Cruising Neighborhoods and Lusting After the ‘Perfect’ Home

In a sense, all driving in Los Angeles is window shopping. Unless we’re on our fretful way to a meeting with the auditor or the divorce lawyer, most of us are able to appreciate our surroundings even as we meander through Alhambra in search of a 2-year-old’s birthday party.

Perhaps we’re on the lookout for something--the next cool bar or coffee place, a New Age bookstore, a decent bike shop, a new route for our dog walk. Or maybe we’re just urban explorers, trying to figure out our city and its citizens. Who would live in an all black house, we wonder. What brain disorder struck residential architects in the 1970s? How can there be so many rich people in this town when we don’t seem to know any? Why were there not this many nice apartments available when we were looking for one?

Some of this curiosity is motivated by lust--house lust, which is one of the most common forms of lust in L.A., preceded only perhaps by career lust and maybe in some parts of town well-defined-lats lust.

We look at other people’s houses and imagine how much more satisfying our lives would be if only we had a turret or two, or a river-stone-fronted Craftsman or a porch with white pillars. If only we had vaulted ceilings and really nice stained glass windows in our entryway, we would never speak harshly to our spouses, our children would get good grades and quit sassing us, and maybe, in the serenity of this tree-lined avenue or that landscaped garden, we would finish that novel/quilt/sonata we’ve been yakking about for five years now.

And this is all just driving by on the way to Big 5. When the object of the drive is to actually look for homes with the purpose of buying one, then this free-floating lust enters the courtship stage.

My husband and I have just begun looking for a new house, and we’re still in the drive-by phase, partly because we really want to check out the neighborhoods we think we’re interested in, and mostly because there are no houses at all for sale in Los Angeles County. Or rather they’re for sale in some secret alternative universe that exists in the 15-second time warp between the moment the Realtor pounds the “For Sale” sign into the yard and when she sticks the “In Escrow” sign on top of it.

But even in a softer market, the search for a house begins a certain way. First there is the drive through the dream neighborhood, the land of the dappled sidewalks, the velveteen lawns, the lovely homes with their libraries and dens and multiple bedrooms, their ample front porches, their spacious backyards. Imagine driving down this lovely street on the way to work or school or the store. Imagine how good it would feel.

Then there is the drive past homes we can actually afford, or could if they were not in escrow already. Can we imagine making this turn, driving down this street and heading home. No, no, maybe, yes. Can we live with the sound of the freeway? Could we really pretend it’s just like the ocean? For years? Will our route to work take us through a really nice neighborhood leaving us chronically dissatisfied and depressed; will a trip to Trader Joe’s route us through an endless stretch of industrial wasteland? Can we stand it?

See, curb appeal doesn’t just refer to the house. It refers to the drive to the house. What you see as you head home is part of home too. The story that it tells about you, about why you’re here and not there and why you’ve traveled so.

So my husband and I drive around with our friendly Realtor, looking at houses that aren’t for sale, but telling him: this street, not that one; shuddering at some homes, swooning over others.

“I think I know what you’re looking for,” he says confidently, as if he can conjure it from nothing in a matter of weeks. And maybe he can. Meanwhile, we’ll just keep driving with lust in our hearts.

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Mary McNamara can be reached at mary.mcnamara@latimes.com.