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I was looking through Zillow.com at some suburban tract homes in Fremont, CA. I noticed in the pictures of some houses built in the early 90s (1990-1993) that the ceiling/roof seemed a bit uneven - one side of the sloping roof seemed longer/more slope-y than the other, if that makes any sense.
I'm asking the community to look at the two pictures I attached here - same house (built in 1993).
One picture shows a living room. Look at the ceiling above the big top window - the wall between the ceiling and window on the right side has a smaller measurement/gap than the left. Additionally, the big right wall ceiling stops and does not align properly, jutting out a bit.
The other picture shows the master bedroom. I'm not sure if it's just me, but the ceiling definitely looks uneven on both sides - one slopes much more downward than the other, and IMO, looks awful. In another picture from Zillow (not shown here), the ceiling recessed light on the right (where the shower is) isn't aligned on the same "line" as the recessed light shown in the picture below - it's a bit below.
Do you notice the same things I do? Do you think this is a sign of sloppy workmanship and poor construction on those houses? Those homes sold for ~$1 million, and otherwise look very nice. Some other homes in the neighborhood that had pictures looked to have the same problem, but others didn't, so do you think this was because of the mass-produced nature of those tract houses (supposedly)? All homes in the neighborhood/subdivision look very similar from both the exterior and the interior, have the same floor plans (with slight variations/customizations), but are reversed/flipped, maybe 4-5 different floor plans.
Hard to tell. Most likely it's just an illusion...weird angle and lighting. I mean, no wall or ceiling is perfectly straight.
Really? My parents' house, built in 1983 (custom-built by a small, single builder, not a corporation, and definitely not a tract home) has ceiling/walls that look perfectly straight/symmetrical to me.
Vaulted ceilings can follow the pitch of the roof- one side of the house can have one pitch, the otherside a different pitch. Hence, the reason for the possible difference in the "angles" of the ceilings.
Also, RE's use professional photographers that specialize in interior shots. They use wide-angle lenses of varying degrees- these can also distort the image somewhat, fooling the eye/brain.
So, to answer your question- you're seeing things! It has nothing to do with "workmanship". If it were literally THAT BAD it would have been fixed, repaired, reworked, replaced, massaged, tickled, or otherwise manipulated until correct.
Look at the tiles in the bathroom pic. There's definitely a ton of optical distortion, makes it hard to tell anything about the actual angles. You'd really have to look in person.
Thanks, guys. I definitely am new to the whole house-searching thing. I had no idea RE agents used special cameras that would distort/widen interior images - that's news to me.
The question I have is, how come photos of some houses show interiors that look straight/properly aligned, and some not? Is it camera dependent?
Okay. Just wondering, why do RE agents use those kinds of cameras? Why not just use a normal camera and a normal picture?
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