) had carpet in the master bath and I never thought twice about it. Now I’m appalled, looking back!
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We live in a very hot market (who doesn’t, right?) - houses within 5 miles of downtown selling before they’re even listed. After losing out on several houses, my daughter & her fiance found a house in a very desirable neighborhood but it definitely needed a ton of work (the house stunk like the urine of 1,000 cats). No problem because my husband owns a construction company. They closed on it virtually, during the shutdown, and went to work on it.
They knew about the racoons living in the attic, and as they removed the ceiling and insulation all of the racoon poo came down around them. The floors all had to be taken up because of years of cat urine, the smell had seeped into the drywall, so all of that had to be removed, along with the insulation - down to the outer brick walls. The HVAC ducts had mold growing out of them. But the very worst of it was when they were removing the drywall - waterfalls of roaches would rain out from the walls & insulation! It was straight out of Amityville Horror!
At one point, my husband remarked that he just should have taken the whole thing down and started again, but they plowed through it and ended up with one of the most remarkable transformations I’ve ever seen. With the exception of outer brick frame of the house, EVERYTHING else is brand new (and it smells new & wonderful!)
It’s amazing to me how people can live in that kind of environment. The previous owners were clean, well-dressed people. I don’t know how they put up with the urine smell!
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Wow. But glad they got the house! It could have gone to a flipper.
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They could’ve done really well flipping it, but then they would have had to move in with us!
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I had lunch with a friend last week, having not seen her in quite some time. She reported buying a house (technically a duplex) before even seeing it, because she knew the neighborhood and had been outbid on a couple of others already. She said once she got it she had to spend 20-25K to make it OK, but it is crazy out there.
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People often get used to a smell and then no longer notice it. Cat urine is one that I don’t know that I could ever get THAT acclimated to, but everyone is different.
Glad the house turned out well, but it does seem like they could have just torn the thing down and built from scratch.
Some of the events you described would scar me for life!
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The house still hasn’t sold…Other houses are in my area are going under contract in 2-3 days and this one is unsold after 2 months! The price has not budged either. Wonder if there is something else going on.
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Maybe it’s the original roof?
Lots that could be going on behind the scenes! There could be something fishy with the chain of title or a boundary dispute or something like that. Or the sellers have an unreasonable clause that they want any buyer to accept. We once bid on a house that turned out to be owned by a trust, and all trustees (siblings) needed to review the offer and agree… one was out of town, so it could have taken close to a month! No go for us. Our offer expired in 24 hours.
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Our house hunt was exceptionally ugly. After firing 3 realtors, we decided to build a new house, because the house hunt was going nowhere. That went fine until the Texas El Nino rain came along and stalled everything for weeks/months. At that point we had a moment of sanity and decided to remodel instead.
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My home is my castle… literally. 
Check out the 
!! 
https://www.redfin.com/WA/Monroe/21632-High-Rock-Rd-98272/home/2613642
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