Scrolling through real estate listings in far-flung destinations is a way to visualize an alternate life, whether you’re trying to move or not and Daniel Levy's skit on SNL about house shopping is a little too relatable for us.
Millions of people have spent far more time at home than they expected to this year. It’s made many of them daydream about what it might be like to live somewhere else, often while scrolling through listings on Zillow. “I go into neighborhoods that obviously I can’t afford as a college student and look at my ideal house and fantasize about when this is all over,” said Crystal Silva, 20, who lives in North Carolina.
She spends hours at a time surfing the app, touring homes she’ll never buy. She’s likely not alone in that. Zillow usage has climbed since March, with online visitors to for-sale listings up more than 50 percent year-over-year in the early months of the pandemic. People bond over listings on Discord servers, group chats and “Zillow Twitter,” and their obsession has made many strange and obscure listings go viral.
Curbed, a website covering city life, real estate and design, recently started a column called My Week in Zillow Saves, in which people share the homes they’ve admired on the site.What many are contemplating when they browse Zillow and similar home buying sites — like Redfin, Trulia and Realtor.com — is not necessarily a purchase, but an alternate life. Zillow surfing has become a primary form of escapism for those who want to flee not just their homes but the reality of 2020. Zillow surfing is especially popular among teenagers.
A TikTok meme over the summer consisted of users talking about knowing where the bathrooms were in their friend’s or crush’s house before ever visiting it because they had toured all of their classmates’ homes on Zillow. Many young people have extensive lists of saved homes and discuss and share listings with friends.
Link:NY Times
Photo: Getty Images