Sitting at the home-office computer with HGTV playing in the background, we’ve all done it.
We’ve watched Chip and Joanna turn a dive into a jewel made of shiplap somewhere in Waco. We’ve seen the House Hunters episode in which a guy in Dallas obsesses over buying a house that looks like a castle.
Or if we’re too lazy to reach for a TV remote, there’s always Zillow.
According to Zillow, daydreaming about living in a far-flung locale is a thing. More than checking your home’s value, scrolling through Zillow listings has become a favorite pandemic pasttime.
Zillow has the metrics to prove it: a 50 percent surge of people lurking at for-sale listings since the early days of the pandemic, up 52 percent in late May. Just in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, traffic to for-sale listings on Zillow has spiked 74.2 percent year over year.
To make it more of a thing, Taylor Lorenz, a New York Times reporter who writes about internet culture, made note of the Zillow Surfing trend. Here’s Lorenz’s main take: Zillow surfing has become a primary form of escapism for those who want to flee not just their homes but the reality of 2020.
People stuck at home are now more focused on their surroundings instead of spending time in an office cubicle. They might be discouraged at their uninspired background in Zoom calls. They hear the kids doing remote learning on the kitchen table. People confined to home are looking for more space or how to be creative with their existing space. Or if they’re not confined and waiting in their car for a Kroger pickup order, the Zillow app is a way to kill time.
In my case, it’s more about curiosity. I’m looking up the house made famous on A Christmas Story (Holy Smokes! it’s Zestimate is only $231,807!), the Home Alone house in Chicago, the Brady Bunch house in California, Ferris Bueller’s house. You can’t stop looking.
Curbed, which focuses on real-estate and design issues, started a column called My Week in Zillow Saves, where people share the homes they’ve admired on the site.
Of course, you can stalk other home sites, such as Realtor.com, Redfin, and Google Maps, each with redeeming features. But Zillow provides a comprehensive trove of images, 3D views, data, video tours, maps, and detailed information that’s easy to filter.
Sometimes, it’s a way to check out how much better — or worse — your former homes are now. What did the new homeowners do with that awkward space below the staircase? Are people doing their part to keep up the yard? Raise your hand if you’re guilty. I know I am.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I hear that Elon Musk is moving to Texas. I’m curious about how I’m going to afford one of his former California homes.
