I’m not talking about your childhood home although if you want to mention it no one is stopping you. My mother still lives in the house I grew up in so I’m still there a lot.
I’ve only owned three properties. The one I’m currently in and two I owned with my ex-wife. Our first house together we quickly outgrew and sold it to another couple. Apparently they were awful people with many problems and the house eventually went into foreclosure. It sat vacant for many years and fell into disrepair. When I would occasionally drive by I would see things I paid for were destroyed or taken away. Very recently it was finally bought, renovated and flipped. Someone is in the process of moving in.
It’s been many years since I’ve lived there but this makes me happy. I don’t miss the house. I wouldn’t want to live there again. But the idea that the house where my two daughters were born was abandoned and falling apart saddened me. I’m glad a new family will get a chance in that house.
Anyone feel that way? Once you move out do you not care what happens there? I would say that I don’t have a strong emotional attachment to the house but I want to see it lived in and used.
Similarly to you, I want to see other people do well in the places I’ve lived, even if I have zero desire to ever live there again myself. I’ve only owned one property prior to my current home, but even the places I’ve rented (and in particular, a house my ex and I once rented for eight years) still holds a bit of attachment for me.
I’m now far away from all of the places I lived previously, so I don’t do any driving by these days. But I’m still on the Facebook page for the last condo building I lived in, and I pay attention to news of sales there.
The house my ex and I remodeled and lived for a few years before our divorce with our two young children was seen by the kids as the “house of the happy part of their childhood.” It was a very good place for young children. Big yard, small lake, lots of frogs and geese and a place to swim. After we moved out, it was torn down by someone who wanted a big house on that lot. The kids actually cried when they saw the house was gone.
Although I cherish the memories of the kids at that age, I don’t care about the house.
None of my other houses have any emotional attachment.
I am very attached to my current house, but that’s a different story.
Yes, I know what you mean. It ranges from, “I feel a sense of warmth that other people are happy there” to “I would live there again if I could”. I don’t feel this way about every house, but a few of them.
I have only 1 former house, which I sold decades ago. It’s on the east coast, and I live on the west coast. Out of curiosity, I took a look at it with Google Maps street view last year and it looked… exactly the same as when I lived there. I don’t really feel any particular attachment to it, other than it was the first house that I owned and I’ll never forget the first day, walking though it and thinking: OMG, I hope this wasn’t a huge mistake!!
Not quite the same thing, but I have a huge emotional attachment to my grandmother’s old house…because, obviously, it was a wonderful place to visit. Lovely old place, and I drive by it every now and then, just to look and remember. I often have dreams about it.
Otherwise…I rent… And I did have a strong emotional attachment to my old apartment unit – semi-detached bungalows. Beautiful old place, with a manager who was a total saint. Alas, the place was so old, it had to be condemned for cracking concrete foundation slabs, and it’s gone now. Le sigh.
My current place feels kinda soulless. So it goes.
There’s the house in West Texas that I grew up in. Much as I hate Texas, it’s hard not to feel an attachment to that house. We had it built new and moved in when I was seven. But hey, what are you going t do? No way I’ll ever live there again.
Our condo in Bangkok that we just sold. We really loved that place. Another example of original ownership. It was time to move on, but I could easily have lived in that forever.
It’s going to take me years to forgive my aunt for not letting me buy Grandma’s house.
I still kind of miss the last place I had in Miami. My current apartment in Belgium is the same size, give or take a square foot, and a very similar total shape; it strikes me as funny that the floor plan is so different. The American one was open-floor, with only two rooms: the bathroom and the U-shaped everything-else; the Belgian one has walls thank you much (bathroom, bedroom, living room; there is no door between the kitchen and the very short hallway).
I drive by when I’m in the neighborhood and try to remember what’s changed, without snooping too much.
My childhood home, 1500 square feet (140 m^2) just sold for $1.1 million (not by anyone I know). So the value as I remember it is very much divorced from how it’s valued in an overblown market.
I looked up my childhood houses (two of them) on Google Street View and was pleased to see them in good repair. If I’m ever in that city again, I might drive by—but probably I won’t.
The homes I’ve previously lived in as an adult are a different story. I have absolutely no desire to see them or go anywhere near them. They may be falling apart, or torn down; I couldn’t care less.
We lived in a Rambling farm house in Northern Michigan for a few years while my husband helped start up a paper mill. I have no particular attachment to the house, except I think I brought a ghost home to Arkansas when we moved back. We have had several mysterious things happen since then. The company tore the house down after we left. It was a good house, too bad.
I don’t have any particular attachment to things, houses included. Whenever I visit Anchorage, I usually drive by where I grew up to see if it’s still standing, and my wife likes to drive by the condo we owned there. When we moved to Portland, I drove by where my grandmother used to live and tracked down the house my other grandparents lived in. This was primarily for genealogy purposes, and no real sentimental purpose. I spent 23 years in Navy housing and another six years in other government-provided quarters, so there’s certainly no attachment there. Didn’t buy my first home until 1998; presently living in our second and likely last.
I didn’t think so, but one day I just happened to be Google Street Viewing old places we used to live in, and discovered that the house we lived in when I was going to high school has been torn down and a two story mini-mansion built in its place. I was surprised at my reaction.
The house I grew up in seems to be cursed. Every family that has lived there wound up divorced and broken. It is currently a rental with seldom fewer than five vehicles in the driveway, so maybe it will be better for a bunch of young single folks. I’d love to see it torn down and re-built.
I am attached to the trees though. I go by every few years and pull the English ivy off of their trunks. (I begged my father not to plant that stuff!)
The same is really true of the other houses I’ve lived in. I don’t care about the structures, but I check on the yards if I’m nearby, and like to see the gardens doing well.
I have a lot of attachment to my last house. I have a fondness for flowing streams and it was along a creek that was in a very urban area but still had a lot of green space and wildlife. Things were pretty good for the first few years but overdevelopment in the watershed led to increasingly frequent flooding issues. Things got bad enough that the city decided to buy out the neighborhood because it was cheaper than fixing the flood situation. Later it morphed into part of a road project which some residents (the ones whose homes didn’t flood) fought. All in all it was over a decade between the city telling me they were buying my house and when they did it. Still, I had a lot of good and bad experiences there. Several cats and one very good doggie came to live with me there and spent their last days in that house. The cats are all buried there. It’s a grassy field now.
I was in that house not quite 30 years. Longer than all the other places I’ve lived, combined.
The place I live now is better in every respect but when I dream I’m usually in that house with my critters.
Before we left Florida in '97, we were living on a small man-made lake. There was nothing special about the house, but I loved the location and I hated having to leave.
From there we moved into a house in Virginia that was probably the nicest house we ever owned - certainly the largest - but I hated the location. If the Virginia house had been on the Florida lot, I don’t think I’d have ever left! Well, except for the whole changing jobs thing.
Out of the homes I’ve lived in as an adult, I’d say the apartment we rented in Berkeley, CA has some nostalgia value. I loved the neighborhood and I loved the apartment. It was the bottom floor of a converted two story craftsman, and was really well maintained with really nice vintage paneling and carpentry. It is also where my oldest child spent his first three years.
Other then that, I don’t have any attachment to any of the many apartments I’ve rented. I did like the house we rented in Sacramento, but I don’t feel a huge attachment to it.
I expect I’ll feel some attachment to our current home if we ever sold it. It is a fairly straightforward 1950s suburban house, but its been well renovated and suits us very well, as does the neighborhood. We still own our Atlanta condo, but I don’t feel that attached to it and if we ever stop renting it out and sell it I don’t think I’d feel much.
The house I grew up in yes. The house which I only vaguely remember that we lived in until I was 6, I really wish I remembered more.
Our first apartment after we were married, no particular attachment.
The co-op apartment in Chicago, I have a negative attachment to. The couple who tried to buy it lied to us about their finances (We’d offered them some financing) and was turned down by the co0op board. Turns out they were black. We didn’t know as we’d already moved to CT so a broker handled the entire thing for us.
Fair housing sent a test white couple to look and essentially forced us to accept their offer. It was also turned down – no surprise. Nevertheless the original couple sued both us and the board despite (as I said our offering financing).
After the thing was finally settled more than 2 years later, they said they hoped we weren’t upset, they’d just seen a chance to get some money. Of course we weren’t upset – we were livid.
