Looking for apartments on the internet: it can be fun, or it can be horrifying. When the only options you see are terrible, it’s like watching a car crash - you can’t tear your eyes away from the life-altering, violent reality of it.

While we enjoy to poke fun at the weirder listings that get posted on Caretaker, especially on our Instagram account, we wanted to end this year on a positive note. We’ve compiled a list of the most amazingly fancy, unreasonably low-priced, and most unique places made available to sublet on our site over the past year. Trust us - you need to click the links and look at the pictures for the full experience. Enjoy.

The clocktower on top of an old piano factory

This listing is mind-blowing for a multitude of reasons. The photos immediately astonished me when I saw them, and only got more impressive as I scrolled. The bedroom is 360 square feet - huge by New York standards, regardless of what neighborhood you’re in. Even more shocking was the price - only $1200 for a month of bliss in a huge room where the windows, the face of a giant clock, flood the space with natural light. Considering that The New York Times reported that the average rent for a single square foot in New York City is $4.98, this bedroom is $600 cheaper than others it’s size. And other bedrooms this size aren’t, you know, inside of gorgeous clock towers. While some may have been turned off by it’s location (The Bronx isn’t known for being the best part of NYC when it comes to accessing public transit), it sits right on the Harlem River, meaning the views are incredible and getting into Manhattan is a breeze.

Looking for a homie for life

Everything about this apartment listing's description screamed 'weird Twitter' humor. We tweeted a link, asking for help locating the author. It ended up getting 125 retweets and sparked a wild search for the cool guy wearing sunglasses featured in every photo of the apartment. The pictures are zany, but the description only amps up the hilarity. I recommend that you read it in full, but my personal favorite section says, “the neighbor in the unit next to this one always be listening to Pitbull .. sometimes at like 3 a.m. there will be no music playin or nothing and you’ll just hear him go ‘Mr. Worldwide !!!’ .. but other than that it’s Lit.” To add to the mystery, the lister’s name was simply ‘TheDude.’ Our instincts ended up being correct, and with the help of the Twitter-verse, we located TheDude.

An 1853 mansion with a saltwater pool

The photos of this place make it look like some European museum where the rooms have been preserved to appear exactly as they did in the mid-1800s. Staten Island may not be ideal for some location-wise, but $1000 a month for a place like this is really hard to beat. The mansion has a saltwater pool, an indoor hot tub, a wood burning pizza oven, a chicken coop with fresh eggs and a cupola on the roof (Don’t worry, I had to Google it too). Like the clocktower mentioned above, it’s right on the water, and all the available bedrooms face the waterfront. If you’re willing to trade a long commute for one of the most interesting homes in the city, this is a dream come true.

Batman’s Manhattan apartment

It’s no mansion or clocktower, but something about this place struck me as extremely desirable. Probably the combination of the skylights in the living room and the fact that the bedroom is hidden behind a secret door in a bookshelf. Hidden passageways have always enticed me, and I love to sleep in a bedroom with very little light, so this secret cave-y room is ideal. It’s a top floor apartment in Manhattan, so it’s pricey, but it’s nice to dream isn’t it?

Everything’s bigger in Texas

I love living in New York, but this listing made me consider relocating. I actually sent it to my group text and asked if any of my freelancing friends wanted to move to Texas for a few months. The house is huge and sits on a lake with a private dock. There’s a large fenced-in backyard, four bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms. One of the bathrooms has a jacuzzi tub next to a glass shower. Most importantly, it’s $2200 a month which, shamefully, is almost exactly what I pay to live in a one bedroom in Brooklyn that certainly doesn’t have private lake access. The group chat briefly discussed the logistics - could we get a houseboat to park off the dock so all 6 of us could live there together? By the time we came to a consensus, someone else had recognized what an amazing deal this was, and it was too late.

Astonishingly cheap in San Fran

When I see a listing in San Francisco for less than $2000, I fully expect it to be some weird, bug-infested sex dungeon that we will have to remove from the site. After all, San Francisco is the most expensive rental housing market in the country. That’s why I was shocked to find that this 3 bedroom was actually beautiful and the rent for one room was only $1100. I’ll admit that I have an affinity for dark green velvet couches, but it’s more than just that. The common areas are spacious, light-filled, and it’s a house - no upstairs or downstairs neighbors to worry about. The giant fireplace, although probably unnecessary in California’s climate, adds a nice touch too. There’s even a garage! With a washer and dryer! Ugh.

Berkeley loft for the plant lover

Okay, $2200 a month is out of reach for many people, and it’s depressing to consider that the rent on this one bedroom is the same as the rent for the 4-bedroom house with a private dock in Texas. But, factoring in the cost of housing in California, this amount of space for this price is incredible. I’ve always been a sucker for a spiral staircase, and the lofted bedroom makes it easy to have people over without them invading your private space. Also, unlike your standard NYC loft, which typically resembles a jail cell where the wall are made of stapled-together cardboard, there are tons of windows, meaning that (as can be seen in the beautiful photos) indoor plants can thrive here. The choices of wall art are interesting…the tapestry over the bed gives off a Hollister store vibe, while the message behind the poster that says ‘COFFEE MAKES YOU QUEER’ is hard to decipher. But to each their own - the interior design choices don’t make this any less of a gem.

Wanna see more of the best places we saw on Caretaker this year that we didn’t feel like writing paragraphs about? Here are some other ones that we love:

One-bedroom in Downtown Brooklyn featuring cute dog photos
Loft studio in LA with angsty, goth art
Swanky one-bedroom in Crown Heights with private terrace
A room in a 9-bedroom mansion built in 1890 in Bushwick
Beachy turquoise bungalow in Santa Monica

As always, hit us up on Instagram or Twitter any time. We don't sleep.