Passion Comes With a Mortgage

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

Passion Comes With a Mortgage
By JAMES R. HAGERTY
January 2, 2008; Page B16

Researching America's real-estate mania of recent years, Daniel McGinn visited a family in Potomac, Md., and toured their new 9,000-square-foot house. It might have been a bit roomy for a family of five, and the lady of the manor admitted: "I could go back to a small house." But then she added: "I could never go back to not having two dishwashers."

(snip)

Mr. McGinn, a Newsweek reporter, shows how insatiable our house lust can be. Mammoth houses might have enough closet and garage space to absorb the contents of a Home Depot, but they create problems -- such as how to fill up walls that look like blank movie screens. One interior designer "is always looking for large-scaled, three-dimensional artwork." There is a subset of house buyers who never consider purchasing anything but a newly constructed home. "You're not moving into somebody else's ick," one of these purists explains. Mr. McGinn talks to counselors who deal with couples driven by the stresses of renovation to the verge of breaking up or suffering from a syndrome called "post-renovation depression."

At a builders' convention, Mr. McGinn examines the latest home accoutrements. Among them is an Ultra-Flusher toilet whose sales reps say it can flush a whole loaf of bread. (Mr. McGinn notes that "it should come with a disclaimer: 'If you really need a toilet this powerful, please consult a gastroenterologist.' ") Mr. McGinn also hangs out with addicts of cable-television shows such as A&E's "Flip This House" and HGTV's "House Hunters." Real estate, he concludes, "has emerged as a full-fledged spectator sport." He contends that such shows aren't mindless entertainment -- they have refined us. "People are more aware that walls should be bathed in neutral colors; that countertops should be barren; that too many family photos will turn off potential buyers; and that Dad's beer-cap collection belongs in a box in the basement, not on the coffee table."

(snip)

He is astute about one of the main drivers of the recent buying-and-building frenzy. "Nearly everyone I met who began investing in real estate in the early 2000s," he notes, had "lost money when technology stocks collapsed." Instead of learning the tech-bubble lesson -- that get-rich-overnight schemes rarely work -- investors merely transferred their delusions from stocks to real estate.

(snip)


Mr. Hagerty is a Pittsburgh-based Journal reporter covering real estate.


URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119923259111260969.html (subscription)

[LynzM]

1. Oh, my god. That's insane.

"I could never go back to not having two dishwashers." Damn, woman. One worked just fine for most families up until, I dunno, the last 10 years or something. Or none. Oy. Make those three kids of yours help with the dishes. Geez. (I sound old, don't I. I'm only 27.)

The house porn has got to stop. It encourages such environmental and financial waste, and such ridiculous standards.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. disgusting. nt

[flashl]

3. 'investors merely transferred their delusions from stocks to real estate'

That's the story, investors left the stockmarket with their money to put it in the safe, tried, and true real estate market. The goons followed the investors into real estate markets, and the rest is history.