When Matt and Anna Jones bought a new house in Brick, New Jersey, they had no idea that their property will come with a guest house. But when they took a better look, they couldn’t believe how it looked. They ended up selling it because too many people were asking about it!
What made this guest house so special and did the couple find the right owner? Let’s check out this couple’s one of a kind story.
Anyone that has been in the market to purchase a new house knows that you have to pay attention to every detail before deciding which house is the better choice.
Well, Matt and Anna Jones weren’t very thorough with the inspection!
What Matt and Anna didn’t know was that when they had purchased their house, they actually got one more for free!
It was a small ranch-style brick cottage, but what they found inside was even more incredible…
You could say that the couple discovered a small house, but they had no idea how it looked one the inside. It could have had a lower floor and be just a regular house.
They got the keys to the brick house and opened the door…
As soon as they opened the door, it was clear that the brick cottage was very special. Standing at less than four feet height, this house was decorated with furniture.
Get ready to have a tour of the house!
Everywhere they looked around, from tables to chair, shower and fireplace, they were all small! It was as if the house had been built for children.
However, some people from the town had another story about this house…
Some locals said that this tiny house belonged to little people that worked at a circus close to the city. Others said that the house was still a home to a family of dwarves.
Soon enough, Anna learned the truth about its origin.
Anna learned that the cottage had been built in the 1960s by the original owners. It was a playhouse for their grandchildren.
While now, 60 years later, the interior is a bit creepy, we’re sure kids would love to have their own playhouse. So what did the Jones’s do about this extra house?
The couple decided to take care of the tiny house and they decorated it for holidays like Halloween and Christmas.
Eventually, the cottage became a New Jersey landmark, and it started drawing tourists!
Anna was happy to welcome any tourist that stopped by their house to take a photo in front of the small doorway.
But unfortunately, Hurricane Sandy left destruction behind and this wasn’t the only issue the owners had with the house…
Anna and Matt ended up discovering that the cottage was vandalized, and as years passed, thieves passed by to steal some of the furniture and decorations.
Anna recalls some of the unfortunate events.
“Unfortunately, people come and steal from it.
We had all these little wooden flowers in the window, and during the summer when we had the little windows open, people would stick their hands right in and I kept noticing flowers missing,” said Anna in an interview with the media.
It’s unbelievable to hear that thieves even stole the front door of the house. This is why she decided to sell it.
Anna and Matt are looking for an “eccentric person that has nothing better to do with their money,” and they want to buy the tiny house.
Maybe, after they sell it, the house would be better taken care of. Still, Anna was amused by all the rumors about their tiny house.
There was one time when her son went to the dentist’s office.
“My son was just at a dentist’s office the other day up in Shrewsbury and when he told the hygienist that he was from Brick she said she had friends that just moved here and that they lived in a neighborhood where there were midgets, because they saw this little house,” explained the homeowners.
But there’s more to this story!
“You see, people don’t think it’s my house, because it’s on its own lot.
So they just think it’s a separate entity,” explained Anna, knowing that this is one of the reasons the house was vandalized and broken into so many times.
When asked whether it’s better to keep the house for the children when they grow up and want to play, Anna said that this was the initial plan.
However, there are always problems, most of them involving all the unwelcomed guests…
“I didn’t think it was safe for them because I never knew what was in there from the night before,” explained Anna, recalling the many times police came after neighbors called about parties being held in that cottage without her even knowing about it!
You would think that a tiny house that looks tended would make unwanted visitors more careful about the things around them and not break anything. However, this is not the case, said Anna: “Someone threw a Jack Daniels bottle through the front window.
That costs $400 every time that gets broken and needs to be replaced.”
“Most of the people that come have all good intentions––they want to take a picture, and I don’t have a problem with that,” explained Anna.
But the ones that steal or are destructive are “the ones that ruin it for the ones that are honest.”
This is why the Jones’s had enough and decided to sell the small cottage. “I can’t afford to keep it up,” said Anna to reporters.
“When Sandy hit this was all under water. We had $78,000 of damage in our house.” So here’s her offer to that eccentric buyer…
So if you’re rich and have nothing to do with your fortune, then buy this tiny house! “I can’t subdivide the lot, so if somebody wanted to buy this, they’d have to excavate it and pick it up and take it.
So if some eccentric person has nothing better to do with their money…”
Besides the damages done to their house, the smaller house was also in a rough condition and hasn’t been fixed. The lagoon that is across the street rose and filled the playhouse.
The furniture, the walls, the carpeted floors are now in a terrible shape. Still, the couple hasn’t given up on the house completely.
The family is still caring for the house as much as they can. Anna said: “We’ve scaled down a lot, we used to do so much more, but they’d steal it, they’d just take it.
It’s sad, because they don’t respect our property.”
Anna didn’t list the house with realtors, but she did post the sale on Facebook. Some people even contacted to ask her about it.
So what is her price? Anna said that she wasn’t sure, but she decided to list it on an auction site…
“I listed it on one of those garage sale auction sites and set the starting bid at $10,000.
But people have to understand that to excavate it and move it is not going to be cheap,” said Anna, explaining that an expert has to learn how much those extra expenses will cost the future owner.
If the cottage does sell, Anna said she won’t miss it, especially since Hurricane Sandy had devastated the interior. “I haven’t been in there in a while because Hurricane Sandy went in there for me, so it was filled with water.
Now I don’t go in there…too many bugs.”
We have to admit we’ve never heard of such a house before.
And while Anna won’t exactly miss the house due to the many issues she has had, we think she’s proud of being the owner of this strange New Jersey landmark.