Saturday, February 05, 2005
The HGTV Effect
One of my favorite things to do on Saturday mornings is to scan real estate listings online. Sometimes I look in my town; sometimes I look in towns where I think I might like to live. It makes Mr. Vintage Reader nervous, but hey, it's a hobby. During college, pre-Internet, I worked for a real estate brokerage during the summers. I got to prepare the weekly listings book for the agents (in Word 2.0 for DOS!) and sometimes write the property descriptions for the Sunday paper, such as "DOLL HOUSE! You'll love this 3/2 Cape Cod's cozy kitchen, overlooking immaculate gardens. It's a charmer!" Back then, that was about all you got in a real estate listing, unless there was a picture (they used to send me out to take those too. It was a great job for a house freak like me).
These days the vast majority of real estate listings--especially if you look at individual real estate agencies' web sites instead of Realtor.com--have lots and lots of pictures of the interiors of the houses. I love to look at the interiors of the old houses, of course, but sometimes I look at the newer ones too, although I typically don't like them. I think they look cheap and thrown-together, without any character or charm.
But.
I've started noticing that new builds from the last few years look nothing like that. The kitchens have real wood cabinets and granite countertops. The light fixtures don't look like standard builder's-grade stuff. There are tile floors, big windows, and a fair amount of actual charm.
I attribute it to HGTV and the explosion of home-dec/home improvement programming on TV. While some of the shows focus on quick, cheap, DIY decorating that I'm betting lasts about a month before everybody in the house is so sick of it that they tear it all out and go back to where they were before, there are a lot of them like Ultimate Kitchens that often show some really, really neat things.
Now, I've still got plenty of environmental concerns about new builds. I still think it's wasteful to build new developments, edging further out into the wilderness, upsetting the ecosystem and ensuring yet more car travel, as older properties and developments go deeper into disrepair. But at the same time, I can't help looking at some of these listings and thinking wouldn't that huge laundry room be nice and wow, look at that awesome Jenn-Aire downdraft range.
One of my favorite things to do on Saturday mornings is to scan real estate listings online. Sometimes I look in my town; sometimes I look in towns where I think I might like to live. It makes Mr. Vintage Reader nervous, but hey, it's a hobby. During college, pre-Internet, I worked for a real estate brokerage during the summers. I got to prepare the weekly listings book for the agents (in Word 2.0 for DOS!) and sometimes write the property descriptions for the Sunday paper, such as "DOLL HOUSE! You'll love this 3/2 Cape Cod's cozy kitchen, overlooking immaculate gardens. It's a charmer!" Back then, that was about all you got in a real estate listing, unless there was a picture (they used to send me out to take those too. It was a great job for a house freak like me).
These days the vast majority of real estate listings--especially if you look at individual real estate agencies' web sites instead of Realtor.com--have lots and lots of pictures of the interiors of the houses. I love to look at the interiors of the old houses, of course, but sometimes I look at the newer ones too, although I typically don't like them. I think they look cheap and thrown-together, without any character or charm.
But.
I've started noticing that new builds from the last few years look nothing like that. The kitchens have real wood cabinets and granite countertops. The light fixtures don't look like standard builder's-grade stuff. There are tile floors, big windows, and a fair amount of actual charm.
I attribute it to HGTV and the explosion of home-dec/home improvement programming on TV. While some of the shows focus on quick, cheap, DIY decorating that I'm betting lasts about a month before everybody in the house is so sick of it that they tear it all out and go back to where they were before, there are a lot of them like Ultimate Kitchens that often show some really, really neat things.
Now, I've still got plenty of environmental concerns about new builds. I still think it's wasteful to build new developments, edging further out into the wilderness, upsetting the ecosystem and ensuring yet more car travel, as older properties and developments go deeper into disrepair. But at the same time, I can't help looking at some of these listings and thinking wouldn't that huge laundry room be nice and wow, look at that awesome Jenn-Aire downdraft range.
permalink posted by The Vintage Reader @ 9:07 AM 
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
