I’ve never been the “adult Halloween” type, so I assure you I will not be dressing up this weekend as anything other than a boring 37-year-old who drinks Crown Royal alone after his wife falls asleep on Saturday nights.

However, I’ll play along with the Halloween theme and tell you there are a LOT of tricks in this week’s MLS Musings, including some tricky camera-work, and a really tricky bathroom feature that could be tough to navigate without embarrassing oneself.

Oh – and the first photo is downright scary.  Enjoy!

When a Realtor is looking through photos on MLS, they pop up in a grid of three-wide, by seven-deep, and you can scroll down to see each row.

But the “feature photo,” which displays first, in addition to the entirely of the first two rows, usually sets the tone.

If you like what you see, you keep looking.

So I’m incredibly puzzled by the following, which represents the first six photos for this listing:

It scares the hell out of me.

It looks like crime scene photos!

Like a murder was committed in this condo, and the police have photos of the outside (at night, dark, like the view from whatever white cube-van did the “hit” that night), then four photos of the lobby, and finally, the hallway leading to the apartment!

Oh no!

Somebody got whacked!

Seriously, what the hell was the listing agent thinking?

And if this isn’t an homage to crime scene photos, and the agent was actually thinking, “I bet prospective agents and buyers would like to see the common areas,” then why not one photo of the lobby?  Why four?

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I don’t understand this one.

What’s with the shirts?

Is that a storefront on Bloor?

If it is, then am I so completely out of touch, and/or old, and or cheap, that I’m not at all attracted to the idea of being close to some bullshit designer-label that people purchase via credit card debt?

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Here’s a listing agent that didn’t quite take advantage of the twenty photos we have at our disposal, and instead, chose to show only four.

No feature photo of the building, of course.  Who cares – when you’ve got two photos of 1/4 of an empty room?

But what are those other photos?  The third and fourth?

Oh, why, those are photos of the brochure for the condo!

Look:

Cool.

I’m sold.

Who can help me draft the offer?

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Have you ever been so drunk that you peed in the sink?

Maybe it’s an honest mistake.  Or maybe you’re “that guy” in the nightclub washroom that doesn’t want to wait in line, and thinks he’s funny.

But if ever you had a 50/50 shot of winning or losing the classic children’s guessing game, “Sink or Urinal?” I think it would be for this………apparatus, here:

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So many thoughts run through my mind with this next photo:

1) Is alcohol still flammable, or did the world change while I was asleep?
2) Isn’t this highly illegal on a condo balcony?
3) Isn’t that an Amana fridge in the background?  The cheapest stainless steel appliances on the market!
4) Did the owners give the photographer a set of keys and a lighter, and book the photo shoot for 8pm?
5) Still illegal……right?

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I hate when agents stretch photos.

It bothers me not only because it’s misleading, but also because people aren’t stupid.

It’s an insult to the buyers’ intelligence.

Look at this dining room, with the long angle that shows the kitchen in the background:

Now look at what this moron did for the straight-on, dining shot:

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Another example, and amazingly, in an even more elegant home, where you’d think the presentation, and representation, would both be top-notch.

Here’s the long shot:

And here’s the close-up:

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Dining room table for two?

Or arm-wrestling, thumb-war, Go-Fish table for two opponents?

That literally is a school table desk for one person.

I think the stager mixed up “inches” and “centimeters” during the walk-through…

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And last, but certainly not least, my favourite in quite a while.

If you thought “Urinal or Sink?” was a great game – not to mention a tough one, then I give you the new game….

……”Kitchen or Bedroom?”