America's Top 10 Strangest Homes For Sale

Perhaps after sailing into your home port after an international cruise, you wished that you could have stayed on the boat--permanently.

Maybe you're irritated by the walk from your car to your front door. You'd rather step from your vehicle right into your room.

Or you feel that the trees surrounding your home provide too many hiding places for your enemies, and you yearn to live in an isolated desert landscape--but only on a hill, in a retro, above-ground dome where you have the terrestrial advantage over approaching foes.

In Depth: Slideshow of Unusual Homes

These might seem like uncommon needs, but they've all been addressed by architects and contractors--resulting in outrageous, unconventional homes. And those whose very specific requirements could be met by an apartment in a "residential community at sea," a "floating" California home that includes a Batcave-like elevator for your car, or a "volcano home" in the middle of the desert are in luck--all these homes exist, and they're on the market right now.

They aren't the only homes that inspire double-takes. The inclination to buck homebuilding conventions extends to property owners who have custom-built castles, installed ice cream parlors and occupied lighthouses to meet their housing needs. To find some of the oddest, we teamed with Realtor.com, Sotheby's Realty and Christie's Great Estates, and rounded up 10 bizarre properties whose only common characteristics are that they're unlike any other home, and they're all on the market.

But while wacky homes might be the perfect complement to their original owners' taste, their success on the resale market is difficult to predict. Homes that are remodeled conservatively, with kitchen upgrades, for example, offer a better rate of return than homes with even slightly unusual discretionary features, like tennis courts and pools, says Kermit Baker, senior research fellow at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. That doesn't bode well for homes with indoor basketball courts and on-site wedding chapels.