Family Moves into Hotel Suite Permanently to Save Money

A Chinese family has sparked a debate on social media after moving into a luxury hotel suite permanently because it’s cheaper and more convenient than renting or owning a home.

The family of eight has been living in a luxury hotel in Nanyang, China’s Henan Province, for 229 days and has no plans to move out anytime soon. After getting a special rate (1,000 yuan or $140 per day) for a luxury suite with two bedrooms and a large living room based on the length of their stay, the family now plans to remain in the hotel indefinitely. Because the daily price of the suite also includes electricity, heating, water, and parking, the unnamed family claims that they actually save money by living in a hotel and their life is much more comfortable.

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These Grain Silos Are Actually a Cozy Steel Home in the Middle of Nowhere

This $1.6 million unique property in rural Washington doesn’t look like much from the outside, but its unassuming exterior conceals a stylish and cozy interior.

Most people would call you crazy for even considering spending over one and a half million dollars on four steel grain silos in Odessa, Washington, but these are not your average grain bins. As you can see in the pictures below, three of the four metallic silos are connected, which is unusual for this kind of structure, but that’s only because they make up a modern and spacious living space. The current occupant, a local hunter, reportedly spent $100,000 on the four old silos and then another $500,000 to convert them into this rather impressive summer home, which comes complete with a shooting range and freeze-proof pond.

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Famous Apartment Building Is Located in the Middle of a Busy Overpass

‘Number 28 on Yongxing Jie’ is an unusual attraction in Guangzhou, China which consists of an eight-storey apartment building surrounded by a busy overpass.

The story of ‘Number 28 on Yongxing Jie’ can be traced back to the year 2008, when a number of buildings in the Haizhu District of Guangzhou were scheduled for demolition in order to make room for a new road. While most of the residents reached an agreement with developers and decided to sell their homes and relocate, three residents of a now-famous yellow apartment building drove a harder bargain, refusing to abandon their homes unless their demands were met. In the end, developers decided to abandon negotiations and instead build an overpass around the building. Today, the story of the ‘encircled’ building is known as Guangzhou’s most tenacious holdout against infrastructure developers.

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Landlord Driven Nuts by Tenant Who Underpays Rent by 1 Cent Per Week

An Australian landlord took to a Facebook group to vent his frustration with a tenant who deliberately underpays his rent by one cent every week.

The anonymous homeowner wrote on a landlord Facebook group asking his peers for advice on how to handle a cheeky tenant who reportedly underpays the rent by 1 cent every week. Apparently, the rent was set at AU$ 1,200 per week, but the person living in the house only pays AU$ 1,199.99. With 52 weeks in a year, it hardly seems like a massive loss for the tenant, but they claim to be losing their mind over the situation and are asking for advice in order to keep their sanity. Meanwhile, the tenant seems to think that they are well within their rights with the 1-cent weekly deduction.

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Family Refuse $33 Million Offer to Sell ‘Nail House’ to Property Developers

A family in Sidney, Australia is being praised for resisting the urge to sell their property to developers who have bought all the land around it, despite being offered tens of millions of dollars for it.

The Zammit family home has become one of the most famous properties in Sydney both because of the way it stands out among the dozens of cookie-cutter homes surrounding it and the resilience of its owners. While every one of their old neighbors agreed to sell their land to housing developers, the Zammits have refused every offer so far, and have no plans of moving away anytime soon. The Australian family has been praised for refusing to sell out and continuing to live on their five acres of land despite the financial temptation and pressure from developers.

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Jakarta’s Rooftop Suburb Is Built Atop a Giant Shopping Mall

The Indonesian city of Jakarta is home to one of the most unusual residential projects in the world – a suburb located atop a 10-storey shopping mall.

Over the past 20 years, Jakarta has become one of the world’s most crowded megacities. With over 10 million residents in its metropolitan area alone and up to three times that in the greater Jakarta area, the city is quickly running out of land to build on. While other crowded capitals, like Tokyo, are expanding vertically, Jakarta is expanding horizontally, with most residents preferring low-rise houses instead of apartments. With real-estate in increasingly short supply, developers have been forced to think outside the box, and that’s how urban oddities like Cosmo Park came to exist…

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Family Has Been Living in the Middle of a Roundabout for Over 40 Years

A Welsh family has been living in the middle of a roundabout for over four decades, after refusing to leave as the circular road was built around them.

In 1960, when David John and Eirian Howatson moved into their bungalow in Denbighshire, Wales the area was just a regular neighborhood and things were pretty normal for about two decades, until authorities came knocking and let them know that their property was right where a new roundabout was to be built. The Howatsons refused to move away, so the roundabout was built around their home, and the family has been living there ever since.

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The Broken Wheel – The Netherlands’ Unique Waterside Suburb

Het Brekkense Wiel, Dutch for “The Broken Wheel”, is a unique waterside residential area and tourist attraction in the Netherlands.

Located between the Frisian Lakes and IJsselmeer, the largest lake in the Netherlands, the aptly-named Het Brekkense Wiel is a suburb made up of several properties on small plots of land resembling broken wheels and surrounded by water. Every building consists of several homes, each accessible both by car and by both, which makes this place very popular with water sports enthusiasts. Because of its unique layout and visually-impressive design – especially when seen from above – Het Brekkense Wiel is often considered an example of ingenious waterside urban planning.

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Japanese Company Invents Flood-Proof Floating Houses

Japanese housing developer Ichijo Komuten recently unveiled a “flood-resistant house” that can not only remain waterproof during floods, but also float off the ground.

Whether you believe in climate change or not, the loss of housing due to floods is an undeniable issue all over the world, and while engineers and architects have been trying to find solutions, few have actually proven effective. Now, a record-setting Japanese housing developer claims to have come up with an answer to keep people’s homes from getting flooded as well as swept away by floods. Their new “flood-resistant house” was recently featured on a popular Japanese TV show and it has been getting a lot of attention online ever since.

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Real-Estate Company Specializes in Haunted and Other “Stigmatized” Properties

While most real-estate firms try their best to conceal potentially disturbing details about the properties they are trying to sell or lease, one Japanese company puts these details front and center, focusing on the advantages haunted or spooky houses have.

Jikko buken, the Japanese term for “accident properties” are a controversial aspect of Japanese culture. The term describes generally undesirable homes, be it because of their proximity to cemeteries or crematoriums, or because of disturbing events that took place in them, from suicide, to accidental deaths or even murder. Because Japanese law states that any potential buyer or renter needs to be notified about any such details, the term “accident property” is generally used. But while most real-estate companies avoid giving details about the “accidents” in their listing, Jobutsu Estate, aka Buddhahood Real Estate, has built its business model around giving potential clients as many disturbing details as necessary.

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Bathroom With a Bed Advertised as ‘Micro-Studio’ for $550 a Month

A listing for a “newly-renovated micro studio” in Vancouver that turned out to be a tiny bathroom with a bed crammed in it was recently slammed online.

Described as “ideal” for a single person looking to live in downtown Vancouver at an affordable rate, and who “does not need much space”, the 160-square-foot (15 sq. meters) suite was actually a bathroom in which the bed was literally just a couple of steps from the toilet bowl. That sort of makes its advertised features, like the brand-new porcelain flooring, granite finishing, and a large window seem somewhat unimpressive. Not to mention that the rent of this unusual “living space” was set at a whopping C$680 ($550).

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This Quaint Vermont House Comes With Its Own Seven-Cell Jail

If you’re in the market for a unique kind of house, this $149,000 Vermont property may spark your interest. It doesn’t look like anything special from the outside, but it actually comes with its own creepy jail.

Located in Guidhall, a small Vermont town, this 2,190-square-foot white and green home has been listed on online real-estate marketplace Realtor for two months, with an asking price of $149,000. It has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, wood floors and high ceilings, a nice backyard, as well as its own adjacent seven-cell jail. That’s right, an actual jail, the kind where people used to be locked-up in up until a few decades ago. This used to be the town jailer’s home, and even though the property has changed hands several times since then, the jail has remained intact.

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Cousins Turn Old Water Tower They Used to Play In as Kids Into Cozy Family Home

Two cousins from the Dutch town of Nieuw-Lekkerland recently received an award for turning an old water tower into a modern and stylish home for their respective families.

Sven and Lennart de Jong grew up in a house right next to the old water tower of Nieuw-Lekkerland, and used to paly in it as kids, so in 2011, when they heard it was being put up for auction, they decided to place a bid. The approximately 200,000 euros they bid proved to be enough and the two became the owners of an abandoned building from 1915. Sven and Lennart knew that they had their work cut out, but they dreamt of making the water tower their home in a decade’s time, and managed to pull it off. For their achievement, the two received the 2020 Water Tower Award, a distinction for the best conversion of a historic water tower.

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Origami Housing – Foldable Tiny House Can Be Moved and Installed in Just 3 Hours

If you’ve always dreamed of packing up your house and moving around whenever you like, this foldable tiny house that comes with plumbing and electrical wiring pre-installed is going to seem mighty interesting.

Latvian startup Brette Haus only started producing its ingenious foldable houses last December, but its innovative design and technology has already made quite an impression both on the general public and housing experts. Using cross-laminated timber as the main construction material, Brette Haus can build a whole house in 8 weeks, and then install it anywhere in 3-4 hours. Because it doesn’t require a permanent foundation, the foldable house can be moved at any time, and has minimum impact on the land it’s set up on.

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Waterbuurt – Amsterdam’s Floating Neighborhood

Waterbuurt (Dutch for “water quarter”) is a state of the art residential development in Amsterdam, which consists of nearly 100 individual floating homes moored on Lake Eimer.

The floating homes Ijburg district are no ordinary houseboats, but real floating houses. They float adjacent to jetties and are moored to steel pilons, so they only move vertically with the changing tide. Designed by Dutch architect Marlies Rohmer, the houses have a “no-nonsense, basic design” but are comfortable at the same time. They were built at a shipyard about 65 km north of Lake Eimer and then transported through a network of canals. Although the Waterbuurt is still a work in progress, some of the houses are already inhabited.

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