Coolest find on Craigslist? Mansion living in Seattle, just $650/month

Wouldn't it be great to live in a mansion on the water, Gatsby-style, with your best friends and make art all day? That was the fantasy of Celene Ramadan, a twentysomething filmmaker and musician living in Seattle, who rented a lake house in Chicago with 17 friends while attending an improv festival. The rental only lasted a week, but it left Ramadan with the idea that her artist collective, Beta Society, should have a "frat house" of its own.

Then a friend forwarded her a Craigslist posting for a 10,000-s.f. mansion on Seattle's Puget Sound, available for rent. The subject line of the e-mail expressed the astonishment of the find: "really, truly, seriously."