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America's Obsession With Our Homes
Currency
January 2008
On Sale: January 8, 2008
272 pages
ISBN: 038551929X
EAN: 9780385519298
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A rich narrative that blends social commentary with
incisive reporting, House Lust offers an astute,
funny, and sometimes disturbing portrait of the behaviors
that drove the greatest real estate boom in history—and its
eventual bust.
Owning a home has long been
considered the fulfillment of the American Dream. But in the
last decade, as the real estate market boomed, Americans’
fascination with homes turned into a frenzy. Everywhere we
turned, people were talking about, scheming over, envying,
shopping for, refinancing, or just plain ogling houses—in
the process, we’ve transformed shelter from a basic
necessity into an all-consuming passion.
In
House Lust, Newsweek’s Daniel
McGinn travels the country to explore the roots of this
mania. Even as the real estate boom has turned to bust,
Americans remain obsessed with houses—many of us are still
trading up, adding on, or doubling down to buy vacation
property. But for others, this zeal for housing has carried
a painful price, one that’s evident in the soaring
foreclosure rates and mounting despair as millions of
homeowners (and their lenders) realize they’ve stretched too
far to buy the home of their dreams.
In a compelling
narrative that takes us inside the homes—and psyches—of the
House Lust–afflicted throughout the nation, McGinn examines
the forces that turned housing into the talk of dinner
parties. He explores the arms race for square footage and
introduces readers to a menagerie of characters from the
real estate world—from “renovation psychologists” who treat
remodeling-addled clients to a guy who trades vacation
time-shares the way kids trade baseball cards. McGinn also
jumps into the fray himself by enrolling in real estate
school and buying an investment property, sight unseen, over
the Internet.
House Lust shows us just how
contagious the ideal of owning the best home on the block
can be. And as the real estate boom recedes into memory,
McGinn offers cautionary tales to help us curb our lust when
prices start rising again.
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