more compelling than any geopolitical struggle.9
The Internet adds force to the narrative in today’s housing market. People are
naturally curious about the amount of money that others make in their jobs, but
they can’t find such information on the Internet (except in the case of
government jobs), and it is considered vulgar to ask. However, McGinn notes,
websites such as Zillow and Trulia, both founded in 2006, allow you to find out
right away (for free) what anyone’s house is worth.
Social psychologist Leon Festinger described a “social comparison process”10
as a human universal. People everywhere compare themselves with others of
similar social rank, paying much less attention to those who are either far above
them or far below them on the social ladder. They want a big house so that they
can look like a member of the successful crowd that they see regularly. They
stretch when they pick the size of their house because they know the narrative
that others are stretching. McGinn’s “You Are Where You Live” effect confirms
the power of the real estate comparison narrative. As of the early 2000s, when
the housing boom was at its peak, there was no other comparable success
measure that one could just look up on the Internet.

The History of Homeownership Promotion
In another element of the real estate narrative, history shows a succession of
advertising promotions for homeownership itself, not just for the sale of
individual properties. In the United States, these promotions began with the
“Own Your Own Home” campaign, launched by real estate agent Hill Ferguson
in 1914 under the auspices of the National Association of Real Estate Boards
(precursor to the National Association of Realtors today). The Own Your Own
Home campaign, like the savings and loan association movement that preceded
it in the United States and the even earlier building society movement in the
United Kingdom and Europe, was an attempt to help people build up some
savings.
The Own Your Own Home campaign set out to change the widespread
presumptions that borrowing is disreputable or dangerous, that people should
never go into debt, and that they should accumulate savings to buy a home with
an all-cash offer. In a 1919 display ad placed in numerous newspapers, the
campaign stated:
Don’t let the idea of a mortgage scare you. Some people think they’re a
disgrace. But if they’re good enough for the biggest corporations and the
United States government they needn’t frighten you.11
Note that the purchase of a home was not cast as part of the more modern
concept of “saving for retirement.” A ProQuest News & Newspapers search
reveals that retirement was virtually never mentioned in advertisements for
homes until the 1920s, and the idea did not take off until the 1940s. In the
earliest part of the twentieth century, people didn’t think of saving for retirement,
as they in many cases did not think they would live long enough to spend much
time in retirement. Rather, savings were put aside as a safety measure against
illness or other misfortune.
The savings bank movement and the Own Your Own Home movement were a
moderate success. The homeownership rate rose, and even today low-income
people in the United States and other advanced countries tend to have some
savings, mostly in the form of home equity.
Next came the Better Homes in America movement launched in 1922 by
Marie Meloney, the editor of a woman’s magazine, the Delineator. Real estate

groups continued to pay for advertisements advocating homeownership
throughout the rest of the twentieth century. In the years leading up to the 2007–
9 world financial crisis, the National Association of Realtors placed numerous
ads including the words “Now is a good time to buy or sell a home.” After the
financial crisis, it launched a new campaign, “Home Ownership Matters.” These
campaigns emphasized that homeowners tend to be successful and patriotic
people. The campaigns not only helped support patriotic ideals but also created a
clearer rationale for buying a home, thus enhancing the narrative.
The desire to impress the neighbors is part of the social fabric, but it comes
with a psychic cost. Marketing people often find themselves in the position of
trying to help people get past their guilt about showing off, which may involve
buying land or ostentatious houses. Before the Great Depression, many ads
touted purchasing undeveloped land as investments. For example, a large
newspaper display ad from 1900 with the headline “A Princely Spot Is
Orangewood” offered five-acre plots near Phoenix, Arizona, that could be used
either to build a home or to plant an orange grove. The ad featured recent auction
prices of oranges from the region as well as text about how fashionable the area
was.12 In response to complaints about such marketing, the individual states of
the United States put into place over the period 1911–33 a series of “blue sky
laws” prohibiting the selling of “speculative schemes which have no more basis
than so many feet of ‘blue sky.’ ”13