I still stalk the two houses I’ve owned. I did a lot of work to fix up both of them and I like checking if the work I did has stuck around. So far it all has.
My wife and I are watching the first house I bought very closely and if it comes on the market we’re going to use it as an excuse to move back there. Of course, we’re looking at other places in the same town too but that house would be perfect for our family situation and budget.
My childhood home and the apartments I lived in when I was in college.
Other than that, no.
This summer I got to see a house I lived in briefly after working odd jobs on it for two summers as my parents built their modern dream house. I was smaller and cramped feeling - mainly because I have gotten use to open plan homes. My nostalgia for that house is greatly diminished.
I am very attached to our current home - my first and only purchase.
I am happy when my life is “just so”. And there were a couple of homes where that was consistently the case for a very long time (until it wasn’t). So yes, I have some nostalgic connection to those places, flaws and all.
I now live in the house I grew up in, BTW. Bought it from the estate when my mom died. Lots of memories here too.
I’ve been in my current home 16 years and my kids grew up here, all of their school years. I’ve done a lot of work on the place and know it like the back of my hand. This is the home where my kids grew up. It is pretty special and I might be leaving it soon.
Our first house we had for 8 years and though the kids were born there, it was just a starter home and I don’t really miss anything from it.
Oh, and I used to live in the Hale Manoa residence hall of the East West Center, a federal think tank at the University of Hawaii. It housed students and guests of all ages from all over the world, mainly Asia-Pacific. Back when I was in school. I was just the hired help at the time, in the Housing Department, and my job required me to live there, so it was a free room. Not a bad score in Hawaii! Those were some great days. I changed rooms a couple of times, but the building holds a lot of fondness for me. The wife, now she was an East West Scholar, and she lived there too – in Hale Kuahine at first, but later in Hale Manoa. Those were our courting days. So yes, I am tied to that building.
I like to drive by my last house in the spring and check on my tulips.
MY tulips.
As of last March they were still going strong!
The house before that had MY forsythia but it’s too far out of my normal range so I don’t check on it.
As far as other people’s houses, my aunt and uncle built a custom home and lived in it for 60 years. The year before my aunt died she finally admitted it was too much for her and put it on the market, and boy, do I miss that house. But really, it’s mostly missing my aunt and uncle.
When I go to the city where I was raised I sometimes drive by the house I grew up in but I wouldn’t say I have a strong attachment to it. It’s more of a curiosity to see what’s changed. Outside of that I have no attachment to anywhere I’ve ever lived … meaning I don’t drive by them or even think about them. In my younger years I moved about every six months. I don’t even think I remember everywhere I lived. I’m slightly attached to my current house as I purchased it as my sole property rather than with a partner.
My childhood home is now in a kinda crappy neighborhood, and has been allowed to fall into disrepair, so it is kinda sad to see it. My dad lived in it for 70 years, and we used to joke that he would break things so that he could fix them…
My wife and I lived in 2 homes while raising our kids. Both are within 20 minutes of us. A couple of times a year when in the neighborhood we will drive by, just to see how the houses and neighborhoods look. The one thing we feel fond of is the trees we planted. On one, (among others) we planted a red oak on the front lawn maybe 20 years ago. It is now an amazingly beautiful large oak. I wouldn’t have thought it would grow so large in 20 years. In the other, we fondly remember a dawn redwood and a swamp white oak in the back yard - both of which are impressive specimens now, 20 years later. We planted both species in our current home, and are looking forward to their growth.
Nostalgia, yes. Attachment, nah.
I had a great garden in our Texas home. When I had a chance to get a peek at it a few years ago, I found that the new owners had replaced it with a wooden deck*. So it goes.
I’ve mentioned to Mrs. J. that as far as the current extensive gardens at our home are concerned, if potential buyers want to pave over the entire back yard it’s fine with me, as long as they pay the asking price when it goes on the market. It’d be nice if some of the many trees I’ve planted survive (the dawn redwoods and white oak, for example).
*the people who’ve bought our homes in the past seem to have been be deck-happy. In the case of he first house we ever had, the new owners put up a deck on top of our cocker spaniel’s burial site (which should mean that the deck is now cursed forevermore).
I was tempted to knock on the door of the people who were living in a home I lived in up through kindergarten and ask those strangers if I could look around. But that would just be weird.
I’m the other way around. I don’t care about the houses I’ve lived in. But my mother moved into a house that was built in 1935. Whenever I stay there, I often wonder about all the families who must have lived in that house.
It truly fascinates me.
No attachment to the house I recently sold, despite it being the place I’ve lived in the longest in my life. I knew it was destined to be gutted and flipped. I am sad about my garden though. Over the ten years I lived there I planted the entire small city sized front yard with a variety of flowers and shrubs and the new owner ripped everything out. It’s back to the dirt and weeds and ugly concrete porch that were there when I first bought it. Perhaps the daffodils managed to hide and will come back next spring.
Don’t know if this is too much of a hijack, but have you encountered folk asking to see the house you were living in? Or if you’ve done more than drive/walk past an old house?
We’ve encountered it a few times. My suggestion is - don’t be snoopy, and don’t act as tho you still own it. We’ve reacted pleasantly when people have rung our doorbell and asked if they could look around inside or outside. But we have NOT reacted as positively when we’ve been surprised by folk peeking in our windows, walking around in our fenced backyard, or driving up, and standing on our front lawn/driveway and taking pictures.
With one exception, we’ve never asked to enter our old houses, and have never ventured off the sidewalk/street. The exception was my wife’s childhood home. It was a pretty distinctive house. Her parents sold it quickly when they divorced - while my wife was away at school. The folk who bought it did some significant remodeling. Many years ago, we knocked on the door, and they seemed very happy to show us around. It gave my wife some closure.
My dad was career military and we moved a lot.
I am attached to the home we moved to when I was in sixth grade. My parents owned it twenty years (dad had retired).
They built a home in the country. I still drive by the old house once in awhile. Some idiot painted the steel siding.
I still think about my childhood home, and would rather not see it, just because i’d like to remember it as it was in my memory. Our previous home that we owned for nine years, I kind of miss. It was an old row house built around 1900. It had a fire after we sold it, and we saw the renovations after the new owners fixed it up. It still felt like my house. I miss the neighborhood more than the house, and it was in constant transition so it’s changed a lot in just three years.
Yes, this is me too. I know that subsequent owners made some major changes and I don’t want to see them. I saw pictures very briefly, and heard descriptions of what they did, but am trying to ignore them. 
I always thought of it as “my” house because my parents bought it right before I was born. There was a spectacular dogwood tree outside my window that the neighbors had bought their house to be near. I remember all the nooks and crannies inside the house and the games my brother and I created in the backyard.
Yes, I’ve lived in 5 different houses and have attachment to them all. I lived in trailer on my uncle’s farm in the country, a rancher-style house in the country that my parents built when I was ~5, a four-over-four 1920’s style farmhouse in a small town when I was 15 or so, my first house of my own was a small rancher in a lakefront community, and my current house. All of them I remember fondly.
I’ve been back to the house we moved into when I was 5, looked at it when it was for sale. A lot had been changed, much for the worse, and it was sort of painful. My sister went back to the farmhouse and it had been very badly treated.
I grew up an Army Brat. Not in the slightest, moved around a lot, every few years. You learn not to have attachments to inanimate things. Plus the military is extremly efficient in clearing you out from housing. And moving the next people in.
To illustrate, my Dad had been posted out of his billet and his relief had come. As the guy had a large family, we moved out of “our” house into the officers mess a few days before we were due to leave so they could move in. At most two or three days later they invited us all for dinner at that house. It, had changed completely. What had been my room, had been split into two, and had different coloured walls. What had been our TV room had been changed into a weird sort of nursary. They had knocked down the partition walls between the dining room and the kitchen. My mum tells me that as the wife had allergies all the flowers my mother had so lovingly planted in the garden were removed.
Yeah, no. And not for the places I lived in as a young adult either. Too transitory. I will admit sometimes my grandparents place does stir emotions, but that’s just missing them I guess.