A couple searching for a place to live were struggling to find an apartment when they discovered what looked like an absolute dream home on the market for a bargain price.
Sydney Lima and boyfriend Kieran Walsh were looking for a place to live in Jersey City, New Jersey, when they were just about to give up hope of ever finding an apartment for them.
That's when they found what looked like a lovely three-storey house on sale for even cheaper than some of the apartments they'd been considering.
Advert
It seemed like a no-brainer to snap up the incredibly cheap house before someone else decided to do the same and rob them of what looked like a golden opportunity.
Taking the sensible option, the couple decided to book a viewing and take a closer look at exactly what it was they were going to buy.
Then they discovered the reason why the place was so cheap after all as they could barely even get inside to have a look around.
Sydney explained that when they got to the house they were 'mind-boggled' to discover that the previous occupant must have been a hoarder and the place was still full of their belongings.
Advert
She said: "You couldn't get inside the door, that's how much stuff there was, which is wild. When we finally got in, I was just mind-boggled. I've never experienced anything like it.
"I feel like I was in the person's brain. There was so much stuff to excess, and you couldn't walk without tripping. There was stuff everywhere but at the same time it was so organised, it was so amazing.
"My first thought was, 'holy crap, this is organised chaos'. Everything was covered, even the stairs, you couldn't walk on the stairs. There wasn't an inch of the house that wasn't full."
The house was packed to the rafters with books, clothes, records, unopened letters and all sorts of other things you pick up over the course of a life, and much of the hoarder's stash was a mixture of bibles and porn.
Advert
Sydney explained that 'the biggest thing that we found in the house was books' as there 'wasn't a part of the house where books weren't stacked up', but she and Kieran soon realised that much of the reading material piled high was either religious or raunchy.
The couple also found what seemed like 'every piece of mail he ever got in his whole life' and most of it hadn't been opened.
Undeterred by the huge amount of belongings left behind by the house's previous occupant, the couple went ahead and bought the place and got cracking with excavating their new home.
A year on and about 20 trips to a local bookshop later they've transformed their home into a lovely place to live, though they've kept a few souvenirs including some of the old records and Playboy magazines as a reminder of what the house used to be like.
Joe Harker