Haddow Press Experiment

Trophy Homes and Status Symbols

Archived in Construction, Real Estate |

I can’t help but wonder if some of the noise in that undeniable boom in the housing market is fueled by the modern notion of homes as the new middle class status symbol. New notion, you ask? Don’t get me wrong. The average person’s house has long been the trophy of high society — nearly as long as human beings have been living indoors, in fact. I imagine that the first homo sapien to have a larger cave than the guy next door neighbor was already, long ago, evoking the envy of the Jones.

But I think the push has likely become more evident, especially in recent years. With a booming housing market there is much more of a race to move away from the house as a “practical living space” towards house as an “OH MY GOD look at that place” possession, especially among the middle class of society who, traditionally, have spent their TIME and money on smaller toys to satisfy that status drive. In an effort to perpetually “trade up” to bigger and better homes we have created a new kind of status for a part of society that has long been content (or simply practically able) to live well and stay settled. After all, my grandparents live in the same house for fifty years. My parents haven’t moved in thirty-two years. Is that kind of accommodation longevity a thing of the past? And will the trophy home mentality continue past the inevitable bust?

Some consequences, anecdotal and opinion/editorial style, follows:

1) The Fragmentation of Community

As we “shuffle” more and more, the sub-urban environment, already encapsulated and insular, will become transient. Fewer and fewer people get to know their neighbors. We move more. We isolate ourselves from the people around us. We fail, utterly and completely, to build caring communities that care and protect each other. When community ultimately collapses what happens? Crime increases. Isolation increases. Property values decrease. Happiness falls drastically.

2) The Disintegration of True Pride in Home

When you live somewhere for a long TIME — and now I’m thinking in terms of decades, not months or years — you begin to feel a very strong attachment to that place. It becomes a part of you. And I emphasize the word “begin” as until you have lived somewhere for a very significant portion of your own life, you cannot even begin to understand that kind of connection to a place. When you feel that depth of pride in some where, some place, some thing there is an equal and opposite effort to preserve and enhance it in a positive way. The movement towards the “trophy home” lifestyle is one where we are never satisfied of where we are at NOW, and never content to have pride — true, deep pride — in that.

Even five years ago status symbols came in the form of cell phones, stereo equipment, lawn mowers, boats, ATVs or vehicles. Today, the drive towards bigger and better homes, the gush of the housing bubble in Alberta and across Western Canada, is creating lasting, long term effects on how we will live in the near future.

Perhaps, I can hope, this is a temporary trend. Folks are trading up while the getting is good. Folks are flipping with opportunity, more than status. And perhaps someday we’ll look back at this decade as a “moving TIME” in our personal histories.

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