Look who’s gawking: Zillow enthusiasts flock to online listings, even when they aren’t house-hunting. Why?
Zillow enthusiasts flock to mock and admire listings, even when they aren’t house-hunting. Why?
By all appearances, Nondini Naqui lives in West Roxbury, but she spends about 90 minutes per day in another world — one of soaking tubs and pergolas, skylights and saunas. That is, she loves to prowl real estate listings on Zillow, the photo-heavy online marketplace that reveals your neighbor’s odd wallpaper and strange candelabras, as well as dream homes all over the country.
“When it was really cold outside in Boston, I liked to look at warm-weather destinations. I’d pop in a random address. There’s a fair amount of dreaming and imagining,’’ Naqui said. “With a little money here or there, we could turn this house around!’’
A stint in graduate school in the South leads her to fantasize about homes in North Carolina, while her fondness for Georgia O’Keeffe sometimes prompts her to prowl New Mexico ZIP codes. Sometimes she’ll even take family field trips to nearby towns simply to explore house listings, with Zillow as her guide.
Naqui, who attributes her hobby to moving regularly throughout childhood, isn’t alone. Online, Zillow fans congregate at Facebook favorite Nightmare On Zillow Street, a group with 182,000-plus members that is, to wit, “a place to collect home photo listings that make you think … ‘WTF?’ ’’
Here, people mock doomed domiciles with conjoined chimneys, mauve wallpaper on the ceiling, disco balls in the kitchen, fireplaces made of popcorn, and abodes best described as “Depressed Hobbit.’’
There’s also Zillow Gone Wild, where a recent photo montage featured a living room decorated with large stuffed bears. But there are also aspirational sites, such as American Bungalow, a Facebook group devoted to the Arts-and-Crafts movement with listings so adorable (and, in the Midwest, so inexpensive) that you’ll wonder why you choose to live in Boston. In the world of online real estate, everyone’s a Peeping Tom.
Closer to home, Somerville’s Elizabeth Hunter runs Real Estate Drools, where her friends — and now, friends of friends — post their real estate finds. (“Do you know you can get a four-bedroom town house, recently renovated, for under $350,000 in Baltimore?’’ she marveled.)
The group began as a pandemic hobby but has evolved into something more significant, accentuating a voyeurism that lurks within so many of us — even those, like Hunter, who don’t intend to move but are curious about how people live, especially after so much isolation.
“It feels transgressive to go to someone’s house and take off your mask. It feels intimate. Online, you can go into lots of houses. It satisfies that feeling of isolation in our own space and the desire to get into other spaces,’’ Hunter said.
Zillow and its ilk let us fantasize and try on other lives, if only for a few moments, especially as the real estate market is as competitive as ever. In fact, visits to their mobile apps and websites were at 10.2 billion in 2021, up from 8.1 billion visits in 2019. In a world where we have so little control, Zillow, at least, lets us plug in prices, search using obscure keywords (“dungeons,’’ anyone?), and pinpoint a preferred region — and, within seconds, hundreds of potential lifestyles await.
In Watertown, homeowner Brendan Gmyrek’s online searches once led him to a mid-century modern funeral home marketed as a residence.
Gmyrek’s white whale is “something at an extraordinarily low price that needs a ton of work. But it has to be in the right location. Or a dilapidated house, but it has to have redeeming qualities,’’ he said.
Most recently, he discovered a well-priced armory in a remote area of New York.
“Somewhere in upstate New York, for under $1 million, you could have a castle,’’ he marveled.
Yes, Zillow users are armchair archaeologists at heart. But there is also a smugness among Boston-area homeowners who bought long ago and now delight in watching their home values increase.
“We’re spoiled in Boston,’’ said Medford’s Renee D’Agata, who notes that her sister in Shaker Heights, Ohio, hasn’t seen the same appreciation.
“It’s sort of exciting, because I thought I paid an arm and a leg for our home in 2014. But, for today’s standards, it’s a steal,’’ she said, noting that she also checks the site to see how much her neighbors paid for their homes.
Not everyone is so enamored. Agents worry that Zillow’s “Zestimate,’’ which calculates the market value of a property using a proprietary algorithm, may be inaccurate and leads many sellers to have an inflated view of their home’s worth. They say it can’t take into account subtle nuances, such as the busyness of the street, the lack of sunlight in the kitchen, or the quality of the yard.
“I wrote a humorous real estate article for my local paper, where I wrote sarcastically: ‘Zillow is not a person.’ Zillow has not seen the potholes to dodge to get to the house,’’ said Judy Boyle, a RE/Max real estate agent based in Westborough.
Social media “has spoiled everyone,’’ said Katherine Waters-Clark, a real estate agent with Compass in Winchester. “People want pretty pictures.’’
So, in this era, sellers should beware. Even though it’s a seller’s market, new buyers expect Zillow-worthy presentations. It behooves sellers to put their best abode forward: no clutter, fresh paint, neutral walls — especially if they want a buyer that will waive the inspection.
“[Buyers] are desperate for houses, but they’re not stupid. They won’t buy if it needs fifty thousand dollars worth of reno. Buyers are often waiving inspections, [but] they won’t do that if your house is a mess,’’ Waters-Clark warned. “If it looks like that from what you can see, what’s an owner really doing that they can’t see? If you want to make the most money in the least amount of time, clean and declutter ruthlessly.’’
As for those Zillow nightmares that somehow make it onto the market: Who knows?
“It’s a sign of the times that people can do that and get away with it. Sellers that do that are leaving so much money on the table,’’ she said.
But they’re leaving a bit of fun for the rest of us, too, whether they’re décor disasters or, more frequently, ostentatiously unimaginable.
Take it from Cambridge online house-hunter Diana Hsu, who doesn’t think she’ll find an affordable home nearby anytime soon, but loves looking nonetheless.
“It’s the same kind of enjoyment you get from watching Kardashians — lifestyles of the rich and famous. You know you’re never going to buy a place with a pool, a sauna, and a movie theater. But it’s nice to see that they exist.’’
Kara Baskin can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @kcbaskin. Subscribe to the Globe’s free real estate newsletter — our weekly digest on buying, selling, and design — at pages.email.bostonglobe.com/AddressSignUp. Follow us on Twitter @globehomes.
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