blenheim palace, castle, cramped, property, property porn, houses for sale, not enough space

Property Porn

If you were to open our laptops and type in our passwords you would find porn. It would quickly become clear that we have a problem with porn. Porn that dulls the senses. Porn that bleaches reality and makes human encounters less rich. Porn that makes you question what you have and what you want and whether anything you have genuine access to will ever be exciting enough. Exotic porn. Domestic porn. Porn.

No word of a lie; we are obsessed. And our search terms entirely depend on our state of mind at any given moment. Do we hope to feel humiliated, subjugated, appalled or inspired, powerful and all-conquering? Welcome to the bleak world of property porn. Insidious, addictive, property porn: the highway to dissatisfaction and self-loathing.

On an optimistic day, we look at houses that cost many times more than our properties would sell for. We visualise a remarkable financial year, the ability to upgrade while absorbing stamp duty into the equation and simultaneously reducing mortgage payments. The area is a little less ‘real’; the kitchen a vast, elegant cooking/sitting/sprawling situation; there is a dressing room (imagine that). There is a spare, spare bedroom that has ‘gym’ written all over it because the at-home office can be in the shed at the end of the (non-overlooked) garden. All this is in London (Zones 1 and 2 only) by the way – if we are talking rural porn then hand us that Country Life and let us examine those semi-statelies.  Party barn anyone? Pottery studio? Ping pong room? Staff cottage? Hammam? Some days – those days when anything seems possible – we type ‘no max price’ into the search bar and really roll around in the mud.

On less confident days we look at flats for half the price of our current homes. Just in case. Occasionally we experiment with a vast, tumble-down Bordeaux chateau or a rambling Hebridean farmhouse, but mostly it’s grubby places within a five-mile radius of where we sit.

This kind of porn reflects how we feel about our place in the world. Constant reassessments. Not just what we deserve but what we need to be happy. Sometimes we feel we’ve failed because we don’t have an ensuite bathroom even though we have many powerfully sustaining relationships and a widely envied hunger for adventure. Other days we feel that we should let it all go: leap off the property bus and see what happens. We’ll never get back on, will we? Our house is our pension. We’ll die on the streets surrounded by plastic bags stuffed full of property details muttering, ‘Well, that budget will get you a fourth bedroom but forget about the underfloor heating…and is it near the railway line? Dirty.’

We define ourselves as ‘in’ or ‘out’ of the game by where we live and – worse – where we might live one day. We suffer from chronic house envy. The flung-together houses of people with not much money but ridiculously wonderful taste and/or incredible DIY skills. The design temples of those who manage never to buy rubbish and tat and generic ‘middle class’ markers. The vast monuments to money of the really, really, properly rich where the very air seems honeyed. The charming country retreats of those who relocated and now live a kind of chicken-populated dream life. Oh let’s not forget the gyms and pools and playrooms. And just to be pedestrian, let us not forget loft-envy and extension-envy. Sometimes it can be as simple as front-door envy. Or even front path/step envy. We are not above going granular with our covetousness.

More. Boxes. To. Tick. More pressure. More porn. Wanting it doesn’t make getting it any more likely. And getting it might not feel as good as property pornographers will lead us to believe. Just as porn isn’t about real sex, property porn isn’t about real life. But we are endlessly, bottomlessly compelled… 

I’m Absolutely Fine! The Manual for Imperfect Women is out in paperback now

SHARE! SHARE! SHARE!
Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on email
Email