There was a time when your dream home was actually your dream.
Maybe it was a big kitchen because your family always gathered there. A backyard because you wanted a dog. An extra bedroom for the children you hoped to have someday. A fireplace, a front porch, or a certain neighborhood you always loved.
You imagined a home around the life you wanted to live.
Now, before you’ve finished your morning coffee, you may have the ability to see inside a Manhattan penthouse, a Malibu estate, a perfectly restored brownstone, and a house with two kitchens, a basketball court, a wine cellar and a closet bigger than your first apartment.
We have access to more beautiful homes than ever before. And sometimes I wonder if that has made it harder to recognize our own dream home when we see it.
When Everything Is Extraordinary
Social media is very good at showing us the spectacular.
The indoor pool. The hidden pantry behind the regular pantry. The immaculate living room that somehow never has a phone charger, dog toy or stack of mail in sight.
They’re fun to look at. But when you see enough of them, your perception starts to shift.
A beautiful kitchen becomes a kitchen that “needs updating.” A perfectly good primary bedroom suddenly feels small. One living space doesn’t seem like enough because you just watched a tour of a house with four.
The problem isn’t wanting a beautiful home. We always have.
The difference is that we used to compare the homes we were seeing to the homes we actually knew. Now we’re comparing them to the most extraordinary homes an algorithm can find.
Instagram Knows What Photographs Well. It Doesn't Know How You Live.
After decades of walking through homes, I’ve learned that what makes a house photograph beautifully and what makes a house wonderful to live in aren’t always the same thing.
A room can be stunning and still not be comfortable. A house can be enormous and still not have a good place to sit and talk. And a home you might scroll right past online can feel completely different when you walk through the front door.
Maybe there’s a breakfast nook where you can picture your children doing homework. Maybe the backyard isn’t enormous, but it’s exactly enough. Maybe you can walk to your favorite restaurant, the park or your children’s school.
None of those things are particularly impressive in a 15-second Reel.
But they can completely change the way you live.
Your Dream Home Should Still Be Yours
One of the most important things I can do with buyers is help them determine what it is they genuinely want.
Do you really need six bedrooms? Do you actually want an enormous yard? Will you use that formal dining room? Would you rather have another 1,000 square feet or be able to walk to your favorite coffee shop every morning?
There are no right answers. That’s the point.
For one person, a dream home might be a historic house with original millwork and imperfect old floors. For someone else, it’s a high-rise where they can lock the door, get on a plane and not think twice.
I love beautiful real estate. I’ve spent my career around it. I appreciate incredible architecture, thoughtful design and beautiful finishes as much as anyone.
But I’m much more interested in the life that happens inside a home than whether it will impress strangers on the internet.
Social media can be wonderful for inspiration.
But sometimes the best homes aren’t the ones that make you think, I can’t believe someone gets to live here.
They’re the ones that make you walk in and think:
I can see my life here.
