If there is one thing that Los Angeles teaches you, it is to become highly sensitive to “vibe.” The notion of vibe supercharges this city—which is evidenced by its robust history of cults. Vibe is intangibility, ambiguity, and so is also a dark art.

For those places or people or things able to possess it, or manufacture it, vibe is also power. Power and, we should say, a major economic driver. More and more, we seem to live in a vibe economy (and a vibe politics) = a very polite way of putting it.

We could make an example out of “home” with a crucial stat: Around half of home buyers decide on a place because it’s “love at first sight.” In other words, despite equal or superior options, the deciding factor was some kind of immediate emotional connection—i.e., a vibe. And, just for clarity, that half of vibe-driven buyers alone equates to some two trillion dollars—trillion!—of the American real estate market.

So why are most real estate listings an absolute vibe killer? Why, for heaven’s sake, is the way we sell homes so unrelated to the dreamy-intangible things that compel half of us to buy them? And how could the Listingscape be improved?


BUT FIRST: THE HELL OF “HOME AS ASSET”

One hundred percent of us use the internet when searching for a home to buy. So, let’s consider the power player du jour, Zillow. Ten billion visits to its platforms per year make it basically a national pastime. Visualizing Zillow will likely conjure up its standard imagery: recent market-ready remodels photographed in a genericizing, overexposed whiteout, often with some sort of spatially warping sub-1x zoom, and ergo altogether a little suspicious. Those camera settings are part of a seller’s “tricks of the trade,” but to what end?

Instead of helping us get a feel for a place, these photos seem to do their best to make a home as close to a straightforward “asset” as possible. A listing asks you to look at the price, look at the number of bedrooms, look at the square footage—and, to achieve this neutrality, all these homes look like the most soulless of Airbnbs. What is there to fall in love with?

These homes don’t seek True Love, a special connection, or The One in a potential occupant or buyer; they’ll (mostly) take anyone with the cash. The result: real estate listings have, by extension, really messed up the average P.O.V. on what home design and décor should be. Protecting your asset means ensuring that there is the biggest market for it as possible, which means the lowest common denominator of vibe. And somehow some have come to view this one-dimensional, suburban-fantasy standard as the aspiration. It has been leaping off Zillow into our day-to-day: If your home stays listings-ready, it doesn’t need to get listings-ready.

Ultimately, the listing-makers of today simply don’t value or understand the nirvana-of-home experience. Presenting a home as homes are (or should be)—highly individual, an imprint of and a support system for a life—is risky.

But a different world is possible.


VIBE ASSESSMENTS 101

Can one define “a vibe”? Yes… ish. But, more importantly, no… ish.

The yes-ish of it is that a home’s vibe is in part due to its form and site: materiality (both for look and touch), its flow (not just layout, but an ease and pleasure of moving through it), whatever scent might be wafting in from a garden, whatever dappled light might be hitting during some midafternoon Sunday open house. These are good vibes.

And it’s also how it’s presented: Have all echoes of life been bleached and shiplapped away?  These are good for “asset,” but bad for vibes.

The no-ish of our ability to define vibe is more important, and relates entirely to your personal history. Not to get too deep into vibes science, but they operate as a wavelength. You are not “hit” with a vibe; you ride it. When two waves of the same wavelength and frequency align in phase, they combine to form a wave with a greater amplitude. This is how you vibe with something.

How one ends up on their specific wavelength is the result of all of culture, but also of hyper-personal histories and tastemaking life events.


TOWARD THE VIBESCAPE

We’ll say it here and now: We hope for a world where the diversity of tastes is exposed and esteemed.

A hero to us is The Modern House, a real estate agency that launched a full 20 years ago (Twenty! Where are its copycats?)—and that, unfortunately for us here in the United States, remains just a U.K. thing.

The trick with TMH is, in first order, that it is super duper selective about what homes it lists—so its readers start off on a certain privileged footing. (And it must be acknowledged that not all listings sites are so picky.)

Secondly, its co-founders are magazine men, so it operates with a distinctly “story-forward” M.O.: a listing’s imagery shows nice coats on nice hooks, owners have not been instructed to whitewash the walls, the furniture is often quite distinctly someone’s personal style. In short, it is not all forced into Generic Buyers’ generic tastes. And it shows that a place can be and has been loved.

We chatted a bit with Albert Hill, one of TMH’s co-founders, about precisely this. His clarifying viewpoint: The purpose of the listing isn’t to make the sale, per se. It’s to persuade someone to visit—because the exact thing that will seal the deal is kind of impossible to guess, and a listing can’t be a catalog of every angle and detail.

He offers examples: “Oh, it was the view from lying in the bath”; “I just loved the staircase.” Or maybe it was also the light quality, the acoustics, the way the walk-in closets are set up so everything can sit right where you need it when you need it—all intangible things that suck in images, suck in V.R., and suck in text. You have to physically experience it to really know.

A second hero: Sam Arneson, based here in Los Angeles, who has amassed a beyond-deserved 200K+ followers on Instagram and the same on TikTok. That’s because she’s a damn master at vibe, which, in her case, is “earth-conscious granola midcentury.” Hyper-specific, because she’s not about finding Generic Buyers, she’s about connecting (connecting!) with an Ideal Buyer. In her words: “I’m not really qualifying why wood houses are better. I am kind of just saying they are.” Vibe is a you-get-it-or-you-don’t sort of thing.

Considering the state of most listings, Arneson’s take is similar to mine: “Same stale photos, same stale descriptions. Like, ‘We fucking know it’s a two-bedroom house. You don’t have to tell us, Jan.’”

So, what does that mean for what a listing should be?


LISTINGS AS THEY MIGHT BE

Imagine if real estate was sold by those who care about homes first, and not sales first. Do you think listings would look like they do?

Arneson instead basically writes poetry: little statements sitting atop supercut videos of a roster of granola wood haus listings. She doesn’t give a shit what you want. She’s not selling to you; she’s seducing you. “To live in a wooden beach house” one video begins—that’s not how you talk about an asset. That’s asking you to imagine everything that house might mean to you.

As a starting point for the list-makers out there, you might follow in those footsteps, finding the life in a home and focusing there. End the addiction to 3-D home tours and show us atmospheric video—short, minimal, and romantic. Show us light! Show us breeziness! Fire all real estate stagers and hire magazine-minded stylists (if you must hire at all). Consider photography beyond “full sun, midday.” The coziest and most welcoming moments in a home can be when softly lit at night—so show us that, too.

Finally, also appreciate the limitations of the digital. This “asset” is one you inhabit, and to inhabit is a very intimate thing. Know that it is, as Hill said to us, sometimes the view out the window while you’re lying down that can sell you on a place. Meaning, the home is made up of a zillion moments, sometimes fleeting—and not just “durable countertops” and “new appliances.” A vibe is sort of an ability to imagine you as a part of those moments.

Let us be swept up by life in a home, for once. It’s our life’s savings—can’t we expect more than an asset? We want vibe nirvana.