I’m a Black woman, and studies have shown that just my ownership of my home decreases its value. This is freeing in some ways - I can do what I want to my home, because *I’m* the biggest factor in its depreciation. If I ever decide to sell my home, I’ll hire a stager to eliminate all traces of me in the decor, to make it blander and more palatable to potential buyers. (There’s a lot to be said about how the “market-reflected gaze” is an extension of the white gaze, but that’s an essay for someone other than me to write.)
The market-reflected gaze is *so* white, in so many explicit (see: take down pictures of your Black family, take down any art that reads as 'Othered') and implicit ways (dominant understandings of what 'professional,' 'organized,' etc. even mean). Definitely worth further conversation (and I'm going to see if others have already written about it, too)
There was a story within the last couple years if I remember correctly, of a family in the Bay Area who had their value undercut by a large amount because they were black. Worthwhile to check out Little White Houses: How the Postwar Home Constructed Race in America by Dianne Suzette Harris. There's a study looking at interiors and how they read as class markers--the Italian one is called out as being "lower class" because of course Italian was considered "ethnic."
Yes to reading Dianne Harris’ wonderful work on this! She points out the GI bill enabled FHA mortgages were largely tools of racial assimilation for white passing folks from cities who had never owned property before, and spent much of their time hiding evidence of their cultural identities (like outdoor laundry or productive gardens) behind landscaping. NDB Connolly’s work on real estate and race is also incredible, and he was in the news earlier this year for staging an experiment to demonstrate how racially motivated the home appraisal process is (which goes a bit beyond market dynamics IMO). Here’s the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/18/realestate/housing-discrimination-maryland.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
This happened to the daughter of one of my company's clients, who also lives in the Bay Area. When she took an appraiser around her condo, it did not gain anything in value; when her mixed-race but white-presenting husband did, the condo's value increased. He wrote about it on his Substack: https://briancopeland.substack.com/p/copelands-corner-august-24-2022
Richard and Leah Rothsteins latest book Just Action addresses the racism and intrinsic whiteness attached to how homes are valued according to assessors (local govt) vs appraisers (real estate) and the implications this has for the racial wealth gap.
Yep - we are a mixed family and we've been advised that when it comes time to sell, we should take put all the family portraits away because racism could cost us tens of thousands of dollars. It is so, so gross.
Connecting race to a home's value is known as red-lining, and it's been done for decades. It's technically been illegal for 50 years. I'm sorry to say it's still going on. It's one of the many facets of racism that was built into federal, state, and local laws starting around WWII.
There's an excellent book on the subject, very readable: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein.
When my husband's aunt sold her place, part of the staging the agents had her do was removing her Indian art, and I wondered if that was more about the art or more about removing signs of the seller being Indian.
I hear you on this front -- I'm a South Asian woman and recently went through the process of selling my condo and I was saddened by just how much the best advice on the market was to make my home as white as possible (obviously, not said that way, but all the coded language is easy to read between the lines). I had two custom murals that my mom had painted for me & I didn't have the heart to paint over it, so I said screw it and kept them up... and it took longer to sell, buuut I felt less like my soul was crushed and I ended up selling the condo to a man of color.
That would be fascinating and quite sad to read. I’m growing tired of the sameness. Frankly. I say you be you. Enjoy your home. When it comes to selling your investment, and if this isn’t the home you plan to grow old in, then yes, make the most $ and move on.
I guess I’ve always searched for a little of both. A home is a good investment for most people. You sink money into it every month. But it should also be yours to enjoy and not obsess about selling.
i’m about to wallpaper one of my bathroom walls with a wallpaper called “coven” by maison c, which features naked women looking like they’re doing some witchy stuff (and the background color i chose is pink). it’s expensive wallpaper so i can only afford to do one wall, and lately i’ve been having doubts about putting it up, but now i can’t freaking wait. it’s so beautiful and slightly irreverent and i can’t wait to be naked in my bathroom with these naked ladies lol
As a child in the 80s one of the homes my parents rented in Dallas TX had naked people on the wallpaper and even though my parents thought it was inappropriate us kids loved it.
Cultural differences are HILARIOUS - I'm French Canadian and my mother is an artist, and nudes as decor wasn't something we've ever blinked an eye at. Actually, I think some of the nudes in my own house are charcoal sketches my mom did!
Depends on your community like anything else. We have nudes, my friend group probably doesn't think twice. I've rented an airbnb with a neon vulva on the wall. It's a big country.
You made my week. I had dinner in San Antonio at a lovely restaurant called Best Quality Daughter (from the Joy Luck Club) and the women's bathroom has this wallpaper. I didn't know what it was called or who made it till i read your comment and googled it -- this paper is PHENOMENAL in person. I'm so excited for you!
PLEASE do this and report back. I am all about a statement wall with wallpaper - we did that in two rooms and didn't regret it one bit. One of them was super expensive AND it is paste-up wallpaper so we had to actually find someone who still knows how to put it up. 100% worth it. Please post pics when you're done!
You are going to love it! I wallpapered one wall of a short narrow hallway in my apartment with a big bold print. My friends all thought (think?) I was crazy until it was done. It is A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. Even my landlord loves it.
Sienna miller has this in her AD Open House tour — her house is actually really personal and charming, though someone could certainly write a dissertation on AD tours generally
What you wrote here made me drop my laptop and run around the room in circles, because I'm just finishing an essay about how AirBnB turns houses that should be homes into hotels/museums while pushing regular buyers out of the market.
if i had a dime for every time i looked at a home listing on zillow and said "this was definitely a failed airbnb" because they all just look the same, cheap, and so bland. like is there a website out there that is basically amazon for cheap decor/furniture to put in your airbnb?
I bought a house when I started graduate school in 2003 (an 800 square foot 1959 2 bedroom), and proceeded to do light upgrades that I loved - a checkerboard tile floor in the kitchen paired with bright teal paint, retro-inspired tiling in the bathroom with lavender walls, a bright yellow bedroom with black furniture and colorful homemade curtains. When I put that house on the market 10 years later, some fellow graduates of my program were also selling their house, a very neutral newer build house. Not realizing that the listing they were sharing was my house (we weren’t friends, they weren’t invited to my parties), they broadly mocked my house for how colorful and unappealing to buyers it was, how the seller of my house must be stupid not to have painted the rooms white to appeal to buyers, how they were smart and kept their house nice and neutral. Basically Zillow Gone Wild-ing me before Zillow really hit the midwest.
I found it DEEPLY satisfying when they happened to do this in a room I was in, and I was able to say “well, I had 6 offers above asking price within 72 hours of the listing going live, so it must be okay. How long has your house been on the market again? 6 weeks? Hmm”
Not that this is remotely the point, but I’m house hunting right now and find myself so much more drawn to deeply weird, lived-in spaces that take big aesthetic swings — vastly preferable, IMO, to the slap-some-white-paint-and-vinyl-plank-over-it, aggressively neutral listings. I like houses that feel as though they reflect the stories of the people who came before me, even if their taste isn’t necessarily aligned with my own, or “marketable” in a broad sense. Far preferable to living in a bland beige box.
Same! I'm not house hunting, but like a lot of people, I spend a fair amount of time on Zillow perusing what's available and it makes me so sad to see the number of houses that just feel so completely empty because of the design choices that were made. I know real estate agents also frequently recommend that people remove a lot of their personal belongings when trying to sell so that potential buyers can imagine themselves there, but that never works for me. I want to see houses that are warm and full of life. I'm about to start a very necessary kitchen renovation in the next few months and I'm so afraid that it's just going to turn my space into something overly sleek and unrecognizable.
Yes! This! We're looking for a small second home (not something to rent, but for US) and it's been so dismal. So many houses having been renovated or flipped to be as neutral and bland as possible; walls knocked down to be "open concept". Give me a bathroom with 1960s pink or green tile! A kitchen with well-made cabinets that have lasted for generations! Walls! For the love of all that is holy....no laminate gray grain wood floors. Yes, give me a lived-in space!!!
These quickie, laminate-grey-floored renos are especially frustrating from a sustainability standpoint. If I’m gonna rip out a permanent fixture anyway, I’d rather it be a battered, water damaged, 60-year-old bathroom vanity instead of some junky, slapdash year-old replacement installed in the name of saleability.
I think this is very much the point! We’re conditioned to think that we need to make things blank to approachable and accessible to others, but paradoxically, what may turn out to be most inviting is the example of living in an individualized and personal way - does it empower someone to imagine how they could make their own mark, reflecting their own personality?
We bought a house in January and I absolutely fell in love with it because it is a quirky lived in house (built 100 years ago last major renovation 20 years ago but with an eye to keeping some of the house's original character) - in fact the dining room came painted dark blue and it was the photo everyone we showed it to was obsessed with. We are pretty sure we were able to get it for such a good price because the last reno being 20 years ago made the kitchen and bathrooms just a little dated - a recently renovated house down the street sold for 40 percent more than what we paid.
We rented for 20 years so we are not only keeping the blue dining room but planning to cover our walls with as many vivid colors as possible (my husband has already painted his office red).
Yes! It's been so hard to find what my realtor calls a "charmer"--a house that hasn't had all of its personality stripped out and replaced with something pinterest-approved. Most of the newly done places look lovely and they just don't feel like me; they feel like they could belong to the same version of me that wears pastel sheath dresses, which is to say a chic and polished version of me that doesn't exist, and who I'm happier having given up on.
When I see those very bland spaces I assume the craftsmanship is poor, b/c in my experience house hunting so many of them are shitty flips. A house that looks like a home & has some life in it **feels** like it was better cared for, loved and possibly restored/renovated. This could be my bias too, bc I did exactly what I wanted when we renovated our house with no eye towards resale!
This actually reminds me of wedding planning--every decision we made because "people" would like it fell flat. All of the decisions we made because we wanted to share a favorite thing with those we love went over brilliantly. As did decisions made for specific people who we could call out by name (such as the special menu for those with serious dietary restrictions--no one goes hungry if I'm hosting!).
This is when I realized that pleasing "people" is a really stupid guiding principle. If you can't name the person who will have the opinion (and further yet, care about that person's specific opinion), it's just noise.
Excellent point!!! Makes me think on all the ways this applies. Obviously businesses that don’t try to generally please everyone end up being dearly loved by the clientele they do serve. Gift-giving…same thing.
Wow I love the idea that you need to be able to name the person. That feels like it would be a really powerful tool to stop the "they" worries in their tracks.
So happy to read this as I’ve just painted my upstairs bathroom bright spring green. Downstairs bathroom is murder red. Bedroom is National Geographic yellow. I love it. And Someone else will love it one day, right?
I am an award-winning commercial design director at a prestigious architecture and design firm - that expectant gaze is even more intense when cast upon me LOL.
We bought our house in 2000, and it had just been renovated, not atrocious, but certainly not to my taste. We were too poor to change anything then, other than a lick of paint, and a backyard deck. Now that we could afford it, I no longer care. It’s the cozy home where my sons grew up, has no major damage to the finishes, and we’d rather do other things with our time instead of renovations. We’ve properly maintained it to keep the structure sound, and don’t give much thought to the next owners.
People always tell us how cosy our home feels; many of my designer friends do live in perfect homes, but I see the effort required, and have no intention of trying to live up to those impossible standards...
I do admit that because of what I do for a living, construction, design, and beauty is a daily part of my life, so that itch gets scratched plenty! Perhaps I am that shoeless cobbler...
"we’d rather do other things with our time instead of renovations" and "I see the effort required, and have no intention of trying to live up to those impossible standards" hit me hard—YES! This is exactly how I approach my home. It works, it's maintained, and beyond that, I'd rather read a book or go for a walk or work in the garden or cuddle my dog etc etc etc
OMG THIS. My parents did this when I was growing up, and all I learned was that I want to come home to a place that feels like home (... lots of books, comfortable couch, good space for casual dinner parties) and be able to relax rather than renovate... AND that I value financial stability and a paid-off mortgage over a showpiece that leaves me stressed out and broke.
“Cozy” is such a good description for a home! I’ve had a couple friends from the UK walk into my home and just gasp, “This is the first place that has felt like a home since we moved here.” Smallish, lots of colors and textures and tschoktskes, lots of original work by artists I know, various furniture collected and refinished by family over nearly two centuries.
I feel this very much, I'm an architect/landscape architect married to another architect and we live in the smallest house on our block (because that's what we could afford!) with a somewhat unkempt garden. It is a very quirky little house, we both love it specifically because the previous owner lived in it 40 years and it didn't have the aesthetic or weird design decisions you often see with flips. While we'll need to expand at some point as our kids get bigger and possibly aging parents move in, we've mostly just been maintaining it and making little upgrades, I think much to the confusion of our neighbors who seem to expect more out of us, haha. But we're planning to be there a long time and while I feel the pressure of the gaze as well it's been freeing not to think of changes we want in terms of resale value but rather fun projects we're interested in and suit our lifestyle.
That said, the anxiety over retrofits for aging parents is a real one and having just gone through some rough stuff with my in-laws as they aged in a house that became flat out hazardous for them I do suggest people consider and spend the money on that if they are similarly resourced or have that need.
Speaking as a real estate broker who was on the Hawaii Life show on HGTV three times, I can relate! People are always surprised that the home I purchased 18 months now looks nothing like the award winning architecture and interior design I sometimes sell. But they always say it looks like me. I love that it has 43 year old character. The floors had been changed to some cheap pretend-wood plank that turns out to be perfect for my 14-year-old incontinent Weimaraner. Do I have renovations that will eventually rise to the top of my list? Yes. But I plan to spend the rest of my decades here, so we have time.
I feel all this! To recenter I like to pull out one of my kids’ favorite old picture books, The Big Orange Splot. When Mr Plumbean’s house has a can of orange paint fall on the roof, all his neighbors complain; theirs is a “neat street.” But instead of painting over it, Mr Plumbean adds to it, until his house looks like all his dreams. One by one, his neighbors are won over, and they, too, let their houses be as deeply weird as they are :-)
Big Orange Spot was one of my kids' favorites, too. When, during Covid, I dug up our whole front lawn and planted perennials and vegetables (it is still splendiferous), I thought of good ol' Mr. Plumbeam. ("My house is me and I am it" or something close to that.)
I love this quirky book. All of the homeowners say, after renovating their houses, “My house is me and I am it. My house is where I like to be and it looks like all my dreams.” Mr Plumbean looks so happy to be drinking lemonade in his hammock, surrounded by his trippy house and new pet alligator.
I think of this book often as I roam my neighborhood; it reminds me to enjoy the hot pink and lavender house because somebody *chose* that because they love it.
I got really into Zillow for a while... in an anthropological way. I was fascinated by the largest, most garish offerings. I wondered what people who have movie theaters and bowling alleys and swimming pools do to see other people. “Bowling Alone” but in your basement. It seems to me the optimization of the home is also very much to blame for the corrosion of the public square--and for our sense of connectedness and the “villaging” we evolved to need (and enjoy). Even those of us who can’t afford massive subterranean entertainment centers may feel lulled into staying home simply because we’ve invested so much in it. Why go the movies when you can watch a giant TV on your sectional?
YES! It crosses my mind a lot, how the American home and the very American focus on individuality/bootstraps is destroying our sense of community. People (capitalists) will come up with every single possible customization for all aspects of life to keep you from having to go outside and interact with other humans. From the way we live, to the way we die, the focus (and responsibility) is on the individual.
There is so very much to be written about House As Status Symbol. I know I mentioned her elsewhere, but Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell really digs into that in interesting ways.
Eula Biss talked about this a little in her book Having and Being Had, especially the material aspects of a home and its connection with someone's social identity. she has more of a poetic take than a scientific one per se, but it's some interesting food for thought.
Oh, I read this and I suddenly felt very sad. I guess I always thought the point of having a movie theater and a bowling alley and a swimming pool and a wet bar in my house was so that I could have all of my friends over! We could watch a movie and then go swimming!!! Then no one would need to worry about sensory issues or food allergies [or COVID-19].
I do not even own a "normal" house so I guess I totally misunderstood this phenomenon.
As a new, first-time homeowner, I feel this hard. I’m also single and it stresses me out to think how expensive it will be to optimize the space for the resale value on one income. I’m trying to get out of that mindset and just enjoy my sturdy pre-war home with its old-ass windows, giant box of a fridge, and crooked toilet.
I was SO overwhelmed by my first house. What I learned and now preach is this: NOTHING must get done right now, unless it actively makes you unsafe. The appearance of your home has nothing to do with your value as a person. Just live in it.
You need time to assess what changes might actually improve your quality of life, versus what HGTV tells you that you should want to do. This is your research period!
I think part of this is the reason I choose to keep renting vs buying. I’m terrified of all the work that would come with owning a house as a single person.
"work that would come with owning a house as a single person." Couples too..........especially if you aren't handy and have to outsource everything. It gets so expensive and you learn to YouTube a lot.
I had to live in my place for a couple of years to 1) get use to having my very own place 2) understand my own lifestyle. Nothing needs to be done you have the cash and time to get things done!
Jul 19, 2023·edited Jul 19, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
as a poc female millennial who spent years paying off student loan debt, car debt, being underpaid and paying city rent prices, i'm nowhere near the ability to buy a home. the act of this and having a child, two things my husband and i have decided not to do, are out of both reach financially and not desirable for us (probably related). that said, from young adulthood, i bucked at the expectation from my parents and society that I "had" to buy a house because it's a "good asset" when it often seemed more like a outsized stressor (cue memories of waking up at dawn to beat the summer heat and pull weeds for my parents in high school) and huge anchor to a place i wasn't sure how long i wanted to be rooted to.
there are pros and cons to renting and owning, but as a renter, i appreciate that I have the flexibility to make our place homey without the pressure of improving the house structurally, keeping up with its market value, and fashioning it into the fullest expression of my status and identity. as i get older, i'm seeing through the veil of making anything my whole personality whether it's my job, house, clothes, travels, etc., and how expensive it all gets, which has been a journey as someone who deeply appreciates art, design, and architecture.
for bipoc folks and others who still feel the ripples of colonization, slavery, and oppression, i see and don't underestimate the value and security of home and property ownership. i just wonder about how obsession as a whole with 'owning' instead of 'being with for a time' and how it feels like capitalism, consumption, and colonization drives everything. we're like hungry hungry hippos that hope to stand out and win by all that we eat, so to speak.
p.s. is there an essay somewhere here about the market-reflected gaze of raising a child? how do you cultivate individuality/sense of self outside of unhealthy socio-cultural norms while knowing that a child has to get a job and needs quality relationships? clearly i don't know but this seems like an incredibly difficult balance to strike. curious how others feel about this.
I believe for many of us POC who own homes today it's not about making a buck or even owning- it's about perceived security and perceived generational wealth. Many Black and POC people in this country literally had ( and HAVE ) their homes devalued for the sheer fact of OWNING homes, and we grew up seeing White real estate concern devalue whole neighborhoods, use newspapers and government officials to implement eminent domain over entire towns and neighborhoods(for a mall, usually) , steal homes and force people into renting. This is not a long time ago- I am in my late forties saw this happen as a KID in the 80s.
Up until last year, the low interest environment in the USA enabled many of us to be able to catch up, usually in medium/big cities , usually with the samey 'luxury' finishes (is it a luxury if everyone is doing it?) and now the 'be with for a while' is something that can put money in our pockets. The Hungry hippo aspect of it all could stop if there was a priority of financial security, health and safety for everyone.
"The Hungry hippo aspect of it all could stop if there was a priority of financial security, health and safety for everyone" — this seems so central to me. Precarity (particularly precarity felt by those who've never felt it in their lifetimes) can fuel such an intense, profit-minded, self-protective stance — when it comes to home ownership, but also when it comes to "school choice" and taxes and so much else.
there's also something here that i'm still working through about the difference between home ownership/inhabitance as protection, stability, and peace vs home ownership as status, entitlement, and reward. they aren't mutually exclusive obviously, but there's a different sentiment there. a friend recently said they "deserved" to buy their new 1.3 million dollar home because they worked hard (they did work but they did also receive A LOT of tech stock), and i thought, well, we ALL deserve housing.
100% to all of this. and the precarity is something that capitalism drives/depends on because of this idea that one has more because others have less (and those who have less don't deserve the more). what value is my "more" if everyone has it, like edie mentioned. so many things could feel more secure if there was a universal agreement that all of us being cared for in a real, lived way makes the world better for everyone. i just don't know that some people actually want that reality :(
I feel like part of the problem with our society, as a whole, is that we are commoditizing needs like shelter. A primary residence is not an asset, and it is not an investment. It is a damned expensive good for use.
I 100% understand hoping to not take a total bath when selling that extremely expensive good for use, but when we start calling things "investments" or "assets" when they just...aren't it opens up the door to a lot of mental gymnastics to justify a "good" (read: terrible) decision.
The fact that real estate prices have risen (in real, inflation-adjusted terms) about 2x-3x in my lifetime isn't something to be celebrated, and it certainly isn't something to be banked on. It is an unsustainable trend and the making of a housing crisis (which, last I glanced at the news, we are in now).
"p.s. is there an essay somewhere here about the market-reflected gaze of raising a child? how do you cultivate individuality/sense of self outside of unhealthy socio-cultural norms while knowing that a child has to get a job and needs quality relationships? clearly i don't know but this seems like an incredibly difficult balance to strike. curious how others feel about this."
There are a thousand essays and infinite therapy sessions in there about this. Thank you for saying it out loud; my kids are all under 6 and I was beginning to feel a little crazy for feeling this pressure without having words for it.
I handle it in part by frequently saying out loud "in our culture..." Trying to make invisible, assumed pressures visible and question-worthy. So in our culture, we consider nipples private except in certain specific circumstances. Mm, no, in our culture we don't eat boogers. Recently I was grumbling about a pirate toy that dressed the pirate gent in a dapper coat and the pirate lady in a tank top. My 6-year-old goes, "It's just pirate culture, Mom."
"society that I "had" to buy a house because it's a "good asset" when it often seemed more like a outsized stressor"...........................................YES to this. Everyone has the ability to define their own stressors and for me ownership is a stressor I don't want. And ask all the people underwater in their homes and have to sell for below what they owe how much of a good investment it was. I feel like it is ALWAYS a gamble.
We have one of those weird, garish houses that would get roasted on Zillow (and I have plans to make it even more colorful!) We have one room where the top is painted like clouds (sponge-painting ftw!), bottom is green grass, and there is a tulip/white picket fence chair border wallpaper. People assumed it would be the first thing we changed when we bought it, and I said you can tear that out over my dead body. I am a big believer that a home should be what makes you happy since you have to see it everyday. I hate the grey/navy/white everything trend - if that sparks joy, cool! But so many people just do it because that's what your house is *supposed* to look like right now. I would live inside of a rainbow if that was physically possible and my house reflects that.
We get two kinds of comments, often from the same people:
- It's too much, you'll never resell it, you need to repaint everything, if you just threw in $50k (!!) you could make it look really classy
- This is the coziest home I've ever been in, it's so you and we can tell that real people live here.
And our dogwalker gave us my favorite compliment of all time - it's like a hobbit house, like I step inside and I'm instantly cozy and safe and know there are good snacks.
This! Have your house the way you want it, and if in some future time you need to sell, evaluate whether you value extra $$ or the ease of making no changes. I want to see houses that reflect their inhabitants, not people who reflect their gray houses.
Oh gosh, I could write an essay about home ownership. So, I will..........
My husband and I got married 18 years ago when we were in our early 30s. We lived in an apartment for the first 2 years of our marriage. I loved it mostly because everything was someone else's problem and it was really the first time I'd ever lived on my own. Yes, I lived with my parents until I got married because I couldn't afford to live on my own; I was working 3 jobs and trying to pay off a ton of medical debt. My husband hated the apartment. He had lived with roommates in apartments since he was 18 and was tired of it and wanted to buy a home. I didn't want the responsibility. But marriage is about compromise and so I lost that argument and we bought our first home in 2009 when the market was really super low and great for buyer's not sellers. The 2 of us moved from a 1200 sq ft urban apartment to a 3600 sq ft 3 stories suburban single family home on a .75 acre. It was too big for 2 people who were never going to have kids but it was a great deal at the time and it was near my mother who loved having us close by as she grieved the loss of my father and needed help.
Fast forward 12 years. We hated that home. We learned not long after purchasing the home that the seller ran a home inspection business on the side and knew how to hide all kinds of problems so they wouldn't get noticed in a home inspection. It was a money pit. And for 2 people living paycheck to paycheck and who were now house poor it meant that every time we built up our savings we had to use it all to fix something. No money for vacations or anything fun. It made us miserable. I won't even go into all the ways we were scammed on this house by the sellers. My husband is the least handy person on the planet and so that meant we had to pay people to fix things rather than do it ourselves. We couldn't wait to get out of that house and not be homeowners again. We thought if we could just sell it and get what we owed left on the mortgage and walk away we'd be happy. We knew we were never going to get back what we put into it.
Well, little did we know what the market was going to do during COVID. We were both working from home due to COVID and we saw what dumpy houses in our neighborhood were going for and were astounded. Our house was WAY better than these we thought even if it was a bit dated. It was clean and had so much mechanical items replaced, new paint, new gutters, etc. So, we talked to a real estate agent on a Wednesday and she told us what we could sell our house for and our jaws hit the floor. We listed 2 days later on Friday and sold the house 2 days later on Sunday. In the matter of 5 days we were free. We had no idea where we'd go or what we'd do but it was crazy what the house sold for. We knew we'd never see that kind of money again. I'm sure it wasn't a lot of money to some people but it was to us.
We ended up getting rid of almost everything we own, paid off the mortgage, paid off all our debt, and still put 6 figures in the bank. We moved in with my mother for 6 weeks and then decided to move to the beach. We now rent a lovely renovated 1800 sq ft home on a lake. We are so glad we downsized home and material possessions and we are so happy to be renters and everything be someone else's problem. We have good landlords that live down the street. We actually have a life now and spend time doing fun things. We have been able to put away money for retirement which is important in our 50s. We live simply. We drive 2 cars with over 100K miles (one is 24 years old). We never would have been able to do what we do now had we not sold the house. I don't know what the future lies for us. I don't know if we'll risk buying another home again. I just know we love not being responsible for all the crap that home ownership doles out. It was NOT a fun experience for us. We weren't living. We were existing.
I realize there are pros and cons of both renting and buying. I realize there are good landlords and bad landlords. I realize that home ownership means the rent is never going up. But, it's such a gamble if you ever even make money on it when you sell it. Yes, it worked for us the one and only time we owned a home but I think that was an unusual circumstance during COVID. I'm not sure that we could have sold it and made money under normal circumstances. For our emotional and mental well being the constant fear of no savings and what was gonna break next and how many thousands of dollars would it need almost broke us. What this also means is that I'm now super-hesitant to take all that money out of savings that I made on the house to put as a down payment on another home. Then I won't have money in savings and I hate that feeling. That's scary getting as close to retirement as we are within the next 15 years hopefully. I also hate the feeling that if my landlord decided to sell the home then I've got to to find a new place. But for now this is what we're doing and it feels right.
Your story just reinforces the idea that buying (and then selling) a house is the way to get financial security. As a lifelong renter, my rent goes up every single year without exception and I don't have a down payment. Enjoy Florida.
I had the same issue too when we rented our apartment with rent going up every year. I'm not sure if the difference now is that our rent is controlled by a person and not a corporation or just our particular circumstance. I don't have enough personal knowledge to know as this is only the 2nd time we have rented.
You are correct in that our particular situation it gave us financial security. However, I have plenty of family members and friends who it has never worked for and in fact made their financial situation worse. It's always a gamble. And our financial security is only guaranteed as long as we stay renters. If I buy another house that security has to be used on a down payment and then I go back to nothing in the bank again and living paycheck to paycheck.
I realize that home ownership means the rent is never going up. But taxes do and in some areas can increase the cost of ownership to the point of unaffordable. Sadly, some owners who now rely on their social security and pension fund themselves unable to keep up. And if you live in Idaho some of the safety nets for older people have been yanked out and are causing considerable hardship.
For anyone who wants to read Grant and Handelman's full article at no cost, I'd like to recommend checking with your public library to see if they participate in Inter library loan (ILL) - if not, many larger public library systems allow in-state residents to sign up for a card online to access eresources. You can place a request for the article through ILL, and your library will send it to a library that subscribes to the journal. That library will make a pdf and email to you for free. (Also super helpful if you need to access medical articles or other pay-walled content)
I've also heard from several different sources that if you can find and contact the authors directly they'll often be very happy to send you the articles for free. They aren't getting a cut of the fees you'd pay; those just support the journals etc. Most people want their work to be read and would love to share it.
Thanks for this! I think it’s bananas that academic content still operates on this financial model. To my understanding, it’s not like any of our money goes to the authors or even their institutions, only to the publication.
I don’t know about other disciplines, but for humanities scholars this is the case!! When I was published in a top journal, my parents asked what I got. Two free copies of the issue I was published in (which, to be fair, do mean a lot to me).
I bought my house in a small mountain town somewhat reluctantly after my landlords sold my delightful rental. The housing stock in our town is limited, and I felt lucky to find a house with "good bones" (i.e., it's built on a foundation, the floors are level, and it's been re-insulated within the last century--none of which are guarantees here) that only needed "cosmetic upgrades." I was sure that once I moved in, I would repaint the blood red accent wall in the living room, redo the kitchen, upgrade the bathrooms, etc.
Lo and behold, turns out that becoming a homeowner didn't magickly imbue me with the time, energy, and desire to become a part-time home renovator. I live in the mountains because I love to spend as much time as possible playing outside, and I like spending my disposable income on skis, bikes, and adventures with my friends. This house lets me live affordably in a place I love and host the people I love in order to share it with them, too. And let me tell you, the old, weird Noah's Ark mural in the basement is a real talking point--no plans to paint over it anytime soon!
For me (40 year old renter in a nasty and getting nastier all the time urban housing market) this piece could have used a paragraph about the immense privilege of being able to own a home, of being able to *not* have a landlord. My rage and bitterness about landlords and passive income streams and constant endless rent raises that come with negligible improvements / upgrades *at best*, cannot possibly be contained or expressed here. But the idea of yearning for a landlord feels a lot like telling somebody who doesn't have legs that sometimes you really wish you didn't have to go jogging every day. And you know frankly I am way more interested in digging into the question of home ownership at all (#landback) than whether somebody regrets painting their cabinets.
I just felt really alienated by this one. I'm not commenting here to start shit. Your newsletter is one of my favorites, I really appreciate your work, and in that context I want to share that this one was rough to me.
I had a paragraph in here originally that included the idea that ownership of a home is a tremendous privilege, a truth I hold very closely alongside the savings and time-obliterating reality for many (including myself) of also owning that house. Both things can be true. I took out that paragraph because I wanted to do more showing than telling when it came to how we should think about how this place where so many have found themselves when it comes to home ownership (miserable about their homes, obsessed with resale value, clinging to the market-inflected gaze because it is their sole asset) is so deeply connected to way we've allowed home ownership to become a privilege. Nearly 67% of Americans own homes. Is that a number want to increase or decrease? Do we want to keep the home as the holy grail, or make it less overdetermined? In hindsight, I should have kept the paragraph in. Sometimes it's important to both tell explicitly and show.
Anne, I'd also like to hear about the generational differences on thoughts of home ownership. I'm in my mid-50s and it was always drilled into me that home ownership what what I was supposed to do for all those normal reasons we hear about. But, working for the last 20 years almost in academia I'm finding that the conversations with students and their ideas about home ownership are radically different. It's more of not only can they not afford it (high prices, student debt, etc) but they don't want to either. Not wanting to be tied down, freedom to move whenever and not have to buy/sell, responsibility, less savings for emergencies, etc etc. We also know for the housing bust of 2008/2009 that home ownership isn't always a money-maker or financial security. Every single person I know that is a landlord and/or has homes for passive income say it's not extra monthly income or sometimes even yearly income. Some years they don't even make money or barely break even. It's a long game of maintaining these homes for their retirements when they can sell them all and hopefully have more money for retirement. That seems like a huge gamble to me.
"Some years they don't even make money or barely break even."
If landlords want to treat housing like an investment, then they have to accept that, like any other investment, it's a gamble. They won't always have positive returns. But at least at the end of it, they still have an asset - as opposed to the renters, who don't own the asset and who have helped fund this 'gambling' in the first place.
Honestly, same; thank you for your comment. The first sentence in the piece really took me aback and I had to sit with it for a sec before I understood where it was going/where it was coming from. I’m 41, a lifelong renter, in Seattle. I mean … I just paid off my (undergrad) student loans about a year ago and am fortunate to have been able to do so. I would’ve had to have been able to start saving much earlier in life (eg paid enough), or partnered with someone earlier, or already owned an asset to sell, or have parental support (etc etc etc). OR … housing costs would have to stop leaping upward from year to year. I read some article about the housing market awhile ago here and it said you used to be able to save for a down payment within 3-5 years and now it’s 10+ years on the Seattle median salary, which is already high.
Mason, You may see my longer comment on here on another thread about my experience with home ownership and wanting to go back to be a renter. I appreciate your comment about landlord/legs. I had never thought of it that way and I appreciate the perspective.
I felt this too. I've only been living on my own for 5 years but in that time our rent has increased exponentially. It's frustrating to feel like you're being slowly shoved out of your home or have to keep moving further out of the city or making your life smaller and smaller just to keep up with rent. (I live in Nashville for context).
I'm a single, child-free woman that rents a small condo outside of Seattle. This article hits. I love my career, earn an excellent salary, save and invest appropriately to fund my retirement, and regularly pursue my hobbies - yet, I still find myself battling against every societal norm that tells me I'm doing this life ALL wrong. I don't understand how homeowners can comment to me "you're throwing money away by renting!" while investing so many dollars and free weekends into home improvement projects. I'm happy to let my landlord assume responsibility for my physical residence as I pursue more meaningful opportunities in my life.
So true! I'm a fan of Ramit Sethi's answer to the people who say "you're paying your landlord's mortgage!" which is "when you go out to eat, do you complain that you're paying the restaurant owner's mortgage???" Home ownership is an expensive-ass endeavor, and if that's not where you want to spend your money, three cheers for just not doing it.
I, too, rent in Seattle. I do so after 20 years of home ownership and remodeling with my ex-husband. I'm so happy to rent a tiny vintage apartment in a great Ballard location and call my landlord when things go wrong. My friends, who all own large fancy-ish houses, completely do not understand my joy. I think they think I'm poor. When in fact I'd rather use my excellent salary to save for retirement, travel, treat myself to ice cream, and enjoy my life. I do not miss owning my own home. Solidarity!
Same. You should read what I posted on here as well. They teach in business school now that the fantasy of how ownership like it used to be isn't really all it's cracked up to be. Not sure I want to be in that ever again.
I’m a Black woman, and studies have shown that just my ownership of my home decreases its value. This is freeing in some ways - I can do what I want to my home, because *I’m* the biggest factor in its depreciation. If I ever decide to sell my home, I’ll hire a stager to eliminate all traces of me in the decor, to make it blander and more palatable to potential buyers. (There’s a lot to be said about how the “market-reflected gaze” is an extension of the white gaze, but that’s an essay for someone other than me to write.)
The market-reflected gaze is *so* white, in so many explicit (see: take down pictures of your Black family, take down any art that reads as 'Othered') and implicit ways (dominant understandings of what 'professional,' 'organized,' etc. even mean). Definitely worth further conversation (and I'm going to see if others have already written about it, too)
There was a story within the last couple years if I remember correctly, of a family in the Bay Area who had their value undercut by a large amount because they were black. Worthwhile to check out Little White Houses: How the Postwar Home Constructed Race in America by Dianne Suzette Harris. There's a study looking at interiors and how they read as class markers--the Italian one is called out as being "lower class" because of course Italian was considered "ethnic."
Yes to reading Dianne Harris’ wonderful work on this! She points out the GI bill enabled FHA mortgages were largely tools of racial assimilation for white passing folks from cities who had never owned property before, and spent much of their time hiding evidence of their cultural identities (like outdoor laundry or productive gardens) behind landscaping. NDB Connolly’s work on real estate and race is also incredible, and he was in the news earlier this year for staging an experiment to demonstrate how racially motivated the home appraisal process is (which goes a bit beyond market dynamics IMO). Here’s the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/18/realestate/housing-discrimination-maryland.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
This happened to the daughter of one of my company's clients, who also lives in the Bay Area. When she took an appraiser around her condo, it did not gain anything in value; when her mixed-race but white-presenting husband did, the condo's value increased. He wrote about it on his Substack: https://briancopeland.substack.com/p/copelands-corner-august-24-2022
Richard and Leah Rothsteins latest book Just Action addresses the racism and intrinsic whiteness attached to how homes are valued according to assessors (local govt) vs appraisers (real estate) and the implications this has for the racial wealth gap.
Yep - we are a mixed family and we've been advised that when it comes time to sell, we should take put all the family portraits away because racism could cost us tens of thousands of dollars. It is so, so gross.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's work on this blows my mind.
Connecting race to a home's value is known as red-lining, and it's been done for decades. It's technically been illegal for 50 years. I'm sorry to say it's still going on. It's one of the many facets of racism that was built into federal, state, and local laws starting around WWII.
There's an excellent book on the subject, very readable: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein.
When my husband's aunt sold her place, part of the staging the agents had her do was removing her Indian art, and I wondered if that was more about the art or more about removing signs of the seller being Indian.
I hear you on this front -- I'm a South Asian woman and recently went through the process of selling my condo and I was saddened by just how much the best advice on the market was to make my home as white as possible (obviously, not said that way, but all the coded language is easy to read between the lines). I had two custom murals that my mom had painted for me & I didn't have the heart to paint over it, so I said screw it and kept them up... and it took longer to sell, buuut I felt less like my soul was crushed and I ended up selling the condo to a man of color.
That would be fascinating and quite sad to read. I’m growing tired of the sameness. Frankly. I say you be you. Enjoy your home. When it comes to selling your investment, and if this isn’t the home you plan to grow old in, then yes, make the most $ and move on.
Isn’t part of the problem that we view homes as investments rather than a place to live?
I guess I’ve always searched for a little of both. A home is a good investment for most people. You sink money into it every month. But it should also be yours to enjoy and not obsess about selling.
Oh wow. I did not know that about value being connected to race. That is so disturbing.
i’m about to wallpaper one of my bathroom walls with a wallpaper called “coven” by maison c, which features naked women looking like they’re doing some witchy stuff (and the background color i chose is pink). it’s expensive wallpaper so i can only afford to do one wall, and lately i’ve been having doubts about putting it up, but now i can’t freaking wait. it’s so beautiful and slightly irreverent and i can’t wait to be naked in my bathroom with these naked ladies lol
I strongy suggest others also google this wallpaper because it RULES
This would make me want to buy the house.
I just googled the wallpaper and I think that is PERFECT for a bathroom!!!
As a child in the 80s one of the homes my parents rented in Dallas TX had naked people on the wallpaper and even though my parents thought it was inappropriate us kids loved it.
Cultural differences are HILARIOUS - I'm French Canadian and my mother is an artist, and nudes as decor wasn't something we've ever blinked an eye at. Actually, I think some of the nudes in my own house are charcoal sketches my mom did!
Depends on your community like anything else. We have nudes, my friend group probably doesn't think twice. I've rented an airbnb with a neon vulva on the wall. It's a big country.
You made my week. I had dinner in San Antonio at a lovely restaurant called Best Quality Daughter (from the Joy Luck Club) and the women's bathroom has this wallpaper. I didn't know what it was called or who made it till i read your comment and googled it -- this paper is PHENOMENAL in person. I'm so excited for you!
PLEASE do this and report back. I am all about a statement wall with wallpaper - we did that in two rooms and didn't regret it one bit. One of them was super expensive AND it is paste-up wallpaper so we had to actually find someone who still knows how to put it up. 100% worth it. Please post pics when you're done!
i absolutely will! i’m going to do a jib door too! extra impact
This wallpaper sounds incredible!
You are going to love it! I wallpapered one wall of a short narrow hallway in my apartment with a big bold print. My friends all thought (think?) I was crazy until it was done. It is A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. Even my landlord loves it.
I WANT THAT WALLPAPER oh my god it's gorgeous. That is an EXCELLENT choice and your bathroom is going to be absolutely gorgeous.
That wallpaper is FANTASTIC!
This will look SO cool!
Oh this is incredible. I love a chaotic bathroom wallpaper so much.
Please tell me you are still gonna do this!
That wallpaper is goddamned glorious.
Sienna miller has this in her AD Open House tour — her house is actually really personal and charming, though someone could certainly write a dissertation on AD tours generally
Is this it? http://www.maisonc.com/coven-wallpaper
yes!
What you wrote here made me drop my laptop and run around the room in circles, because I'm just finishing an essay about how AirBnB turns houses that should be homes into hotels/museums while pushing regular buyers out of the market.
if i had a dime for every time i looked at a home listing on zillow and said "this was definitely a failed airbnb" because they all just look the same, cheap, and so bland. like is there a website out there that is basically amazon for cheap decor/furniture to put in your airbnb?
Please share when it's published, would love to read this!
Yes, please send it my way!
Oh, so interesting! Would love to read this when you're done.
I also want to read this essay
I bought a house when I started graduate school in 2003 (an 800 square foot 1959 2 bedroom), and proceeded to do light upgrades that I loved - a checkerboard tile floor in the kitchen paired with bright teal paint, retro-inspired tiling in the bathroom with lavender walls, a bright yellow bedroom with black furniture and colorful homemade curtains. When I put that house on the market 10 years later, some fellow graduates of my program were also selling their house, a very neutral newer build house. Not realizing that the listing they were sharing was my house (we weren’t friends, they weren’t invited to my parties), they broadly mocked my house for how colorful and unappealing to buyers it was, how the seller of my house must be stupid not to have painted the rooms white to appeal to buyers, how they were smart and kept their house nice and neutral. Basically Zillow Gone Wild-ing me before Zillow really hit the midwest.
I found it DEEPLY satisfying when they happened to do this in a room I was in, and I was able to say “well, I had 6 offers above asking price within 72 hours of the listing going live, so it must be okay. How long has your house been on the market again? 6 weeks? Hmm”
They eventually sold below asking 3 months later.
Not that this is remotely the point, but I’m house hunting right now and find myself so much more drawn to deeply weird, lived-in spaces that take big aesthetic swings — vastly preferable, IMO, to the slap-some-white-paint-and-vinyl-plank-over-it, aggressively neutral listings. I like houses that feel as though they reflect the stories of the people who came before me, even if their taste isn’t necessarily aligned with my own, or “marketable” in a broad sense. Far preferable to living in a bland beige box.
Same! I'm not house hunting, but like a lot of people, I spend a fair amount of time on Zillow perusing what's available and it makes me so sad to see the number of houses that just feel so completely empty because of the design choices that were made. I know real estate agents also frequently recommend that people remove a lot of their personal belongings when trying to sell so that potential buyers can imagine themselves there, but that never works for me. I want to see houses that are warm and full of life. I'm about to start a very necessary kitchen renovation in the next few months and I'm so afraid that it's just going to turn my space into something overly sleek and unrecognizable.
Yes! This! We're looking for a small second home (not something to rent, but for US) and it's been so dismal. So many houses having been renovated or flipped to be as neutral and bland as possible; walls knocked down to be "open concept". Give me a bathroom with 1960s pink or green tile! A kitchen with well-made cabinets that have lasted for generations! Walls! For the love of all that is holy....no laminate gray grain wood floors. Yes, give me a lived-in space!!!
Oh my god, SERIOUSLY. Walls, PLEASE, and if I never see gray faux-wood laminate again I'll die happy.
These quickie, laminate-grey-floored renos are especially frustrating from a sustainability standpoint. If I’m gonna rip out a permanent fixture anyway, I’d rather it be a battered, water damaged, 60-year-old bathroom vanity instead of some junky, slapdash year-old replacement installed in the name of saleability.
Yes, the whole HGTV reno culture is even more depressing when you think about the environment.
I think this is very much the point! We’re conditioned to think that we need to make things blank to approachable and accessible to others, but paradoxically, what may turn out to be most inviting is the example of living in an individualized and personal way - does it empower someone to imagine how they could make their own mark, reflecting their own personality?
We bought a house in January and I absolutely fell in love with it because it is a quirky lived in house (built 100 years ago last major renovation 20 years ago but with an eye to keeping some of the house's original character) - in fact the dining room came painted dark blue and it was the photo everyone we showed it to was obsessed with. We are pretty sure we were able to get it for such a good price because the last reno being 20 years ago made the kitchen and bathrooms just a little dated - a recently renovated house down the street sold for 40 percent more than what we paid.
We rented for 20 years so we are not only keeping the blue dining room but planning to cover our walls with as many vivid colors as possible (my husband has already painted his office red).
Yes! It's been so hard to find what my realtor calls a "charmer"--a house that hasn't had all of its personality stripped out and replaced with something pinterest-approved. Most of the newly done places look lovely and they just don't feel like me; they feel like they could belong to the same version of me that wears pastel sheath dresses, which is to say a chic and polished version of me that doesn't exist, and who I'm happier having given up on.
When I see those very bland spaces I assume the craftsmanship is poor, b/c in my experience house hunting so many of them are shitty flips. A house that looks like a home & has some life in it **feels** like it was better cared for, loved and possibly restored/renovated. This could be my bias too, bc I did exactly what I wanted when we renovated our house with no eye towards resale!
This actually reminds me of wedding planning--every decision we made because "people" would like it fell flat. All of the decisions we made because we wanted to share a favorite thing with those we love went over brilliantly. As did decisions made for specific people who we could call out by name (such as the special menu for those with serious dietary restrictions--no one goes hungry if I'm hosting!).
This is when I realized that pleasing "people" is a really stupid guiding principle. If you can't name the person who will have the opinion (and further yet, care about that person's specific opinion), it's just noise.
Excellent point!!! Makes me think on all the ways this applies. Obviously businesses that don’t try to generally please everyone end up being dearly loved by the clientele they do serve. Gift-giving…same thing.
Wow I love the idea that you need to be able to name the person. That feels like it would be a really powerful tool to stop the "they" worries in their tracks.
YES!
So happy to read this as I’ve just painted my upstairs bathroom bright spring green. Downstairs bathroom is murder red. Bedroom is National Geographic yellow. I love it. And Someone else will love it one day, right?
LOVE THIS.
omg, how deeply satisfying, hahaha
Teal!!!
This is excellent! And that kitchen sounds amazing!
I am an award-winning commercial design director at a prestigious architecture and design firm - that expectant gaze is even more intense when cast upon me LOL.
We bought our house in 2000, and it had just been renovated, not atrocious, but certainly not to my taste. We were too poor to change anything then, other than a lick of paint, and a backyard deck. Now that we could afford it, I no longer care. It’s the cozy home where my sons grew up, has no major damage to the finishes, and we’d rather do other things with our time instead of renovations. We’ve properly maintained it to keep the structure sound, and don’t give much thought to the next owners.
People always tell us how cosy our home feels; many of my designer friends do live in perfect homes, but I see the effort required, and have no intention of trying to live up to those impossible standards...
I do admit that because of what I do for a living, construction, design, and beauty is a daily part of my life, so that itch gets scratched plenty! Perhaps I am that shoeless cobbler...
"we’d rather do other things with our time instead of renovations" and "I see the effort required, and have no intention of trying to live up to those impossible standards" hit me hard—YES! This is exactly how I approach my home. It works, it's maintained, and beyond that, I'd rather read a book or go for a walk or work in the garden or cuddle my dog etc etc etc
OMG THIS. My parents did this when I was growing up, and all I learned was that I want to come home to a place that feels like home (... lots of books, comfortable couch, good space for casual dinner parties) and be able to relax rather than renovate... AND that I value financial stability and a paid-off mortgage over a showpiece that leaves me stressed out and broke.
“Cozy” is such a good description for a home! I’ve had a couple friends from the UK walk into my home and just gasp, “This is the first place that has felt like a home since we moved here.” Smallish, lots of colors and textures and tschoktskes, lots of original work by artists I know, various furniture collected and refinished by family over nearly two centuries.
I feel this very much, I'm an architect/landscape architect married to another architect and we live in the smallest house on our block (because that's what we could afford!) with a somewhat unkempt garden. It is a very quirky little house, we both love it specifically because the previous owner lived in it 40 years and it didn't have the aesthetic or weird design decisions you often see with flips. While we'll need to expand at some point as our kids get bigger and possibly aging parents move in, we've mostly just been maintaining it and making little upgrades, I think much to the confusion of our neighbors who seem to expect more out of us, haha. But we're planning to be there a long time and while I feel the pressure of the gaze as well it's been freeing not to think of changes we want in terms of resale value but rather fun projects we're interested in and suit our lifestyle.
That said, the anxiety over retrofits for aging parents is a real one and having just gone through some rough stuff with my in-laws as they aged in a house that became flat out hazardous for them I do suggest people consider and spend the money on that if they are similarly resourced or have that need.
Speaking as a real estate broker who was on the Hawaii Life show on HGTV three times, I can relate! People are always surprised that the home I purchased 18 months now looks nothing like the award winning architecture and interior design I sometimes sell. But they always say it looks like me. I love that it has 43 year old character. The floors had been changed to some cheap pretend-wood plank that turns out to be perfect for my 14-year-old incontinent Weimaraner. Do I have renovations that will eventually rise to the top of my list? Yes. But I plan to spend the rest of my decades here, so we have time.
I feel all this! To recenter I like to pull out one of my kids’ favorite old picture books, The Big Orange Splot. When Mr Plumbean’s house has a can of orange paint fall on the roof, all his neighbors complain; theirs is a “neat street.” But instead of painting over it, Mr Plumbean adds to it, until his house looks like all his dreams. One by one, his neighbors are won over, and they, too, let their houses be as deeply weird as they are :-)
Big Orange Spot was one of my kids' favorites, too. When, during Covid, I dug up our whole front lawn and planted perennials and vegetables (it is still splendiferous), I thought of good ol' Mr. Plumbeam. ("My house is me and I am it" or something close to that.)
Yesss
I love this quirky book. All of the homeowners say, after renovating their houses, “My house is me and I am it. My house is where I like to be and it looks like all my dreams.” Mr Plumbean looks so happy to be drinking lemonade in his hammock, surrounded by his trippy house and new pet alligator.
omg i love this. i think i’ll purchase this for my friend’s kid just so i can enjoy it too, haha
Oh I remember this — the ‘neat street’ line pulled up a memory!
Reminds me of the David Wilcox song "Leave It Like It Is"...
I think of this book often as I roam my neighborhood; it reminds me to enjoy the hot pink and lavender house because somebody *chose* that because they love it.
I love this idea, but it also makes me sad because it's so hard for me to imagine my real life neighbors ever being cool with the weirdness.
Oh that’s one of our favorite books!
I got really into Zillow for a while... in an anthropological way. I was fascinated by the largest, most garish offerings. I wondered what people who have movie theaters and bowling alleys and swimming pools do to see other people. “Bowling Alone” but in your basement. It seems to me the optimization of the home is also very much to blame for the corrosion of the public square--and for our sense of connectedness and the “villaging” we evolved to need (and enjoy). Even those of us who can’t afford massive subterranean entertainment centers may feel lulled into staying home simply because we’ve invested so much in it. Why go the movies when you can watch a giant TV on your sectional?
YES! It crosses my mind a lot, how the American home and the very American focus on individuality/bootstraps is destroying our sense of community. People (capitalists) will come up with every single possible customization for all aspects of life to keep you from having to go outside and interact with other humans. From the way we live, to the way we die, the focus (and responsibility) is on the individual.
Individualism + Materialism = unhappy society.
There is so very much to be written about House As Status Symbol. I know I mentioned her elsewhere, but Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell really digs into that in interesting ways.
Eula Biss talked about this a little in her book Having and Being Had, especially the material aspects of a home and its connection with someone's social identity. she has more of a poetic take than a scientific one per se, but it's some interesting food for thought.
Oh, I read this and I suddenly felt very sad. I guess I always thought the point of having a movie theater and a bowling alley and a swimming pool and a wet bar in my house was so that I could have all of my friends over! We could watch a movie and then go swimming!!! Then no one would need to worry about sensory issues or food allergies [or COVID-19].
I do not even own a "normal" house so I guess I totally misunderstood this phenomenon.
As a new, first-time homeowner, I feel this hard. I’m also single and it stresses me out to think how expensive it will be to optimize the space for the resale value on one income. I’m trying to get out of that mindset and just enjoy my sturdy pre-war home with its old-ass windows, giant box of a fridge, and crooked toilet.
I was SO overwhelmed by my first house. What I learned and now preach is this: NOTHING must get done right now, unless it actively makes you unsafe. The appearance of your home has nothing to do with your value as a person. Just live in it.
Definitely! I remember my inspector saying “this place is totally livable as-is for 5-7 years. The fridge is ugly though.” Haha
Thank you for that last sentence!!!!
You need time to assess what changes might actually improve your quality of life, versus what HGTV tells you that you should want to do. This is your research period!
the damn crooked toilets omg
I think part of this is the reason I choose to keep renting vs buying. I’m terrified of all the work that would come with owning a house as a single person.
"work that would come with owning a house as a single person." Couples too..........especially if you aren't handy and have to outsource everything. It gets so expensive and you learn to YouTube a lot.
I learned how to unclog my shower drain from a Bob Vila video!
I had to live in my place for a couple of years to 1) get use to having my very own place 2) understand my own lifestyle. Nothing needs to be done you have the cash and time to get things done!
Your house sounds amazing! Please keep optimizing for you to live in it, not for some vague anonymous buyer someday!
as a poc female millennial who spent years paying off student loan debt, car debt, being underpaid and paying city rent prices, i'm nowhere near the ability to buy a home. the act of this and having a child, two things my husband and i have decided not to do, are out of both reach financially and not desirable for us (probably related). that said, from young adulthood, i bucked at the expectation from my parents and society that I "had" to buy a house because it's a "good asset" when it often seemed more like a outsized stressor (cue memories of waking up at dawn to beat the summer heat and pull weeds for my parents in high school) and huge anchor to a place i wasn't sure how long i wanted to be rooted to.
there are pros and cons to renting and owning, but as a renter, i appreciate that I have the flexibility to make our place homey without the pressure of improving the house structurally, keeping up with its market value, and fashioning it into the fullest expression of my status and identity. as i get older, i'm seeing through the veil of making anything my whole personality whether it's my job, house, clothes, travels, etc., and how expensive it all gets, which has been a journey as someone who deeply appreciates art, design, and architecture.
for bipoc folks and others who still feel the ripples of colonization, slavery, and oppression, i see and don't underestimate the value and security of home and property ownership. i just wonder about how obsession as a whole with 'owning' instead of 'being with for a time' and how it feels like capitalism, consumption, and colonization drives everything. we're like hungry hungry hippos that hope to stand out and win by all that we eat, so to speak.
p.s. is there an essay somewhere here about the market-reflected gaze of raising a child? how do you cultivate individuality/sense of self outside of unhealthy socio-cultural norms while knowing that a child has to get a job and needs quality relationships? clearly i don't know but this seems like an incredibly difficult balance to strike. curious how others feel about this.
I believe for many of us POC who own homes today it's not about making a buck or even owning- it's about perceived security and perceived generational wealth. Many Black and POC people in this country literally had ( and HAVE ) their homes devalued for the sheer fact of OWNING homes, and we grew up seeing White real estate concern devalue whole neighborhoods, use newspapers and government officials to implement eminent domain over entire towns and neighborhoods(for a mall, usually) , steal homes and force people into renting. This is not a long time ago- I am in my late forties saw this happen as a KID in the 80s.
Up until last year, the low interest environment in the USA enabled many of us to be able to catch up, usually in medium/big cities , usually with the samey 'luxury' finishes (is it a luxury if everyone is doing it?) and now the 'be with for a while' is something that can put money in our pockets. The Hungry hippo aspect of it all could stop if there was a priority of financial security, health and safety for everyone.
"The Hungry hippo aspect of it all could stop if there was a priority of financial security, health and safety for everyone" — this seems so central to me. Precarity (particularly precarity felt by those who've never felt it in their lifetimes) can fuel such an intense, profit-minded, self-protective stance — when it comes to home ownership, but also when it comes to "school choice" and taxes and so much else.
there's also something here that i'm still working through about the difference between home ownership/inhabitance as protection, stability, and peace vs home ownership as status, entitlement, and reward. they aren't mutually exclusive obviously, but there's a different sentiment there. a friend recently said they "deserved" to buy their new 1.3 million dollar home because they worked hard (they did work but they did also receive A LOT of tech stock), and i thought, well, we ALL deserve housing.
100% to all of this. and the precarity is something that capitalism drives/depends on because of this idea that one has more because others have less (and those who have less don't deserve the more). what value is my "more" if everyone has it, like edie mentioned. so many things could feel more secure if there was a universal agreement that all of us being cared for in a real, lived way makes the world better for everyone. i just don't know that some people actually want that reality :(
I feel like part of the problem with our society, as a whole, is that we are commoditizing needs like shelter. A primary residence is not an asset, and it is not an investment. It is a damned expensive good for use.
I 100% understand hoping to not take a total bath when selling that extremely expensive good for use, but when we start calling things "investments" or "assets" when they just...aren't it opens up the door to a lot of mental gymnastics to justify a "good" (read: terrible) decision.
The fact that real estate prices have risen (in real, inflation-adjusted terms) about 2x-3x in my lifetime isn't something to be celebrated, and it certainly isn't something to be banked on. It is an unsustainable trend and the making of a housing crisis (which, last I glanced at the news, we are in now).
"p.s. is there an essay somewhere here about the market-reflected gaze of raising a child? how do you cultivate individuality/sense of self outside of unhealthy socio-cultural norms while knowing that a child has to get a job and needs quality relationships? clearly i don't know but this seems like an incredibly difficult balance to strike. curious how others feel about this."
There are a thousand essays and infinite therapy sessions in there about this. Thank you for saying it out loud; my kids are all under 6 and I was beginning to feel a little crazy for feeling this pressure without having words for it.
I handle it in part by frequently saying out loud "in our culture..." Trying to make invisible, assumed pressures visible and question-worthy. So in our culture, we consider nipples private except in certain specific circumstances. Mm, no, in our culture we don't eat boogers. Recently I was grumbling about a pirate toy that dressed the pirate gent in a dapper coat and the pirate lady in a tank top. My 6-year-old goes, "It's just pirate culture, Mom."
"society that I "had" to buy a house because it's a "good asset" when it often seemed more like a outsized stressor"...........................................YES to this. Everyone has the ability to define their own stressors and for me ownership is a stressor I don't want. And ask all the people underwater in their homes and have to sell for below what they owe how much of a good investment it was. I feel like it is ALWAYS a gamble.
We have one of those weird, garish houses that would get roasted on Zillow (and I have plans to make it even more colorful!) We have one room where the top is painted like clouds (sponge-painting ftw!), bottom is green grass, and there is a tulip/white picket fence chair border wallpaper. People assumed it would be the first thing we changed when we bought it, and I said you can tear that out over my dead body. I am a big believer that a home should be what makes you happy since you have to see it everyday. I hate the grey/navy/white everything trend - if that sparks joy, cool! But so many people just do it because that's what your house is *supposed* to look like right now. I would live inside of a rainbow if that was physically possible and my house reflects that.
We get two kinds of comments, often from the same people:
- It's too much, you'll never resell it, you need to repaint everything, if you just threw in $50k (!!) you could make it look really classy
- This is the coziest home I've ever been in, it's so you and we can tell that real people live here.
And our dogwalker gave us my favorite compliment of all time - it's like a hobbit house, like I step inside and I'm instantly cozy and safe and know there are good snacks.
Our house was built in 1959 and has a classic lower-level den paneled in knotty pine. I get one of two reactions:
"Don't you want to paint this?"
and
"Oh my god, what a cool room!"
I have one of those 😂
I have this room in my 1962 house! I love it -- literally spend the most amount of time in that room it's so great.
Yes, we have the paneled basement too and I love it!
This! Have your house the way you want it, and if in some future time you need to sell, evaluate whether you value extra $$ or the ease of making no changes. I want to see houses that reflect their inhabitants, not people who reflect their gray houses.
"the ease of making no changes" is vv overlooked!
I KNOW THERE ARE GOOD SNACKS!! 💯
Oh gosh, I could write an essay about home ownership. So, I will..........
My husband and I got married 18 years ago when we were in our early 30s. We lived in an apartment for the first 2 years of our marriage. I loved it mostly because everything was someone else's problem and it was really the first time I'd ever lived on my own. Yes, I lived with my parents until I got married because I couldn't afford to live on my own; I was working 3 jobs and trying to pay off a ton of medical debt. My husband hated the apartment. He had lived with roommates in apartments since he was 18 and was tired of it and wanted to buy a home. I didn't want the responsibility. But marriage is about compromise and so I lost that argument and we bought our first home in 2009 when the market was really super low and great for buyer's not sellers. The 2 of us moved from a 1200 sq ft urban apartment to a 3600 sq ft 3 stories suburban single family home on a .75 acre. It was too big for 2 people who were never going to have kids but it was a great deal at the time and it was near my mother who loved having us close by as she grieved the loss of my father and needed help.
Fast forward 12 years. We hated that home. We learned not long after purchasing the home that the seller ran a home inspection business on the side and knew how to hide all kinds of problems so they wouldn't get noticed in a home inspection. It was a money pit. And for 2 people living paycheck to paycheck and who were now house poor it meant that every time we built up our savings we had to use it all to fix something. No money for vacations or anything fun. It made us miserable. I won't even go into all the ways we were scammed on this house by the sellers. My husband is the least handy person on the planet and so that meant we had to pay people to fix things rather than do it ourselves. We couldn't wait to get out of that house and not be homeowners again. We thought if we could just sell it and get what we owed left on the mortgage and walk away we'd be happy. We knew we were never going to get back what we put into it.
Well, little did we know what the market was going to do during COVID. We were both working from home due to COVID and we saw what dumpy houses in our neighborhood were going for and were astounded. Our house was WAY better than these we thought even if it was a bit dated. It was clean and had so much mechanical items replaced, new paint, new gutters, etc. So, we talked to a real estate agent on a Wednesday and she told us what we could sell our house for and our jaws hit the floor. We listed 2 days later on Friday and sold the house 2 days later on Sunday. In the matter of 5 days we were free. We had no idea where we'd go or what we'd do but it was crazy what the house sold for. We knew we'd never see that kind of money again. I'm sure it wasn't a lot of money to some people but it was to us.
We ended up getting rid of almost everything we own, paid off the mortgage, paid off all our debt, and still put 6 figures in the bank. We moved in with my mother for 6 weeks and then decided to move to the beach. We now rent a lovely renovated 1800 sq ft home on a lake. We are so glad we downsized home and material possessions and we are so happy to be renters and everything be someone else's problem. We have good landlords that live down the street. We actually have a life now and spend time doing fun things. We have been able to put away money for retirement which is important in our 50s. We live simply. We drive 2 cars with over 100K miles (one is 24 years old). We never would have been able to do what we do now had we not sold the house. I don't know what the future lies for us. I don't know if we'll risk buying another home again. I just know we love not being responsible for all the crap that home ownership doles out. It was NOT a fun experience for us. We weren't living. We were existing.
I realize there are pros and cons of both renting and buying. I realize there are good landlords and bad landlords. I realize that home ownership means the rent is never going up. But, it's such a gamble if you ever even make money on it when you sell it. Yes, it worked for us the one and only time we owned a home but I think that was an unusual circumstance during COVID. I'm not sure that we could have sold it and made money under normal circumstances. For our emotional and mental well being the constant fear of no savings and what was gonna break next and how many thousands of dollars would it need almost broke us. What this also means is that I'm now super-hesitant to take all that money out of savings that I made on the house to put as a down payment on another home. Then I won't have money in savings and I hate that feeling. That's scary getting as close to retirement as we are within the next 15 years hopefully. I also hate the feeling that if my landlord decided to sell the home then I've got to to find a new place. But for now this is what we're doing and it feels right.
Your story just reinforces the idea that buying (and then selling) a house is the way to get financial security. As a lifelong renter, my rent goes up every single year without exception and I don't have a down payment. Enjoy Florida.
I had the same issue too when we rented our apartment with rent going up every year. I'm not sure if the difference now is that our rent is controlled by a person and not a corporation or just our particular circumstance. I don't have enough personal knowledge to know as this is only the 2nd time we have rented.
You are correct in that our particular situation it gave us financial security. However, I have plenty of family members and friends who it has never worked for and in fact made their financial situation worse. It's always a gamble. And our financial security is only guaranteed as long as we stay renters. If I buy another house that security has to be used on a down payment and then I go back to nothing in the bank again and living paycheck to paycheck.
This story makes me so happy. I'm so glad it worked out for you like that, after all the hassle.
I realize that home ownership means the rent is never going up. But taxes do and in some areas can increase the cost of ownership to the point of unaffordable. Sadly, some owners who now rely on their social security and pension fund themselves unable to keep up. And if you live in Idaho some of the safety nets for older people have been yanked out and are causing considerable hardship.
Yes! In the first 3 years of our home ownership taxes went up so much that our mortgage increased by $600 a month.
For anyone who wants to read Grant and Handelman's full article at no cost, I'd like to recommend checking with your public library to see if they participate in Inter library loan (ILL) - if not, many larger public library systems allow in-state residents to sign up for a card online to access eresources. You can place a request for the article through ILL, and your library will send it to a library that subscribes to the journal. That library will make a pdf and email to you for free. (Also super helpful if you need to access medical articles or other pay-walled content)
I've also heard from several different sources that if you can find and contact the authors directly they'll often be very happy to send you the articles for free. They aren't getting a cut of the fees you'd pay; those just support the journals etc. Most people want their work to be read and would love to share it.
Thanks for this! I think it’s bananas that academic content still operates on this financial model. To my understanding, it’s not like any of our money goes to the authors or even their institutions, only to the publication.
This may be one of the reasons I keep my part time teaching job 😂 I love access to academic articles.
I don’t know about other disciplines, but for humanities scholars this is the case!! When I was published in a top journal, my parents asked what I got. Two free copies of the issue I was published in (which, to be fair, do mean a lot to me).
Also, the journal title spells it "DYSplacement," apparently!
I bought my house in a small mountain town somewhat reluctantly after my landlords sold my delightful rental. The housing stock in our town is limited, and I felt lucky to find a house with "good bones" (i.e., it's built on a foundation, the floors are level, and it's been re-insulated within the last century--none of which are guarantees here) that only needed "cosmetic upgrades." I was sure that once I moved in, I would repaint the blood red accent wall in the living room, redo the kitchen, upgrade the bathrooms, etc.
Lo and behold, turns out that becoming a homeowner didn't magickly imbue me with the time, energy, and desire to become a part-time home renovator. I live in the mountains because I love to spend as much time as possible playing outside, and I like spending my disposable income on skis, bikes, and adventures with my friends. This house lets me live affordably in a place I love and host the people I love in order to share it with them, too. And let me tell you, the old, weird Noah's Ark mural in the basement is a real talking point--no plans to paint over it anytime soon!
For me (40 year old renter in a nasty and getting nastier all the time urban housing market) this piece could have used a paragraph about the immense privilege of being able to own a home, of being able to *not* have a landlord. My rage and bitterness about landlords and passive income streams and constant endless rent raises that come with negligible improvements / upgrades *at best*, cannot possibly be contained or expressed here. But the idea of yearning for a landlord feels a lot like telling somebody who doesn't have legs that sometimes you really wish you didn't have to go jogging every day. And you know frankly I am way more interested in digging into the question of home ownership at all (#landback) than whether somebody regrets painting their cabinets.
I just felt really alienated by this one. I'm not commenting here to start shit. Your newsletter is one of my favorites, I really appreciate your work, and in that context I want to share that this one was rough to me.
I had a paragraph in here originally that included the idea that ownership of a home is a tremendous privilege, a truth I hold very closely alongside the savings and time-obliterating reality for many (including myself) of also owning that house. Both things can be true. I took out that paragraph because I wanted to do more showing than telling when it came to how we should think about how this place where so many have found themselves when it comes to home ownership (miserable about their homes, obsessed with resale value, clinging to the market-inflected gaze because it is their sole asset) is so deeply connected to way we've allowed home ownership to become a privilege. Nearly 67% of Americans own homes. Is that a number want to increase or decrease? Do we want to keep the home as the holy grail, or make it less overdetermined? In hindsight, I should have kept the paragraph in. Sometimes it's important to both tell explicitly and show.
Anne, I'd also like to hear about the generational differences on thoughts of home ownership. I'm in my mid-50s and it was always drilled into me that home ownership what what I was supposed to do for all those normal reasons we hear about. But, working for the last 20 years almost in academia I'm finding that the conversations with students and their ideas about home ownership are radically different. It's more of not only can they not afford it (high prices, student debt, etc) but they don't want to either. Not wanting to be tied down, freedom to move whenever and not have to buy/sell, responsibility, less savings for emergencies, etc etc. We also know for the housing bust of 2008/2009 that home ownership isn't always a money-maker or financial security. Every single person I know that is a landlord and/or has homes for passive income say it's not extra monthly income or sometimes even yearly income. Some years they don't even make money or barely break even. It's a long game of maintaining these homes for their retirements when they can sell them all and hopefully have more money for retirement. That seems like a huge gamble to me.
"Some years they don't even make money or barely break even."
If landlords want to treat housing like an investment, then they have to accept that, like any other investment, it's a gamble. They won't always have positive returns. But at least at the end of it, they still have an asset - as opposed to the renters, who don't own the asset and who have helped fund this 'gambling' in the first place.
Thank you so much, I felt this exact same way. Nobody yearns for a landlord when their rent's been going up every year for *checks notes* 23 years.
Honestly, same; thank you for your comment. The first sentence in the piece really took me aback and I had to sit with it for a sec before I understood where it was going/where it was coming from. I’m 41, a lifelong renter, in Seattle. I mean … I just paid off my (undergrad) student loans about a year ago and am fortunate to have been able to do so. I would’ve had to have been able to start saving much earlier in life (eg paid enough), or partnered with someone earlier, or already owned an asset to sell, or have parental support (etc etc etc). OR … housing costs would have to stop leaping upward from year to year. I read some article about the housing market awhile ago here and it said you used to be able to save for a down payment within 3-5 years and now it’s 10+ years on the Seattle median salary, which is already high.
Mason, You may see my longer comment on here on another thread about my experience with home ownership and wanting to go back to be a renter. I appreciate your comment about landlord/legs. I had never thought of it that way and I appreciate the perspective.
I felt this too. I've only been living on my own for 5 years but in that time our rent has increased exponentially. It's frustrating to feel like you're being slowly shoved out of your home or have to keep moving further out of the city or making your life smaller and smaller just to keep up with rent. (I live in Nashville for context).
Welp, this just helped me pull the trigger on getting tile that I love, instead of some boring pattern, so thank you!
I'm a single, child-free woman that rents a small condo outside of Seattle. This article hits. I love my career, earn an excellent salary, save and invest appropriately to fund my retirement, and regularly pursue my hobbies - yet, I still find myself battling against every societal norm that tells me I'm doing this life ALL wrong. I don't understand how homeowners can comment to me "you're throwing money away by renting!" while investing so many dollars and free weekends into home improvement projects. I'm happy to let my landlord assume responsibility for my physical residence as I pursue more meaningful opportunities in my life.
So true! I'm a fan of Ramit Sethi's answer to the people who say "you're paying your landlord's mortgage!" which is "when you go out to eat, do you complain that you're paying the restaurant owner's mortgage???" Home ownership is an expensive-ass endeavor, and if that's not where you want to spend your money, three cheers for just not doing it.
I, too, rent in Seattle. I do so after 20 years of home ownership and remodeling with my ex-husband. I'm so happy to rent a tiny vintage apartment in a great Ballard location and call my landlord when things go wrong. My friends, who all own large fancy-ish houses, completely do not understand my joy. I think they think I'm poor. When in fact I'd rather use my excellent salary to save for retirement, travel, treat myself to ice cream, and enjoy my life. I do not miss owning my own home. Solidarity!
Same. You should read what I posted on here as well. They teach in business school now that the fantasy of how ownership like it used to be isn't really all it's cracked up to be. Not sure I want to be in that ever again.