(Getty)
They’re writing the book on how to ignite bidding wars.
The New York Times is reporting real estate agents are using novels, biographies, and how-tos as ammunition for price battles between pandemic buyers seeking homes with quiet places where one can relax and take in a good read.
“Even when I stage a house, I put books in them,” Morgan Munsey, who sells for Compass in Brooklyn and Manhattan, told the newspaper, noting that he has seen bidding wars break out over well-stocked libraries.
During a time when digital overload has many looking at lit screens for hours a day, the printed word can have a calming effect that forces us to sink into a soft chair and decompress, if only for a chapter or two.
And along with real estate agents, architecture companies are taking notice.
“The tactile connection to books and the need for places of refuge in the home, both for work and for personal well-being, have made libraries a renewed focus in residential design,” Andrew Cogar, the president of the New York and Atlanta firm Historical Concepts, told the Times.
In Oak Knoll Press-published book, “The Private Library: The History of the Architecture and Furnishing of the Domestic Bookroom,” Reid Byers makes the argument that there are plenty of reasons to keep great works of literature on shelves in your home rather than inside the brains of your pocket e-reader — with relaxation and wonder at the top of the list.
“Entering our library should feel like easing into a hot tub, strolling into a magic store, emerging into the orchestra pit, or entering a chamber of curiosities, the club, the circus, our cabin on an outbound yacht, the house of an old friend,” he writes. “It is a setting forth, and it is a coming back to center.”
Guess we could all use a bit of that right now.
[New York Times] — Vince DiMiceli