The house was on Carlaw, south of Queen. I wasn't familiar with the immediate area — I just thought it might be a good convenient location. That area turned out to be very seedy looking.

Crossing at the intersection to get there my realtor "Val" and I were hit (twice! once on each crossing!) by a horrible stench from the sewers. Val tells me that the closer you get to Ontario lake, the worse it gets. The Beaches stink to high heaven in summer despite its million-dollar properties.

The house looked like a dive from the outside, frankly. The basement apartment door was under the front porch, so there was a kind of drawbridge arrangement on the front porch — you lifted up two panels in order to have headway to get down the stairs. This made the front porch alarming to walk across as it gave with one's every step. I commented, "This is not beginning well," but we braved this and went in.

I do believe this house might have been nice when it was built. It had 12-foot ceilings, and elegant little extras like 12" baseboards, fancy trim around the doors and staircase, and a lovely stained glass panel in one of the bedroom door transoms. However, all the trim was buried under thick coats of badly applied paint. And somewhere along the way someone had added a HORRIBLE addition to the back of the house.

The kitchen needed a complete renovation — dreadful cupboards (too high to be of use, and unfinished inside), dreadful floor (black tiles with multi-coloured sparkles, like it was salvaged from some seventies-era disco), very poor planning, etc.

The backyard was TINY — to the point at which it could be said there wasn't one. Basically there was a very small deck (maybe 8' deep and 16' feet wide), half of which belonged to the house next door. The two halves were separated by what I can only describe as a moat — a little channel of scummy black water that ran down the centre. Val observed that this moat was a perfect breeding ground for West Nile. All I could think was that someone must have had delusions of living in a castle, what with the moat out back and the drawbridge out front.

Upstairs there were three bedrooms (with very shallow closets — one could not have hung an ordinary hanger in them) and a bathroom that needed a lot of work.

One of the bedrooms had a wood burning stove that wasn't hooked up to anything and what was described in the listing as a "walkout". I had assumed this meant there was a balcony. Oh silly, trusting me. It would be more accurate to describe it as a "fallout" as it was a pair of sliding glass doors that led to nothing except a headlong plunge into the aforementioned moat.

Then we went up to the loft. The stairs and loft were carpeted with brand new, excellent quality carpet, but unfortunately it was in a retina-burning shade of fuschia. The stairs to the loft were so steep as to be ladder-like. There was no railing, and I held onto the upper steps for balance while climbing. The loft had a sloping ceiling (which was painted cobalt blue with silver stars!) that made it unusable for anything but storage. I had seen in the pictures that it sloped, but thought it only sloped on the one side. Also, it was unpleasantly warm in the attic. In April. I could only imagine what it would be like in July.

Vall and I backed down the stairs very cautiously, warning each other to be careful. Then we exited the house and were going to see the basement, but when trying to pull up the porch panels we found they simply slammed back down again. I think they must have been built that way to allow for furniture to be taken in and out, and for everyday comings and goings the tenant would find it easier just to duck. Provided you could find a decent tenant who would put up with the situation.

However, poor Val was looking quite terrified underneath her professional "whither my client goest, I shall goest" veneer. (All through our exploration of the house she'd been giving me an anxious, "you're not seriously considering buying this place, are you?" sort of look.)

I decided to cut her some slack and say there was no need for me to see the basement. I already knew I wouldn't take the house. I'd have to put a huge amount of work and money into it to fix the run down front half and the jerry-built back half, and then all I'd have would be an okay house in a dreadful area. She looked immensely relieved to hear this, and said, "This place scares the shit out of me."

This wasn't even the worst house I've seen. And the house search continues....

You should write a book. About anything. I would buy it.

Good luck with the house hunting...it's hard, I know.

Yikes. If it was on the fringe of seedy it might be worth considering but it sounds pretty scary regardless. Something will turn up - just keep listening to your guts.