Paul Kedrosky’s blog “Infectious Greed” has an entry entitled “Zillow is Data Porn”, where he likens the new website Zillow to pornography for middle-aged people. He figures there might be more time spent on that site than on some porn sites…

Marjorie Garber has written a book entitled Sex and Real Estate: Why We Love Houses. Her premise is that real estate has become a form of “yuppie pornography.” Hopes of summer romance have given way to hopes of summer homes, and fantasies of Romeo have been replaced by fantasies of remodeling. Even real estate ads are flirtatious in their offers of bedrooms that are sensuous and sinks that are seductive. Thus the house you live in, like the partner you choose, can be everything from your beloved to your dream to a status symbol trophy.

The Stranger had their own take on this, surmising that houses, apartments, and businesses provoke fond sex memories and mortifying regrets. Sexual Real Estate from The Stranger

That reminds me of an old joke around our office: Sex is like real estate, get a lot while you’re young.

Update, as noted in Brad Inman’s Blog, quoting the The Arizona Republic: “Exploring others homes is an increasingly popular pastime, a Grand Obsession. The article notes, “In her provocatively titled book Sex and Real Estate, cultural critic Marjorie Garber entertainingly argues – but doesn’t entirely convince – that real estate has become a form of “yuppie pornography.”

Home tours and their cousin, the real estate open house, are, Garber writes, “a flirtatious activity of window-shopping other people’s houses” that offers “a socially sanctioned license to daydream about what goes on behind other people’s closed doors.”

If real estate is the new sex, home tours are peep shows. Pay the admission and you can watch action you can’t get at your own house. Copper-clad doors. Hand-carved limestone entrances. Sixteen-foot ceilings. Whew. It quickens the pulse.”

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