I don't know the specific cause of what you're seeing, but the generic cause of seeing inside of any building from the outside tends to be that there's something within that second height level above you that causes the clients to think you are beneath something. Think of it like this... the game has a Z axis, which tells it how "high" something is in the game.
As a generic scenario, if you recalled to someplace, you might be at 0 on the z-axis, or 0-z.
In game heights, a wall is 20 z-units high, so if you stand underneath something that is at 22-z, the client thinks you're underneath a roof of some sort and eliminates everything 20-z and higher.
Houses are slightly different... if you think of the ground as 0-z, the foundation is +5-z, so the second level starts at +25-z, third at +45-z, and fourth at +65-z. If something's above you at say +25-z (or the second floor of the building), it will take away anything from +25z or higher out of the game display for you. It's why things act so oddly at multi-story IDOCs, and also why you have to find exactly where to stand "under" or "in front of" something that was up on the roof of the building (typically +65-z higher than where you are then standing).
Obviously, I'm calling things +5, +10, et cetera because not all areas in the game are at 0-z, so if you're in a higher area, like 45-z, then the roof of a tower would instead be at like +110-z, roughly.
So, yeah, that's why sometimes you can see inside from out (stacking bottles would eventually get something over that +20-z mark, and you'd be "under" it); but as for the mystery of recalling in and seeing through buildings, only time I've really see that happen is if you're so close you're actually standing under a roof piece. Otherwise, I'm completely unsure.