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I knew I would live there when I first walked into the 102-year-old condominium in San Francisco’s Nob Hill neighborhood last month. The feeling was indistinguishable from when I bought my first home in Oakland 45 years ago.
Nostalgia and imagination inspire powerful feelings when buying a home. You are launched into an orbit of transcendent enthusiasm, like falling in love.
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Brad Inman
As my wife Yaz and I were closing on the San Francisco unit, the young buyers of our 98-year-old Spanish-style West Hollywood home felt the same magical enchantment. The Brooklyn transplants wrote a poignant letter describing their enthusiasm about purchasing our house — they fell in love.
This is one reason why selling or leaving a home is so difficult. It’s not just the memories; your soul becomes welded to the place, making it difficult to let go. Before moving in, your imagination lays the first psychic rebar, connecting you to a future of joy and meaning with all of life’s experiences ahead of you.
Brad Inman’s chair in Palm Beach, Florida
Millions of other people embark on this same journey, which, as a journalist, has always drawn me to real estate.
Homeownership has never been an elite privilege — at least not in the United States. It was always meant for everyone. As with our current housing affordability crisis, market forces often step in to correct the imbalance when it becomes too much. A more balanced market is beginning to take shape now.
To achieve homeownership, aspiring buyers must make sacrifices, stretch their household budgets, accept smaller living spaces, and choose geographical trade-offs.
Young people — Gen Z, the Zoomers — are setting out on a new wave of geographical reshuffling, this time to affordable Midwestern states. No personal or economic obstacle can squash their determined real estate ambitions. Like love, desires take over.
Right now, I sit in a chair, in a room, in my home, where I write, read and reflect.
Homes aren’t just a dream for me — they are who I am and what I love.
