Member-only story
I can’t resist the voyeurism of online real estate
“Look,” I say, thrusting my phone at my half-asleep husband. “Look at the pool! And the kitchen. It has a drawer microwave.”
James squints at my phone. Without his glasses, he can’t see much more than a blur of colors, but he nods before closing his eyes. “It’s nice. I like it better than the other one.”
I flop back onto my pillow and hold my phone over my head as I scroll to the next house on the list. I’ve never been anywhere near the town where the houses are located, but I somehow stumbled upon the bucolic lake community in the North Carolina mountains and am obsessed.
But James and I have no intention of moving. After eight years of renting, we bought our “forever” home in the summer of 2020 as Covid uncertainty destroyed the real estate market. We are among the lucky who were able to secure a low mortgage rate and manage to buy before the prices went crazy.
I absolutely love my home. Before moving to Northern Virginia, we lived in James’s inherited family home, and we until we bought our current home — in our mid-40's — we had never bought a primary residence before. For eight years, we toured homes, dismissing them as too big, too small, too sterile, or too over-the-top. We wanted to stay in our neighborhood so the boys didn’t have to…
