When Jed Clampett struck oil, he hustled his hillbilly family out of Bug Tussle and traded a mountain shack for a Beverly Hills mansion. A thriving dry-cleaning business allowed George Jefferson to leave Archie Bunker and Queens behind for a “dee-luxe apartment in the sky.”
These may be sitcoms, but television is merely reflecting real life. Look at Larry Ross, who won half of a multi-state $363 million lottery pot in May. Among Ross’ plans for the windfall: a bigger house and a more secure neighborhood.When good fortune strikes, moving up the housing ladder seems to be a primal instinct. Why?
Psychologists point to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory. Once you’ve got the basics covered — food, a roof over your head and the ComEd bill paid — aesthetic aspirations begin to kick in. “A luxury home isn’t self-actualization, but it’s certainly taking shelter to the next level,” says Terrence Koller, a Chicago-based clinical psychologist.
Housing is closely linked with status in America, say sociologists. Ancestral lines may determine social standing in class-bound countries, but in a democracy there are no titles to quickly identify the upper crust.
Instead, we build castles to signal our superiority.
Americans also have a long history of uprooting and replanting themselves, and our geographic mobility further intensifies housing as a status symbol. You may have been born to Boston blueblood, but that silver spoon is not apparent in Los Angeles unless you move into a palace in Pasadena.
Housing and cars are two ways to establish identity, observes Nina Gruen, principal sociologist at Gruen Gruen, a real estate consulting firm headquartered in San Francisco. “They’re outward signs of who we are, or more accurately, who we’d like others to think we are,” she said.
Predisposed to seek snazzier shelter, a robust economy has enabled more Americans to act on those instincts. Not only are many Baby Boomers in their peak earning years, they’re reaping rewards on Wall Street and inheriting money from their parents (a generation that believed in socking it away for a rainy day). In fact, an estimated 5 million Americans are now millionaires and 275,000 have at least $10 million (up fourfold in the last decade). No wonder residential real estate is booming at the upper brackets.
Still, there are some new twists on how well-heeled buyers approach the home front.
Corporate downsizing of the early 1990s planted a large seed of insecurity in the minds of consumers. Today more Americans equate money with freedom and control over their own destiny, says Jon Berry, vice president at Roper Starch Worldwide, a research firm headquartered in New York.
Whereas we once looked to the outside world for ego gratification, today we’re finding it in our own backyards. In 1990, the No. 1 status symbol was to be a corporate chieftain, according to Roper surveys. Today’s top status symbol is a three-way tie: owning a vacation home, being able to travel abroad and living in an exclusive neighborhood.
“If you can’t invest yourself emotionally in your office, it has to go somewhere … the home is even more important,” observes Berry, noting that more Americans think it’s important to have a beautifully decorated home today.
This heightened emotional attachment begins with size. Never mind that household size is decreasing. We continue to churn out bigger homesteads.
Today’s average new home measures 2,225 square feet, up 50 percent from 1,500 square feet in 1970. And that figure is dwarfed by an increasing number of upscale homes that measure 10,000 square feet or more.
The bigger-is-better trend carries over to vacation homes. Many of today’s getaways are just as large as primary residences; sometimes even bigger.
Yet size alone doesn’t satisfy completely. Even as McMansions crop up in subdivisions, inner cities and country lanes, owners are determined to create cozy castles.
“These mansions are still sophisticated, still elegant, but not the huge cold museums you might imagine from their size,” says Kathleen Carlin-Russell, editor-in-chief of Unique Homes magazine. Warmer materials such as limestone and woods add a little homespun touch, she says: “People want an escape, a respite from the world.”
“People like to feel pampered, maybe because the outside world is less pampering,” observes Berry.
Yet pampering has to be personalized. Affluent owners aren’t satisfied with the status quo in residential splendor.
And forget about keeping up with the Joneses — or the Rockefellers. People at the top have more wealth than ever before. And they’re spending it faster.
From 1945 to 1973, incomes were growing at about the same rate: 3 percent per year for rich and poor Americans alike. But in the mid-1970s, a shift occurred, widening the gap between the haves and have-nots, according to Robert H. Frank, a professor of economics at the Johnson School of Management at Cornell University and author of “Luxury Fever.” This disparity accelerated in the 1990s, he adds.
Today, while the median family in America has experienced no real earnings growth since 1979, earners in the top 1 percent have twice as much purchasing power as they did then.
And they are using that power. They want to set themselves apart, stamp their personality on properties.
Blame much of this “fingerprinting” on the Boomers. “It’s about being the biggest generation in history (up to Gen Y) and trying to separate yourself from the crowd in some way,” says Larry Samuel, a partner at Iconoculture, a Minneapolis-based trends forecasting firm.
“Now we have the money to differentiate ourselves in so many ways, and marketers are glad to help us out.”
And when it comes to self-expression and identity, nothing comes close to your own turf.
“Anybody can have a Jaguar,” points out Barbara Caplan, a partner at Yankelovich Partners, a consumer research firm in New York. “If you’re looking to create your own world, the home is the most ideal platform to do that.”
Among the fingerprints being left on high-end homes today: sculpture gardens and indoor galleries for art patrons, elaborate woodshops and pottery studios for artisans, kitchens that would dazzle even Martha Stewart, wine cellars with tasting rooms, soda fountains for underage drinkers or Twelve Steppers, shower rooms with more sprays and nozzles than your local car wash, smoking rooms with special exhaust systems, suites for our offspring, media rooms with stadium seating and popcorn machines and basements outfitted with hockey rinks, bowling alleys and driving ranges.
“We are really pleasure-bent now,” says Caplan, noting the home’s role as an entertainment center has increased substantially. “We’ve moved from return-on-investment to return-on-enjoyment. People are bored and the home is one way to get rid of that boredom.”
Another new underpinning of luxury consumption is technology. Not only has technology created many a millionaire, but it allows us to keep pushing the envelope on the high life.
Take Chez Gates, where old masters’ artwork is displayed digitally and Friends of Bill walk around with electronic devices that alter computer programming to reflect their preferences in music, light levels, temperature, even television shows.
Microsoft founder Gates’ high-tech temple may be an extreme example of automation, but about 7.5 million American households have some form of smart house technology, reports the Consumer Electronics Association. And few upscale homes are without it.
Chicago interior designer Doug Nickless is working on a project in which the budget for audio, video, security and computer systems alone exceeds $400,000. “When it’s completed, the owners can control their home environment from anywhere, even if they’re jetting back from Europe,” says Nickless.
With motion control and voice activation technology, an entire house can be constructed today without light switches. That’s quite a change from 10 years ago when the affluent still had to flick switches, Nickless says. “Options for pampering have always been there, but they just keep getting bigger, better and faster.”
Want your bathtub to fill itself? Or how about having your refrigerator scan its contents and order more milk and eggs from Peapod?
With enough money and programming, your house can practically function by itself. But don’t fire the maid yet. Someone still has to load that Waterford into the dishwasher.
