Despite the current downturn in the housing market, the country's “mania for homes” that exploded during the last half-decade is still alive and well, according to Newsweek
writer McGinn. The fascination with homes—“talking about, valuing, scheming over, envying, shopping for, refinancing, or just plain ogling homes”—has continued even after the market has cooled, McGinn argues, and can be seen in the ongoing popularity of HGTV, the 24-7 real estate and home improvement cable channel and its flagship show, House Hunters
. To prove his thesis, McGinn entertainingly explores the gamut of housing obsessions, from buying personally designed and oversized trophy homes, attempting large-scale renovations and spending “obscene” amounts of time on real estate Web sites such as Zillow and PropertyShark to actually going out and getting a real estate license, which McGinn himself does after only minimal training. It is this ability to get inside the actual lives of the housing-obsessed rather that relying purely on statistics to prove his point that makes this book as enjoyable as an episode of Flip This House
, another popular housing reality show that McGinn cites in a book that is, at heart, all “about behavior, not economics.” (Dec. 26)
