Most Obsessed Renter to Collect $20,000 from Apartments.com

Apartments.com, the nation’s largest online listing service for rental residences, has announced three finalists in its search for the most stuff-obsessed renter in the nation.

Videos made by the trio of their “treasure”-filled apartments are now available on the company’s Web site, where visitors can vote on their choice for the candidate with the biggest and best “Possession Obsession”.

The nominee who receives the most votes will win $20,000 in cash. Visitors can vote once a day every day from now until October 19.

Visitors to Apartments.com/PossessionObsession can watch short video tours of the finalists’ abodes, including one from Ali, a Boston artist who retrieves usable items from dumpsters and discards, and who inlaid the bedroom of her apartment with more than 100,000 sample flooring squares.

There’s also Kalvin, whose apartment next to a Tulsa, OK, funeral home sports a year-round array of vampires, jack-o-lanterns and other Halloween fixings. And Brenda’s Chicago pad is a well-stuffed homage to pinup art in calendars, ashtrays and even table lamps.

Apartments.com says contestants were asked to submit a short entry outlining how their obsessions began, the ways their collections are taking over their living space, and any funny incidents that may have occurred because of their hoarding behavior.

“This contest shows just how passionate America is about collecting,” said Apartments.com spokeswoman Lisa DeVries in a release. “We saw entries from collectors that ran the gamut from frog-lovers to dinosaur-diggers and superhero groupies to movie buffs.”

The company says the first level of the contest received more than 500 entries.

Apartments.com offers online listings of rental properties from more than 50,000 unique addresses coast to coast. The company’s Web site gives users the ability to conduct personalized searches, take virtual tours and check listings from local newspapers and community sources.

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