What do you look for in a home? A fancy kitchen with a perfect glistening white island? A backyard for your sweet dog to run around in? What about a lovable farm animal just hanging out outside?
TikTok account @housinghorrors shared a house on the market for £1,500,000 that had a hilarious surprise waiting for anyone who was searching for a new space and scrolled through the photos. There is an impressive number of bedrooms (four!) and three bathrooms (say goodbye to fighting with your partner/roommate/kids to get ready in the morning). But… there’s something else: A donkey.
As the man behind the @housinghorrors account explained, “the estate agents had WAY too much fun taking photos of this house.” First, you see the house, which has a brown exterior and cozy country vibes. Nothing terrible there. Then there’s a field where a donkey is just chilling. As the realtor said, “When I first saw this photo, I was absolutely lost for words.” Wait… there are TWO donkeys! This is as memorable as someone getting a house because of TikTok… or discovering rugs in their backyard.
Everyone had pretty much the same reaction: They’re not fans of this uniquely ugly house… but they would love to have a cute animal in their side yard. As someone wrote, “I’d buy it for the donkey.” People couldn’t help but roast the house while enjoying the donkey. One user commented, “I don’t care that it’s overpriced, I’m sold just on the donkeys.” Another compared it to “the beginner house you build in sims.” Several others wondered if this isn’t so much an actual home as a wooden shed.
I live in Toronto where real estate is basically unaffordable for even the wealthiest, so I don’t get sticker stock on houses anymore. For instance, a place in my neighborhood has been on the market since June and it’s priced at $3.5 million. If there was a donkey in the front yard, maybe it would have new owners by now! Well, even I can admit this particular house is pretty terrible, between the tiny kitchen and the blue carpet in one of the bedrooms. However, I agree with @housinghorrors that this is a “great marketing tactic.” Who doesn’t want to schedule a viewing so they can see the donkeys in person?
Of course, this TikTok leads me to ask, what is it like to have a donkey on your property? Thanks to the blog Helpful Horse Hints, they’re awesome for farm owners since they’re good at being trained and are intelligent. They also eat hay, aren’t likely to ruin your fence, and make sure that enemies like coyotes don’t come near the other animals.
But if you wanted to have a donkey as a pet, that might not be legal where you live, no matter how cute they are. Donkeys are on the list of animals that you can’t keep as pets in Toronto along with elephants (how would that work?), tigers, kangaroos, and bats (no thanks). Although New Yorkers can have certain pets such as honeybees, some reptiles, horses, and rabbits, lions, monkeys, and roosters are illegal. Since animals that would typically reside on farms can’t be pets in NYC, donkeys seem like they would fall into that category as well.
So, while a donkey might get people in for showings, that still might not get people to purchase a property that has blue carpet and not much else of note. But it’s at least fun to see from afar.