Posted on: Friday, June 27, 2003

Open houses give insight into others' lives — and our own

By Julia Prodis Sulek
Knight Ridder News Service

"I'll take my coffee on the master suite balcony," I say. Emerging from my sunken tub (with jets), I grab my robe (size small), hanging neatly in the ample walk-in closet (with built-ins). As I lean against the wrought-iron railing overlooking the back garden, the warm sun dries my hair, tinting it a natural blond.

I am pampered, organized, relaxed.

Wait a minute. This is not my house. This is not my life. This is an open house, with a "for sale" sign in front. I have no intention of buying this house or any other. But I am an open house addict, on the circuit Sunday 2-5.

My home is supposed to be my sanctuary. But sometimes, on a weekend afternoon, I find a stand-in. When I take off my shoes at a stranger's stoop and wander from room to room, I become the Walter Mitty of real estate. I daydream that somehow, in this particular space — a paneled study here, a workout room there — my life would be different. I would be different. More content maybe, more creative definitely, thinner absolutely. If only.

In real life, my house is 65 years old and has a master bedroom with two tiny closets and a bathroom off the hall with a broken shower. I'm a mother of two preschoolers who have their own rooms, only one of which we've fixed up so far. My day often begins in a rush with a handful of Frosted Flakes and a squirt of Clairol's "Touch of Sun" to lighten my roots.

My husband and I bought our home in San Jose, Calif., in 1999. The house had Sunset magazine's singular requirement for true California living — a kitchen overlooking the back yard, with ready access to a barbecue. It didn't seem to matter at the time that the kitchen was a 1970s remodel with heavily grained, dark oak cabinets and countertops made of fake butcher-block laminate.

But a house in need of updating gave me an excuse to hit the open-house trail, and I've been on it ever since. June is a busy month for real estate, and there's a brigade of us out there now "just looking."

We greet each other with that same shameful nod, as if caught peeking in someone's medicine cabinet. Some people mutter excuses to snoop into other people's lives: This one's friend is thinking of buying a house, that one's sister is moving to town. Some enjoy sizing up the crystal in the china hutch, checking the Viking range to see if it has actually been used and taking note of the size 8 sweater on the closet hook.

Others seem to be conducting serious market research: The value of their own homes can be gauged by comparing the features of a neighbor's house. And a remodeling project is always reason enough to arrive armed with camera and measuring tape.

While scores of people traipse through open houses each weekend, real estate agents guess that about half of them aren't serious shoppers. It took me years to look eager agents in the eye and admit with confidence that no, I am not in the market for a house.

We open-house addicts call ourselves "lookieloos." I used to think we were essentially just a bunch of nosy neighbors. But I've come to realize that the roots of this fixation are deeper than voyeurism or market research. The fascination comes from the way a house both reflects and defines a person's identity.

People choose from an endless variety of products to express their identities — the single guy in his Porsche Boxster, the teenager with a nose ring, the couple with their climate-controlled wine cooler.

But nothing speaks as loudly as a house. And nothing has the power to shape an identity the way a home does.

A wall of windows overlooking a courtyard of a Carmel, Calif., open house makes me imagine myself a famous novelist with a salon of literary friends who drive down to Nepenthe for inspiration and a Cosmo. A curving stairway in the grand entry of a San Jose house makes me imagine my daughter descending it on prom night.

My delusions are not unlike those of the main character in James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," who imagines that instead of being a browbeaten husband, he has other identities — he is, at heart, a heroic fighter pilot, a famous lifesaving surgeon, a debonair sharpshooter.

Now I'm not saying I could necessarily win a Pulitzer Prize if I lived in this house. But for better or worse, my obsession has given me vision. I can see not only what a house is, but what it can become.