Park Meadows Blog

By MARK POTHIER  |  February 11, 2007

After my in-laws died in 2005, we listed their Plymouth house with a real estate agent. Someone would eventually buy the place – we were resigned to the deed changing hands – but the sense of home they nurtured for four decades would stay in the family. When they lived there, anyone who stepped inside the wide gray house on the skinny cul-de-sac immediately sensed it was more than a building.

The standard advertisements were published in local newspapers and real estate flyers, their wording by necessity slashing 40 years of character to choppy blurbs. Great in-town property near everything! Four bedrooms, heated sunroom, and large walk-in closet. Living room with fireplace. Agents soon brought “interested parties” to look around. They asked if the carpeting covered hardwood and wondered about the origin of a stain on the dining room ceiling. There was a lot of talk about “potential.” During the following months – while my wife sorted through her parents' lifetime of belongings with the same tenderness they had shown her – family and friends began to ask questions. Increasingly, they sounded worried. “How many people have been through?” “Any offers yet?” Some dispensed advice. Ask the agent to schedule more open houses, they said, or consider renting it out for a year. Housing analysts already were poking at the bubble that lifted prices to historic highs. “For sale” signs were putting down roots on front lawns. Inventory statewide was collecting dust, our broker said, and buyers were not in a hurry to make decisions.

In early 2006, as winter wore into spring, we dropped the price once, twice, and then a third time. That's when my wife and I realized a hard reality of the real estate market: Almost no one outside of immediate family associated her parents with the house anymore. While we still treasured it, water stain and all, others saw a commodity in danger of becoming a liability.

These days, people tend to think of houses as places to stay while waiting to go somewhere else. Maybe they anticipate corporate headquarters moving jobs out of state or fear layoffs will arrive with the next quarterly report. Maybe a marriage has started to fray. Perhaps they covet a bigger house with more amenities. Judging by the displays at Home Depot and Lowe's, everyone seems to require the same gleaming appliances, stone counters, and hangar-sized bathrooms. But to homeowners of my in-laws' generation, the attachment to where they lived was as secure as a foundation. Houses were not acquired primarily for investment purposes or seen as banks to tap for debt consolidation and cars. They would not have considered buying one with the idea of “flipping” it for profit. And the only growth trends they followed were their children's and, later, grandchildren's, with each additional inch of height etched in pencil on a wall. But they also bought during a time when prices were modest, job security was the norm, pensions were still intact, and marriages usually lasted longer than the mortgage. Home ownership was less complicated then.

Today's typical first-time buyer is 32 years old and earns about $58,000, according to a recent National Association of Realtors survey. He spends $165,000 on a house – obviously not in Massachusetts – and plans to stay six years. The typical repeat buyer is 47, makes almost $82,000, and hangs on to a house for nine years. The emotions associated with a real estate purchase can't be quantified so easily, but it feels as if we're more clinical about obtaining a deed than my wife's parents were. Many of us are acutely aware of our home's value and obsess about whether it is worth more or less than last month. Some homeowners bookmark websites like zillow.com, which tracks estimated house prices as if they were volatile stocks. My in-laws' house finally sold in November, for about $80,000 less than we originally anticipated. But the lights are on again when we drive by, and that's worth something. A young family is making it their new home. I hope that they have the time to truly settle in, no matter what direction real estate charts travel in the coming years. Because that is a market value too often overlooked.Mark Pothier is a senior assistant business editor at the Globe. E-mail him at mpothier@globe.com.

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