House Lust: America's Obsession with Our Homes

I really enjoyed this book. It is extremely easy to read, has adequate footnotes for those who want to further explore any of the topics which the author covers, and in my opinion it incredibly accurately captures the fascination/interest/obsession (and yes, even lust) of many of us have for all aspects of activity regarding our homes (and those of our neighbors and even strangers). Whatever the reason (idle curiosity, planning a move, determination of the value of your own home, interest in renovations), if you often peruse the weekly real estate section of your local paper, visit open houses just for the heck of it, often mentally decide how you would renovate or redecorate a home that you are visiting, can't resist checking out the neighborhoods where you vacation with the thought that it might be nice to have your own getaway abode there, or have graduated from watching THIS OLD HOUSE on PBS to being able to recite from memory the most watched shows on HGTV, this book is definitely for you. Dan McGInn is a national correspondent for Newsweek. He has spent several years covering many aspects of the real estate boom that eventually assumed bubble type characteristics and is now undergoing the inevitable hangover of a correction, which will hopefully not morph into a crash. The tone and style of the book is illustrated by his examination of the traditional competition and envy (not confined to real estate), which he describes in his opening chapter about the Toll Brothers' subdivision in Potomac Maryland, aptly titled "Mine's Bigger than Yours". Other randomly selected chapters include commentary on such topics as "Fix-up Fever", the seemingly favorite neighborhood pasttime in some communities of remodeling cum expansion, and the whole mystique of often little used vacation homes that are usually very uneconomic investments despite their frequent justification on that basis. Included in that discussion is a very interesting overview of the operation of the timeshare industry for the uninformed such as myself, as well as the recently introduced luxury vacation option known as destination clubs (as epitomized by Exclusive Resorts, the largest). McGinn has a keen eye and an engaging style; as the title of my review states, I not only found a lot of educational material (admittedly much anecdotal, but a lot of hard facts as well), but I also really had fun reading this book (as it appeared that he did writing it). So if you are a chronic addict with HOUSE LUST that cannot be cured, you will probably relate to much of the material in this book. But even for the more casual hobbyist (who can change the dial and for whom HOUSE HUNTERS is not "appointment television"), the new terminology alone to which you are introduced is worth the time and price of the book. One example - in Las Vegas a new home is as much a status symbol as a new car, and what is in other parts of the country simply considered an existing home being sold is for many individuals

The first thing that strikes me about Daniel McGinn's excellent first book, "House Lust," is how supremely organized it is. We get a very well-organized tour through the housing bubble via separate, tidy, punchy chapters concerning up-sizing mania, the new-house phenomena driving booms in locales like Las Vegas, fix-up fever, real-estate investing as a watching sport, rental properties, Realtor conventions and vacation homes/time shares. Each chapter gets just the right gist of what that particular piece adds to the overall market. Furthermore, McGinn's effort is awash in credibility. Not only did he research house lust, he lived it. Among his many participatory exploits are his eyebrow-raising purchase of a rental property in Pocatello, Idaho (he used his book advance, much to the, umm, chagrin of his wife) and his pursuit of a Realtor license. In each case, the author's first-hand involvement greatly enriches the tale. Of additional note are McGinn's efforts to keep the book relevant at the time of the sub-prime-fueled, foreclosure-laden bust of the bubble. The book was conceived mid-bubble. The market had clearly turned prior to publication. McGinn notes this dramatic shift and adds what I feel is an appropriate level of commentary about the implications. To that end, in his Acknowledgements section he mentions that esteemed economist and Newsweek colleague Robert Samuelson "provided generous advice on adjusting the book's tone as the housing market weakened." Speaking of Newsweek, like many others I suppose, I learned of this book through the excerpt in that weekly. I've been a long-time (20+ years) subscriber. It's a delight to see how many colleagues McGinn credits by name and how many he counts as friends. It's a workplace that seems very family-like and collegial. In the wake of a significant buyout of many of Newsweek's longtime writers, it leaves me a bit melancholy. This is the downside of the web revolution and rapidly plummeting print circulations: the busting up and atrophying of great talent pools like Newsweek is a most unfortunate thing for readers like me...and it seems for people like Daniel McGinn, a generous journalist who understands how a place like Newsweek molded him.

With pre-school age boys I rarely take the opportunity to read a book cover to cover. I expected that I could skim House Lust and get the gist of the story quickly and move onto the next book on my nightstand. But I didn't want to put this one down. Each chapter revealed a perspective on the housing market and "home psychology" that I personally related to or was simply fascinated by. Dan looks at "house lust" from several interesting, amusing, and unexpected angles. One of my many favorites was what he calls the "maximum-use imperative" in which people buy more house than they use on a day-to-day basis bedrooms, bathrooms, gamerooms etc) so that all the extended family members can stay with them once a year or they can host that perfect once-a-year party.

Given the recent burst of the housing bubble I found this book to be particularly relevant. It examines the factors that have contributed to our fascination with our homes - in some cases to extremes that are both comedic and really sad - from a perspective that is informative, personal, and fun. It should make homeowner or want-to be homeowners like myself examine his or her priorities and behaviors more closely before making life-altering decisions.

It seems that whatever Americans get into these days, it turns into a weirdly competitive sport for them: whether you buy a new car, TV, BBQ, whatever, the Olympic motto applies: faster, higher, stronger... So it's not surprising that the same is true when it comes to real estate, but the mind still boggles at the kind of insanities people come up with to create what they believe to be their dream home. (I mean, how many bathrooms could you possibly need in a house?) That's what HOUSE LUST is about - it's a great and entertaining piece of reportage that takes you across America and in the course of which you'll meet all kinds of crazy people with grand designs for their homes, designs that are often as remarkable as they are ludicrous. But what makes the book even better is that while it's ostensibly about America's obsession with real estate, the author, Daniel McGinn, is also smart enough to see this as a symptom of a deeper problem: that we still seem to think that size matters.