What Happened To Home Sweet Home?

A perky young presenter beamed at me from TV the other day and said, "Of course, we all want to make money from our houses, don't we?."

That's a given. With expectations fuelled by stellar prices, the young and the perky don't want to know that the home they inhabit might someday be less valuable than it was yesterday.

I told one bright-eyed investor recently that seven years ago houses languished for months without buyers, often selling for tens of thousands less than the asking price. In the late 1990s the only word for real estate was dire. She winced a little, but I could see she was thinking, well, that was then, it's not like that now…

So the lust for ever-smarter homes rolls on and on, with every woman apparently hanging out for a "gourmet" kitchen with granite benches, shiny appliances and thousand-dollar light fittings. Halogen lights must shine down like stars, everything has to be remotely controlled and polished wood must gleam underfoot.

It's all very wonderful. But when, I wonder, did houses become just commodities, more valued for their net worth than their warmth?

We can all look back to plain-jane houses we grew up in. My childhood home still had a "safe" - a food cupboard on the kitchen's coolest wall with a wire screen to the outside that let in air and kept flies out. I can still smell the mouldy basement where my mum laboured over the clanking wringer of the washing machine, with its grey rubber tubes draining into dank concrete tubs.

Our house had clattering Venetian blinds and tufted candlewick bedspreads. The floor was covered with felty stuff called Bisonia Squares until we got real carpet. Cold, bare floorboards were a shameful thing then, with homeowners yearning for the day when they could afford wall-to-wall Axminster.

My grandparents' old villa still had a scullery - a dim corridor with a grotty old sink where my gran scrubbed at the pots.

Roll on two generations and the smartest new homes have not just sculleries but butler's pantries too (as if we all have a Jeeves on the payroll) and every carpet in sight has been ripped up to display the floorboards. Once again, dropped plates smash, fluff gathers in corners and winter floors chill bare soles. Fashion is a contrary beast.

And worst of all, housing fashions are changing so fast that a place you might have thought was hunky-dory 10 years ago might now need a new fortune spent on it to keep it up to scratch for far-too-discerning buyers.

Overdosed on too many episodes of Changing Rooms, My House My Castle, Location, Location, Location and the House and Garden Show today's home seekers can't help yearning for the buffed, lush living spaces those shows espouse.

We sneer now at the boxy, boring houses that were just about everyone's lot in the 1950s. Who'd want those awful floral carpets and flocked wallpapers? And yet, we lived rich, real lives in those houses, didn't we?

People partied and sang and made home brew, argued and cried, mourned deaths, leapt into bed and made babies just the same, albeit on kapok mattresses rather than inner-sprung.

All the marble tiles, power showers, stainless steel range-hoods and plasma TVs in the world haven't made for greater happiness, have they? But against all reason, householders as yet un-stung by any property reversals keep on believing that greater luxury will bring lasting contentment. Stacking the glossy mags high on their designer coffee tables, they dream their dreams and wait for the day when they can sell at a fat profit.

It seems the world now views houses as little more than money in the bank. And once up for sale, they're not even allowed to be seen as personal spaces. You'll have noted all that advice about removing family photos and clearing off fridge magnets so as to make rooms as neutral as can be, devoid of life?

But without people, houses have no life at all. After we've moved out, the people stuff is all we remember - what happened there and what it did to our hearts. We recall the emotional highs and hurts long after we've forgotten whether we chose the "right" colour for the walls.

Or at least, that's how it should be. If choosing superior cupboard facings and hand-rail styles really seems more important, then we've devalued something that used to be precious - the real meaning of "home sweet home".

Experience magazine