“Why Zillow Is Never Adding a Comment Section” — $400K Zillow Listing for House Fell Into River Roasted

The housing market in the United States is so bad right not it appears that someone thinks they can get $400,000 for a house in Juneau, Alaska that ended up falling into a lake.

Either that or there is someone with access to a Zillow account who seriously underestimated the blowback they would receive for posting a home that is clearly in not habitable condition.

And that's not an opinion, either, the house listed by a TikToker named Sierra (@sierrakatherinee) was officially "condemned" according to the screenshots of the Zillow listing she provides in a viral video she posted to the popular social media platform.

Thousands of commenters seemed just as stunned as Sierra was that this home ended up on Zillow, with one person writing that it's because of listings like this that the application will never allow a comments section.

"Let's just get right into it one bedroom, one bathroom, $400,000," Sierra says as she begins her video showing photos from a Zillow listing in her clip.

"And I'm just sitting looking at this house I'm like, how is it one? Only one bedroom? And only one bathroom?" she asks, commenting on the size of the home and it's pricing.

"And two, if it's just one bedroom and one bathroom why do you want $400,000 from me? So let's go take a look at the front of the house, okay? And I'm looking like how do you have more garages than you have bedrooms? I'm really not understanding also that's hella steps, that's hella steps," she remarks, commenting on the exterior of the home after her video transitions to pictures of the home that were taken from the outside.

Sierra continues to question the layout of the home, stating that it seems as if there are things that just don't add up. "So let's take a look."

S--- gets serious right from the get go: the next photos she shows after welcoming viewers to take a further "look" with her reveals a portion of the home that's absolutely decimated.

"The whole back of the motherf---- house is gone. The whole back of the house is gone!" she says. The image looks like something out of an action movie: a Kaiju appears to have stepped on the Alaska home, removing half of the structure in one fell stomp.

"From this angle you would never know," she says, referring back to the previous picture of the front of the house she showed prior. "You would never know! Y'all, gone! Gone! By the wayside, washed away, gone! And just for good measure there is a river," she says, showing off another photo in the Zillow listing which appears to show an embankment with what looks like a flowing body of water situated right behind the house.

Sierra goes on, "I'm assuming this is a river, just wooshing by the back of your house which probably caused that collapse. And then they proceed to show you the inside of what's left. Which is probably why it's only listed as one bedroom, one bathroom."

At this point in the clip she pulls up the Zillow description of the property which calls the destroyed home an "investment opportunity" stating that the house is officially "condemned" and that the Mendenhall River indeed wrecked the house.

So basically, whoever is selling the home is offering a lot in Alaska for $400,000 as the listing states: "the end of the apartment/garage wall facing the river is in need of being rebuilt and re-sided once [the] home is removed."

"This is though being sold as-is where is and if you're reading this you're like what the hell is riprap? And let me say this, adding it to my list of places I don't want to live are places where I need to even know what riprap is, if I have riprap, and if it's new riprap or old riprap. I don't wanna live nowhere that gotta do that," she states at the end of her video.

The "riprap" that she's referring to, which she provides a screenshotted explanation of in her video along with photos is defined as "a layer of large stones that protects soil from erosion in areas of high or concentrated flows."

The definition page goes on the explain that this technique is especially useful in ensuring that rivers don't become unruly and begin to destroy whatever is surrounding them. From the looks of what happened to the home, it seems like this property and its adjacent ones, rely heavily on riprap to ensure that whatever is built near the river isn't wreaking havoc on their structures.

A visit to the Zillow page looking at the specific address reveals that the home is off-market, and it appears that the photos detailing the destruction levied against the property were either replaced or taken down. It is also listed as a 4-bedroom 4-bathroom home.

Seeing as Sierra posted her video on February 29th, 2024 — if the home was still in the same condition as it was back then, it's hard to imagine that as of this writing enough work was done to restore it to the current condition being represented in its current listing.