Strange Houses by Uketsu: How a Mystery Novel Changed the Way I Look at Landed Property

I don't usually write book reviews on my website.

Most of the blogs I write are related to Singapore landed property—market trends, selling strategies, District 19, property prices, home layouts, and the things I think homeowners should consider before buying or selling a landed home.

So this article is a little different.

Over the last weekend, I was in Kuala Lumpur and happened to walk into a Popular bookstore. I wasn't particularly looking for anything specific, but while browsing through the shelves, one book caught my attention. It was called Strange Houses by Uketsu.

What made me pick it up wasn't actually the title. It was the cover. There was a floor plan of a house printed on it. As someone who spends a large part of my working life looking at landed properties, studying layouts and walking through different types of homes, I naturally found that intriguing.

I picked it up and started flipping through the pages. I eventually bought it. And somehow, what was supposed to be a random purchase turned into a book that I finished in about two days. More surprisingly, after finishing it, I found myself thinking about my work.

Not because I suddenly became interested in solving murders, but because the book made me look at something very familiar to me — the house floor plan — in a slightly different way.

First, What Is Strange Houses About?

Before I go any further, I should probably point out that Strange Houses is a mystery thriller with horror elements. It is fiction, and some of the subject matter is quite dark.

The story revolves around a writer who comes across the floor plan of a seemingly ordinary house. At first glance, there isn't anything particularly unusual about it. But once the writer and his architect friend, Kurihara, begin studying the layout, they notice several strange details.

There are spaces that don't seem to have an obvious purpose. Certain rooms are positioned in unusual ways, and some parts of the house don't quite make sense from a conventional architectural perspective. Naturally, they start asking questions.

• Why was the house designed this way?

• Why is this particular room here?

• Why is there a seemingly unnecessary space?

• Why does one room connect to another in this manner?

The investigation becomes more complicated when a second house with another unusual floor plan enters the story. What initially appears to be an architectural curiosity gradually turns into something much darker, as the characters begin connecting the layouts to events surrounding the people who lived in these houses. I won't go too much further into the plot because I think this is one of those books where knowing too much beforehand takes away some of the fun.

What I can say is that the floor plans aren't simply illustrations accompanying the story. They are part of the mystery itself. And that was what made the book particularly interesting to me.

The First Two Chapters Immediately Caught My Attention

The first two chapters were probably the most fascinating parts of the book for me. The reason is quite simple: they introduced two different houses and their respective floor plans. I found myself doing something I probably wasn't supposed to be doing as a casual reader. I was studying the floor plans.

I would read a section of the story, look at the layout, go back to the previous page and try to work out how everything connected. Then I would start forming my own theories.

"Why would someone design the house like this?"

"What is the purpose of this space?"

"Could this room have been added later?"

"What happens if you look at the layout from the perspective of the people actually living in the house?"

That was when the book became quite addictive. It almost turns the reader into another investigator. Instead of simply waiting for the characters to explain what is happening, you are given enough information to start making your own deductions.

Of course, some of my theories were completely wrong. But that was part of the fun.

As Property Agents, we should look at Floor Plans Differently

Now, I want to make something very clear. I'm not suggesting that Singapore homeowners should start examining their floor plans to see whether their houses could be used for some kind of sinister purpose.

Please don't do that.

This is a mystery novel, after all. I also don't think the gruesome traditions and murders described in the book are something that Singapore buyers and homeowners need to worry about when viewing a landed property. But the book did make me think about something much more practical.

Why was this house designed this way in the first place?

That question is something I don't think we ask often enough. When we look at a landed property, we tend to focus on the obvious things. How big is the land? How many bedrooms are there? How many bathrooms? Is the house renovated? How wide is the frontage? Is there a balcony? Is there a garden? How many cars can fit in the car porch?

All of these things are important, especially when you're dealing with a property worth several million dollars. But the floor plan tells us something else. It tells us how the house was intended to function. And sometimes, that can tell us a lot about the type of family that would be most comfortable living there.

Every Landed House Has a Reason Behind Its Layout

Take two landed houses that are almost identical on paper. Imagine two two-storey inter-terrace houses next to each other, both sitting on approximately 2,000 sq ft of land. Both have four bedrooms, three bathrooms and similar asking prices. At first glance, you might assume they're broadly similar properties.

But walk into them and study their floor plans, and you could find two completely different homes. One might have three bedrooms on the second floor with a common bathroom positioned between them. The other might have one ensuite bedroom and two common bedrooms sharing a Jack-and-Jill bathroom.

Why?

There could be many reasons. Perhaps one house was designed for a family with younger children. Perhaps the other was designed with teenagers in mind. Maybe the previous owner renovated the house because they wanted more privacy between certain family members. Perhaps the original layout was changed because an elderly parent moved in.

The point is that the floor plan is a reflection of how someone intended to live in the house. And that is something I think we, as property agents, should pay more attention to. Instead of simply asking, "What does this property have?", perhaps we should also ask, "Why does this property have it?"

The Right House Is Not Necessarily the Biggest House

This is particularly relevant when matching landed properties to buyers. A buyer may tell me that they want a five-bedroom house. But that doesn't necessarily mean every five-bedroom house will work for them.

Imagine a family consisting of a husband and wife, two children and an elderly parent. For them, a bedroom on the ground floor might be incredibly valuable because the elderly parent doesn't have to navigate stairs every day. Now imagine another family with two teenage children. They may care much more about having separate bedroom zones and some privacy between the different floors.

Another family might enjoy entertaining friends and relatives regularly. For them, a generous living and dining area could be more important than having an additional bedroom. Someone who works from home might be willing to sacrifice bedroom size in exchange for a proper study.

So when I look at a landed house, I'm increasingly interested in understanding which family profile the layout naturally suits.

A property isn't simply a collection of rooms. It is a configuration of spaces designed—or renovated—to support a particular way of living. And if we understand that, I believe we can do a much better job of matching the right buyer to the right house.

A Floor Plan Gives You a Completely Different View of the Home

There's another reason the book made me think about floor plans. When you're physically standing inside a house, you're experiencing the property from ground level. You walk from the living room into the dining area, then into the kitchen. You go upstairs and enter the bedrooms one by one. Everything is experienced sequentially.

A floor plan gives you something completely different. It allows you to look at the entire house from above. Suddenly, you can see how everything connects.

You can see where the bedrooms are located in relation to one another. You can understand how someone would move through the house. You can see whether the living areas are separated from the private areas. You can identify which rooms are closer to the kitchen, which bedrooms are on the same floor and whether an elderly family member would need to climb stairs to access their bedroom.

For a landed property, I think this is especially important because you're not just buying a single-level home. You're buying a vertical living environment.

A three-storey landed property can look very impressive in photographs, but the photographs don't necessarily tell you whether the layout works for your family. That's where the floor plan becomes useful.

I Realise How Important Floor Plans Are When Selling a Landed Property

This is probably the biggest practical takeaway I got from the book. Many landed properties in Singapore are marketed with beautiful photographs. And rightly so. Good photography matters. Buyers want to see the condition of the house, the finishes, the size of the rooms and the overall feel of the property.

But photographs only tell part of the story.

A photograph shows you what a room looks like.

A floor plan shows you how the house works.

Those are two very different things. For a property that may cost several million dollars, I think prospective buyers should have both. This is especially important for older landed homes, properties that have undergone additions and alterations, and houses with unusual configurations.

Sometimes, a buyer walks into a house and immediately thinks the property is too small. Then they see the floor plan and realise the space has actually been distributed quite efficiently.

The opposite can also happen. A house can look spacious in photographs, but once you look at the floor plan, you realise that a significant portion of the space is taken up by corridors, staircases or awkwardly configured areas.

Without seeing the layout, it is difficult to properly understand the property.

This Is Something I Want to Improve in My Own Listings

After finishing the book, I started thinking about my own listings. Moving forward, whenever possible, I will scan the landed homes I market using Matterport.

The obvious benefit is the 3D virtual tour, which allows prospective buyers to explore the property remotely. But what I find equally useful is the ability to generate a 2D floor plan from the scan.

Example of A Matterport Schematic 2D Floor Plans

That gives buyers another way to understand the property before arranging a physical viewing. And for me, it also provides another opportunity to explain the house.

Instead of simply saying:

"This is a five-bedroom landed house."

I can explain:

"This layout works particularly well for a multi-generational family because there is a bedroom on the ground floor, while the other bedrooms are separated across the upper levels."

Or perhaps:

"The third floor offers more privacy, so this could work well for a family with teenagers or adult children."

That is a much more meaningful conversation than simply listing the number of bedrooms and bathrooms.

What I Like About Strange Houses

What I enjoyed most about the book is how unusual the concept is. I've read mystery novels before, but I've never read one where house floor plans become such an important part of the storytelling.

It is interactive in a way that I wasn't expecting. You find yourself looking at the diagrams and trying to work out the mystery alongside the characters. That makes it very easy to get drawn into the story. I also appreciated that it is relatively short and straightforward to read. There isn't a huge amount of complicated exposition, and the mystery keeps moving along.

If you enjoy mysteries, puzzles or unusual storytelling, I think it is worth giving it a try. And if you're someone who works in property, architecture or interior design, you may find the floor-plan aspect particularly interesting.

What I Didn't Like About It

Of course, the book isn't perfect. My biggest criticism is that some of the conclusions made throughout the story feel like they are based on relatively limited evidence. There are moments where I found myself thinking, "That's certainly one possibility, but there are probably several other explanations as well."

But then again, perhaps that's part of what makes a mystery novel enjoyable.

If every clue had an obvious explanation and every deduction required concrete evidence, there wouldn't be much of a mystery left. Some wild deductions are probably part of the fun.

And I think there is actually a useful lesson here for property buyers as well. A floor plan can give you clues, but it doesn't tell you the entire story. If a house has an unusual layout, don't immediately assume you know why.

Ask the owner.

Ask the agent.

Look at the history of the property. Understand what renovations were carried out. Find out how the previous family actually used the space. The more information you have, the better you can understand why the house ended up looking the way it does today.

The Unexpected Lesson I Took Away From the Book

Interestingly, I didn't finish Strange Houses thinking about the murders. I finished it thinking about houses.

And more specifically, I started thinking about how much information is hidden within a floor plan. Every landed home has a story. Some were designed by developers. Some were rebuilt by previous owners. Others have been renovated several times over decades.

Behind every bedroom, staircase, corridor and living space, there was probably a reason why somebody decided to put it there. Sometimes the reason is obvious. Sometimes it isn't.

And I think that curiosity is useful when you're dealing with landed property. Because when I'm helping a homeowner sell a house, I don't just want to know the number of bedrooms. I want to understand how the house works.

• Who would enjoy living here?

• What kind of family would appreciate this layout?

• What are the strengths of the configuration?

• What are the compromises?

• Which buyer might walk in and immediately understand the value of the space?

Those are questions that I think can make a difference when marketing a landed property.

One Random Book Changed How I Look at My Work

When I picked up Strange Houses in Kuala Lumpur, I certainly didn't expect it to influence the way I think about my work. I bought it because the floor plan on the cover caught my attention.

I continued reading because the mystery was interesting. I finished it because I wanted to know how everything would turn out. But I came away with something else.

A reminder that a house is more than what you see in photographs.

• The floor plan matters.

• The way the spaces connect matters.

• The intended use of those spaces matters.

And most importantly, the suitability of the layout for the eventual buyer matters.

Going forward, I want to pay even more attention to these details when I market landed properties. Where possible, I want my listings to include proper floor plans and Matterport virtual tours, because I believe buyers should be able to understand a property from both perspectives: inside the house and from above it.

Perhaps that's the strangest thing about this whole experience. I picked up a mystery novel because I was intrigued by a floor plan. And I ended up being reminded why I enjoy working with landed properties in the first place.

Every house has a story.

Sometimes, you just need to look at the floor plan to start understanding it.

Interested in Strange Houses?

If I've managed to make you curious about the book, you can find Strange Houses at Popular Bookstore in Singapore, or through various online bookstores.

This isn't a sponsored recommendation, and I'm not receiving anything from the publisher or bookstore. I simply bought the book myself while I was in Kuala Lumpur, enjoyed it, and thought the connection between the book and my work was interesting enough to share.

If you enjoy mystery novels and happen to like looking at floor plans, I think you'll have quite a bit of fun with it. And if you're a property owner, perhaps the next time you look at your own floor plan, you might ask yourself a slightly different question:

"Why was my house designed this way?"

You might be surprised by what you notice.

Thinking of Selling Your Landed Property?

If you're a landed homeowner in District 19, whether you're in Kovan, Serangoon Gardens, Bartley, Hougang or the surrounding landed estates, and you're considering selling your property, feel free to reach out to me.

Before talking about marketing prices or putting a property on the market, I believe it is important to first understand the house itself—its layout, strengths, limitations, history and the type of buyer it is most likely to appeal to. Because ultimately, selling a landed property isn't simply about selling the number of square feet you own.

It's about helping the right buyer understand why this particular house could be the right home for them.