We love scrolling through Airbnb’s OMG listings just for fun and adding to our wishlist. This category of offbeat home rentals is one of the 50 categories the company rolled out last summer to help us better land on the kind of rental we want. How does a property get listed in this category? Airbnb’s curation team used machine learning to scan descriptions, titles, photo captions and guest reviews to locate the homes that are supposed to make your eyebrows raise. Some of the OMG listings are a stretch—things that are mildly interesting, like a one-room schoolhouse or a corn bin converted to a rental, but not visually jaw-dropping. Some offer a normal house but with a surprising add-on, like a plane parked in the yard that you can stargaze in. But others are truly extraordinary and ensure that your visit will be eye-popping. So, we have put on our work gloves and combed through all the U.S. listings to bring you the top 10 most splendid, wild, fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime listings!
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This beautiful curved ceiling with a dramatic staircase looks like you get to stay inside a wooden umbrella. The home was featured in Architectural Digest and Curbed and has space for eight guests. This dome sits on 28 acres of private forest with plenty of wildlife to wander by the windows. Pick your own veggies from the garden, play a tune on the baby grand piano, then retire to the hot tub: this place is a retreat in itself.
This place looks like a giant made it out of clay in art class and set it down for you to enjoy. Created by a group of sculptors in the 1980s and recently renovated, its hand-plastered walls and built-in furniture define the word cozy. Set on a clearing surrounded by trees on a private dirt road, the two-guest home is close to hiking and the MASS MoCA museum. As the description reads, “relax and leave the rectilinear world behind.”
Sleep in a normal house (a nice one, with room for six guests) but between sunset and midnight, venture out to the high-tech observatory on the property, its door guarded by an alien statue. You can select a celestial object on the computer that you’re hoping to see, and the dome and telescope rotate into place to “give you front-row seats to the universe,” as the listing puts it. Back at the house, there’s a hot tub, game room, fire pit and 360-degree views of the desert.
Modular to the max, this Modernist home is a stolid arrangement of black and gray sitting on 3.3 acres—you’re given hiking access to the woods directly behind the building. With room for three guests, the home includes bespoke furniture made of various types of wood, crafted by the Cube’s designer, Scott Grote. Next door is a historic stone house, so you have the best of all worlds: old, modern and beautiful forest.
This place certainly fulfills the OMG requirements, especially the heated indoor pool that looks like you’re swimming in an ice cave. Sleeping up to seven guests, this home on five forested acres aims to relax and rejuvenate your vital life (prana). It consists of a timbered geodesic dome covered in foam, a sauna, a cold plunge tub, an indoor jacuzzi, an outdoor hot tub, a solarium for sipping coffee while deer and turkey wander by, and on-call professional spa services.
This round cabin with flaring roof lines is architecturally fascinating and offers spectacular views of the lush woods in which it’s embedded. A dramatic stone fireplace will keep you toasty, and the stone steps down to a sunken shower will make you feel like you’re at a medieval spa. There are four acres: one for each guest. Various patios offer a chance to connect indoors with the outdoors.
It’s a tiny home with a massive view: 200 square feet for two guests, with a vista of Vermont’s beautiful Green Mountains and the adorably-named Blueberry Lake. The mirrored glass house on 2 acres was built in Estonia and lets you spy wildlife from your bed; Roxbury State Forest is right behind the property. The stay includes organic red wine and locally made snacks. Plus: heated floor, rain shower, fire pit, hot tub, Scandinavian lawn game. Skiers? It’s close to Sugarbowl.
We love the unusual vibe of this handmade hobbit cabin situated on a 97-acre farm with four ponds, trails leading through fern-covered woods, access to a barn that was once an artist’s studio, and views of the Catskill mountains. This cabin (one of three) overlooks a meadow and has room for four guests. Don’t forget to sit in the wood-fired sauna—which is a cute, tiny, shingled hut—or sit around the campfire enjoying the stars.
It’s got the wow factor for sure, this glass-fronted home perched on a platform like a periscope emerging from the waters. It was featured in Dwell and the New York Times and overlooks a swimmable pond. The property spans 34 acres of woods—there’s no wifi so take a few deep breaths and enjoy the solitude. Accessibility alert: you must walk in with your luggage and be able to climb a ladder to reach the loft and to reach the outdoor hot tub. It sleeps two guests.
We love a totally modern house set in a totally bucolic setting. This one also has a long, narrow pool that lets you swim toward the view of the Catskills. Its design was inspired by the Stahl House in Hollywood and was featured in the New York Times. Set on 25 private acres, the four-person home has floor-to-ceiling glass to let the indoors in. If you can bear to work, there’s lightning-fast wifi and two workstations right against the glass. Plus: hot tub, daybeds, fire pit.
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