Let's make houses homes
Realtors still like to call them homes, because it sounds warmer, more friendly, and that plays a huge role in such an emotional purchase, but sometime in the last few decades, the home became the house. It has never been more apparent than in today's red-hot, yet volatile, real estate market, where emotions give way to dollars and investment sense.
In almost every community across North America, from Manhattan to Beverly Hills to Calgary to Toronto, real estate is more often talked about as an investment than it is a place to live.
Our parents have told us for generations that real estate is a good investment because it's the only thing they're not making any more of.
But even then, a home was a place to raise a family. Today, are they more often viewed as investments where people store an ever-changing, ever-growing collection of consumer items to impress visitors or simply reassure themselves of their own success?
Why, when the average size of the family has decreased so dramatically over the last three generations, has the average size of the family home grown exponentially?
Welcome to the new millennium, where the square footage of a kitchen has doubled or tripled at a time when eating out has never been more popular and eating in a vehicle is a national pastime.
Where kitchens contain all manner of gadgets from cappuccino makers to juice squeezers to bread machines to make "cooking" easier in an era when prepared foods have proliferated in the grocery stores.
Where bathrooms have become water palaces. Where the garage is bigger than ever and full of more cars than drivers.
Where children's bedrooms are decked out with the latest technology, from computers, to video games to televisions.
Where the dining room table doesn't get a lot of use.
Where the bookcases are bare.
With markets as jittery as they have been lately, and sales of existing homes in the U.S. in a downward spiral, and too many high-risk mortgages in jeopardy, it could once again, for better and for worse, make the house a home.
August 14, 2007 in Real Estate Investments | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
