Who thought this was a good idea?

We've been checking various sources weekly since January in our search for a new place to live. In January or February we visited a total of 3-4 places. There's been nowhere to even visit since then. Each week there's usually nothing in the price and size we're looking for (3+ bedroom /4ZKB under 600 cold/mo). If we had unlimited funds, we maybe could find 3-4 listings a week, but these are usually 700/mo or well over 1200/mo. If we decided to go through a realtor we'd have to pay a finders fee of 2.38 times the regular rent usually due to the owner. So that's out.

700/mo for a 3-bedroom may not sound horrible to a US resident, but then you have to slap on the price of installing a kitchen (sometimes one is already installed, but chances are slim), utilities (electricity is between double-triple the US per/kilowatt hr price), and the ubiquitous side-costs (usually contributions to the whole building's common area electricity, water/trash services, etc). Sometimes you have to re-wallpaper the whole place and repaint inside and also pay for new flooring to be laid. The housing market here is obviously tough. It's not hard to understand why our friends, the Whites, decided to build their own home and pay a mortgage instead.

However, it's interesting to see how long it takes certain places to finally leave the listings - these places are either really in the middle of nowhere, totally overpriced, or just plain dumps. Although renting a whole house is pretty much out of the question for us, I periodically check the listings just in case. There's one house that never moves. It's been listed since last fall. It's price hasn't dropped too much over time and it's out in the sticks. It's renovated, the asking price is 1250 Euros/month, which is comparable to other stuff out there, but check this out:
Who thought this was a good idea? The main entrance to the house is just one regular door, which opens to an area that actually narrows to be even smaller than the door. Seriously. Obviously not wheelchair friendly, but honestly, how do you deal with that on a daily basis?? Look at the floorplan:
So there's another entrance downstairs, but then you walk in where all the bedrooms are and then still have to schlep your stuff upstairs. I don't get it. If you're going to remodel the house, at least make it easy to walk in the door. This house was first built in 1961 and remodeled in the past year, so this was not built in the Dark Ages. You can see more pictures of the house here. House hunting is FUN!