“Curb Appeal”

I was out for a run the other day and my mind wandered from dreams to tonight’s basketball game to the big hill coming up in front of me.  As I ran, I passed a house that has been for sale for well over a year.  I laughed and thought to myself, “Well, Big Surprise that home hasn’t found a buyer!”  To say this house was “plain” would be a compliment–it is just plain ugly.  As I galloped on by, I thought, “They are never going to sell that house.  It has awful curb appeal.”

A simple comment anybody in real estate (or an obsession with HGTV) could understand.  Then God, as He often does, planted a thought running in the opposite direction:  “What exactly is curb appeal?”  I dwelled on the question for awhile:  looking good from the street, attractive appearance, eye catching…  You know what I mean.  But the longer I tried to nail down a definition to this Real Estate 101 terminology the more I found myself humbled.  Curb appeal, for all practical purposes, has no bearing whatsoever on the actual quality of the house.

Curb appeal says nothing of the stability of the foundation, the reliabilty of construction, the efficency of the heating and cooling system, the leaklessness of the roofing, the cleanness of the carpets, the size of the house, the absence of foul odors, the storage capacity…all that curb appeal describes is how the house looks to other people!  Is there not a profound life-lesson in this–that one of our first thoughts when analyzing a home is how it will look to other people?  Our first consideration looking at a home is not the quality of what is inside (where we live), but the status of what’s outside (where others look).

I know, I know…the outside can be an excellent indicator of what is inside.  But seriously, take a moment to think about the irony of how important the house we live in (or want to purchase) must look good to others.  I think there is a deeper lesson here speaking to the human condition: 

We are much more prone to care about how things look from the street than what is in the basement. 

Let us stive to be people who live for more than curb appeal.