It’s not the first time a unique listing has gone viral and filled our inboxes since we started doing the Wednesday WTF, but this week’s 50 Shades of Real Estate arrived and went viral just in time for Valentine’s Day.
I mean, we’ve had half-nekkid people, a home with an insane amount of statues, and even drinking from a Pringles can, but this week’s listing really whipped everyone into a frenzy. I mean, it really flogged my inbox. I had to start a brand spanking new folder to hold all the emails. I’ll be honest, I felt a little tied down, a little chained by the responses.
I’m going to keep doing this until you give me the safe word.
Roughly 30 different people sent me this listing in Maple Glen, Pennsylvania, which is a really lovely Colonial that’s clearly been updated and well-maintained. It has five bedrooms, three bathrooms, and more than 5,000 square feet of space, making it an ideal home for a family.
Or, you know, a sex dungeon Airbnb, or, uh, a “private adult sexual oasis.”
Listen, we’re not prudes here—what happens between two (or, uh, more) consenting adults is entirely their thing.
But we have to wonder, once again: Does going viral equal home sales?
Let’s look at our two previous examples: the half-nekkid people listing in Conroe. Still on the market. The Lionsgate Estate with all the statues? Also still on the market.
Notoriety might increase the looky-loos and the traffic, but it doesn’t mean the house is going to sell, clearly. So as a Realtor, what are you to do?
“I felt that I had to put the pictures in the way it was so someone would not walk in and be surprised,” the Realtor said in an interview. “[A buyer] may like it or they may decide to take it out. It’s only furniture.”
But the listing, once viral, also disturbed neighbors, who apparently were unaware that their neighbors a) had a sex dungeon and b) were renting it out on Airbnb.
And it also seems like the sellers kind of wanted the photos in the listing, too, perhaps. And they’re really charming, and explain how they came about the idea to create a specialty Airbnb.
The beautiful photography was all for naught, anyway, since the offending photos were pulled from the listing.
But we have to wonder: couldn’t the Realtor (since she is only allowing showings with qualified buyers accompanied by a Realtor) have left a note in the MLS itself, alerting fellow agents to the home’s, uh, special characteristics?
So Realtors, let us know—would you have posted the photos? Also, as a potential buyer, would a Saint Andrew’s Cross and a closet full of floggers turn you off a beautiful home?
We’ve included the now-deleted photos below because, hello, do you know me? Of course, I snagged them before they were deleted.
