The Looky-loo : Maybe it’s just human nature, but many of us love to go to open houses, even if we have no plans to buy.

Have you ever been out driving on a Sunday afternoon and passed a cute little Cape Cod with a sign: “Open House Today 3-5”? And it’s 3:30 p.m. The door’s wide open. The agent’s just sitting there. So, impulsively, you pop in for a look around. You’re not in the market. Just in the neighborhood. Just . . . curious.

Ah ha! Gotcha! You’re a looky-loo. Welcome to the club. We are legion.

Looky-loos, by accepted definition, are people who look at real estate for sale without any concrete plans to buy. Some of us do it only when the opportunity presents itself. Situational looky-loos. A few cross over the line--looky-looing every weekend for years. Junkies.

Some looky-loos may vehemently protest. They do intend to buy. Really. They’re even pre-qualified. Doesn’t that make them serious?

“They may be fooling themselves,” said Greg Pawlik, assistant manager with Douglas Properties in Pacific Palisades. He thinks a lot of chronic looky-loos are trying to convince themselves that they really shouldn’t buy. The endless rounds of walk-throughs and open houses are just to find fault with properties. A great disappointment, they sigh. So discouraging. But also a great relief.

“They want to be able not to buy,” he said. “To say, we looked and looked and there was nothing. They can’t tell people they’re scared, especially in this market, with such low interest rates. They need an excuse.” So they demand perfection, week in, week out.

Why do people looky-loo? Some do it as free recreation. A pleasant Sunday afternoon outing. Then there are the wanna-bes, out to see how the other half lives. It’s also socially acceptable voyeurism (as long as you don’t open the dresser drawers). Or a source of decorating ideas. Or just because your kids have to go to the bathroom.

Irene Reinsdorf, an agent with Buddy Bernard’s White House Properties in Encino, has seen it all.

“For some people, it’s like going window shopping,” she said. “They’re driving by, see the sign and just come in.” She’s “sat on” (real estate lingo for manning an open house) open houses where the only souls through the front doors were looky-loos.

“It’s a form of entertainment,” Pawlik said, “and it’s free. People see it as a chance to go in houses they couldn’t possibly afford.”

And that could be a $300,000 tract home as well as a mansion. Looky-loos are found across the economic spectrum, from starter homes in Covina to Bel-Air estates. In fact, Reinsdorf finds more looky-loos in less expensive homes than in the palaces.

Of course, not that many palaces have open houses. Joe Babajian, chairman of Fred Sands Estates Directors’ Office in Beverly Hills, usually only holds them when mansions are vacant. “Then there’s no reason not to,” he said. When he decided to hold a series of open houses in a Holmby Hills estate (on the market in the $4 million-$5 million range), it turned into a stop for tour buses. “They just unloaded and went through,” Babajian said. Another mansion in the same price range (this one near the Hotel Bel-Air) drew looky-loos from the hotel. Guests walked over for a quick tour after brunch.

The million-dollar estates draw a lot of people who are “fantasizing,” Babajian said. “A guy making about 50 grand a year, living in a condo somewhere, is usually totally oblivious to the other segment of society. The estates. The Rolls-Royces. Open houses attract them.”

Then there are the bored, lonely people out there who find looky-looing a way of adding a little color to drab lives. “I think people tend to do it more when there’s a void in their lives,” said Doris Lions, an Encino therapist.

Liz Hargrove, a Pasadena therapist, said that some looky-loos may do it as a defense mechanism. “They can pretend they’re looking for a home rather than dealing with their problems.” And, she speculates, it may be that junkie looky-loos have “some intimacy problems.”

“Sometimes people from dysfunctional families don’t know how other people live,” Lions said. “They’re curious. By looking at other people’s homes, at their belongings, knickknacks, toys, they see into other lives.” It gives them something to compare their lives to. She agrees with Hargrove: “It’s also a way of feeling intimacy,” even though no one’s at home.

Because, after all, in going through someone’s house you see the intimate details of their lives. An astute observer will know if (and what) you read in bed, over-indulge in the latest fashion, your taste in music. A chilling thought. So much so, that some sellers refuse to have open houses. “They don’t want people knowing that much about them,” Babajian said.

“Neighbors are the No. 1 looky-loos,” Pawlik of Douglas Properties said. “I think it has to do with how we live in Southern California. We have a lot of privacy here. The majority of neighbors on most blocks have never been in the house that’s up for sale.” But they see the open house signs and as soon as the coast is clear, they’re through the front door.

“They announce themselves before they even get inside,” laughed Toni Tucker, an agent with Re/Max in Beverly Hills. “ ‘I live across the street and I’ve always wondered what this house looked like.’ Variations on that theme.” Doesn’t it seem odd that people who have never introduced themselves to you in five years would only step inside your house when they know you’re not going to be there? As soon as the “For Sale” sign went up, they could have moseyed over and inquired about asking price, remodeling, number of bedrooms. But no-o-o.

In their defense, it’s not just nosiness that propels them over. They also have serious, practical intentions. “They want to see for themselves why the house across the street is selling for $200,000 less than what they think theirs is worth,” Tucker said.

Lions agrees. “It can be more than curiosity for curiosity’s sake. It’s a good way of pricing their own homes.” Seeing what’s been done to other homes on the block can give a potential seller an idea of a realistic asking price without calling on an agent.

Agents welcome neighbor looky-loos. It offers them a chance to meet other potential sellers in the area--and neighbors have been known to help with a sale by telling friends and relatives about the “nice home down the street.”

Looky-loos can also be searching for decorating tips. House Beautiful come to life. Some decorators even instruct their clients to go look at homes and get a feeling for what they like. Reinsdorf finds this especially common in tract houses. Who could resist the temptation to see what someone else has done with an identical floor plan?

Pawlik admits to finding a decorating tip himself on a looky-loo outing. (Of course, for him, technically this would be a busman’s holiday.) In one of the children’s bedrooms, a train track for those huge West German toy trains had been mounted on a shelf around the top of the room. He’d been wrestling with just that decorating dilemma.

One sub-category: the out-of-town looky-loo. Typical scenario: They’re spending the weekend at Lake Arrowhead and suddenly they’ve just got to have a second home there. So they drop in at the prominently situated real estate office and suddenly they’re out looking at a few properties. It happens so fast. Caught up in the moment. And then, Monday morning they’re back at work. Head out of the clouds. “What were we thinking?” The fantasy passes--until they spend a long weekend in Carmel.

Just say (hypothetically speaking, of course), you were a looky-loo. Would the agent “sitting on” the house be able to spot you?

“You can never tell by the way people are dressed or what they drive,” Reinsdorf said.

But they can tell by how you act. “Looky-loos act real sneaky. Very evasive,” he said. Even innocent conversation makes them edgy. “I like to make eye contact with people,” Reinsdorf said, “and looky-loos usually don’t.”

“Looky-loos say, ‘Do you mind if we look?’ ” Babajian said. “They act guilty, like they shouldn’t be there. Serious buyers are more cavalier.”

“Looky-loos don’t usually want to talk,” said Ben Bellet, sales associate with Fred Sands Beverly Hills Estates. “They want to be left alone.” Still, Bellet believes in treating even the most flagrant looky-loos as if they’re serious buyers. “Some agents judge them at the door. ‘This guy’s not real’ and treat them badly.” Bellet has been to open houses where he hasn’t announced himself as a fellow agent and he’s gotten the looky-loo treatment: “The agent will continue reading the paper or talking on the phone.”

The agent’s first tip-off that he’s dealing with a less-than-committed buyer is the hesitation about giving their names and addresses. Reinsdorf is firm: “I tell them that this is someone’s private property and the owners have requested the names and addresses of everyone who walks through.”

She asks people, “Are you planning to buy?” Looky-loos say, “Sure.” When she follows up with, “Are you prepared to buy?” they get evasive.

Another tip-off is not looking at the floor plan. Serious buyers are mulling over how they’d place their furniture. The looky-loo is busy admiring the Navajo rugs or the antique paperweights or family pictures. Also most looky-loos don’t bring their kids with them, Reinsdorf says.

Pawlik says he spots looky-loos because they either “don’t have anything to say or they absolutely love the property.” No middle ground.

Some looky-loos are just wishful thinkers, Bellet said. “The pretend they can afford the houses they’re looking at. They’re hoping for a raise or a better job,” he said. He points out that looky-looing is “a way for people to educate themselves, which is what they have to do before making an offer. After all, it usually a person’s biggest investment.”

Tucker has become philosophical about the subject. “Everybody’s a looky-loo these days. They’re waiting to see where we bottom out. They’re afraid to commit.” Looky-loos are often just keeping up-to-date on the market.

Now I feel better.