Step Inside the 1998 Home That No One Has Lived in—And Is Still Brand New

A Utah real estate agent has offered a glimpse inside a home first built in 1998 that has never been lived in.

Shane Jourdain from Homie Real Estate in southern Utah gave viewers on TikTok a tour of the property, which is located in the city of St. George.

Jourdain told Newsweek: “I was showing the home to a potential buyer and we met with the HOA treasurer who told us the story about the gentleman that purchased the home brand new in 1998 with plans to eventually move there and retire. For whatever reason he never made the move and eventually passed away leaving the home as an un-lived in home.”

Home ownership still matters to most Americans. In 2023, a YouGov survey of 2,545 U.S. adults commissioned by the financial advice website Bankrate.com found that 74 percent of respondents still view homeownership as an important part of the American dream.

That’s a significantly larger proportion than the number who see having children (42 percent) or a successful career (61 percent) as key components.

Many respondents still faced significant problems in trying to get on the property ladder with prohibitively low income (46 percent), sky high prices (42 percent) and an inability to make the initial down payment (40 percent) cited as the three biggest obstacles.

For anyone struggling to reach the goal of owning a home, footage showcasing the pristine interior of a property that has been empty for the best part of 26 years might have made for a difficult watch.

Over the course of the video, Jourdain takes us through the entire property. A large, unmarked carpet features prominently, while the kitchen is distinctive for having a brand new oven and microwave complete with instruction manual. The doors to the bedroom and bathroom remain virtually untouched, with plastic wrapping still on the latches, and the clearest indication of time passing comes in the bathroom where dust has gathered in the tub.

Though some might marvel at the idea of a home remaining untouched for so long, many viewers online were unhappy.

“Honestly it should low key be illegal to buy a property and own it for 20+ years just for it to sit and never live in it or even touch it like let the house and go and give it to a family who needs,” one user wrote, with another agreeing: “Millennials can’t even buy houses right now and old people are just sitting on extra houses.”

Others were amazed at the way the property looked.

“It’s crazy to see something look so outdated and so brand new at the same time,” one person said.

At the time of writing the video has been watched over 13 million times.

Whatever the opinions of those watching, the apartment’s status as a controversial time capsule of sorts is at and end. The property has been sold, with Jourdain revealing it fetched “close to $399,000.”

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