When Tamela Greene started her search for a second home in New York’s Hudson Valley, she knew exactly what she was looking for: ugly.
She found it near Copake Lake. Various additions to the home had created multiple rooflines and siding materials that looked disjointed, plus it was painted a kind of beige-yellow and had dead trees in the front yard. No surprise, it had been on the market for about two years. “We looked at 30 homes and this was the ugliest on the outside,” says Ms. Greene. “People would drive by the house and say, ‘Ugh, that’s awful!’ ”