Ten Weird Real Estate Facts You Probably Never Knew!

1. A man started with one red paper clip and traded his way to a home.
Kyle MacDonald made his first trade — one red paperclip for a fish-shaped pen — in July of 2005. Less than a year and several trades later, he finally traded a film role for a two-story farmhouse in Saskatchewan. Who knew that bartering could be so lucrative?

2. Swedes and Danes use dead bodies to heat their homes.
It’s an idea that makes a lot of sense when you think it through. Crematoriums heat up to 2,000 degrees, which can be a lot of energy going to waste — until someone got the bright idea to pump that heat into local energy companies, where it’s used to warm homes.
 
3. In parts of Germany and Poland, when a couple marries, guests break a whole lot of porcelain.
And leave it to the couple to clean up. They do this right in front of the bride’s home, usually the night before the wedding. It’s called “Polterabend” and it’s meant to symbolize the struggles the new couple will face as they build a home together, with an emphasis on working together through those struggles.
If you’re invited to participate, make sure you break only porcelain (old toilets welcome) and not glass, which stands for happiness, and therefore should never be broken.
 
4. Brass doorknobs disinfect themselves.
It’s called the oligodynamic effect: The ions in the metal have a toxic effect on spores, fungi, viruses, and other germs — eliminating the nasties within eight hours.
 
5. The original housewarming party was — literally — a housewarming.
Guests brought firewood as gifts and lit fires in all the fireplaces in the home. Obviously this warmed up the place for the family, but it was also believed to ward off evil spirits. Uninhabited homes were thought to attract roaming ghosts, so a new home would have to be rid of that bad energy before it could become a happy abode.

6. In Scotland, homeowners paint their front door red when they pay off their mortgage.
Throughout history, a red front door has symbolized many things – the ancient Hebrews believed it would protect firstborn children from the angel of death; in the early days of America, it meant the home was a safe place for travelers to stop for the night. And according to feng shui, a red front door invites positive energy into a home.

7. According to an old superstition, if a bird flies into a home, death is soon to follow.
Long before “put a bird on it” became hipster decor, birds were thought to symbolize imminent death for the home’s occupants. People have long connected birds to the spirit world, and it’s evident in our culture — just think of Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “The Raven” and Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds.”
 
8. There’s a house that levitates.
A Japanese company has developed a residential earthquake-proofing system that raises a house off of its foundation as far as 3 centimeters using just air pressure.
When an earthquake hits, compressors activate, forcing an immense amount of air under the home. The house will levitate there until the earthquake ends, then be placed gently back on the foundation.
 
9. The people of Easter Island have a word, “tingo,” which literally means “to take objects one desires from the house of a friend by gradually borrowing all of them until there’s nothing left.”
  I suspect they may not stay friends for long!

10. You can buy a missile silo.
The most popular use is to turn the old silo into a home. It might be an ugly home, but a little nonconformity never hurt anyone.