While most agents would consider the punk house a nightmare, but there is often artistry and beauty to these kind of squats that I enjoy.

I’ve only seen a few hit the market “as-is”, as most get cleaned up prior to listing. I like the idea of communal living, and did it myself for awhile during my pre-and-post college years, though we were never in one place long enough to amass the kind of squalor and filth pictured in the book “Punk House: Interiors in Anarchy”.

With the ones that I’ve listed, there is usually so much art on the walls, if we can clean them up, we can usually sell it to another artist.

Punk House features anarchist warehouses, feminist collectives, tree houses, workshops, artists’ studios, self-sufficient farms, hobo squats, community centers, basement bike shops, speakeasies, and all varieties of communal living spaces.

In over 300 images of fifty houses in twenty-five cities in the US, photographer Abby Banks finds the already weathered face of a seventeen-year-old runaway; the soft hands of a vinyl junkie (record collector); the mohawked show-goer; the dirty dishes in the sink; silk screened posters on the wall; and many other revealing glimpses of these anarchist interiors.

“Punk House” in New York Times

Where Lou Reed Peed: CBGB’s toilet