The Specific Allure of the Cheap Old Houses Instagram Account
Like many other New Yorkers, I have spent more than three months holed up inside a tiny apartment. As much as I love my city, I can’t help but daydream about what it would be like to have my own home: specifically, my own historic home with plenty of period-specific details. That’s where the Cheap Old Houses Instagram account comes into the picture.
Though I’ve been swooning over all the grand staircases, arched doorways, and built-ins featured on the account for a few years now, the allure of Cheap Old Houses has reached new heights over the past weeks. With all of the homes coming in at $100,000 or less, these aren’t just stunning historic residential specimens; they are also places that I could hypothetically afford. (At least when you compare the monthly mortgage payment to my current rent.) Obviously, the renovation costs would be astronomical and I am in no financial position to buy a plant right now, let alone a house, but looking at these listings is relaxing and oddly reassuring. It’s a total fantasy that is somewhat attainable. Sure, there are plenty of Instagram accounts out there with lavish mansions and fully restored historic properties, but at a much higher price point, they don’t have the same draw.
According to Elizabeth Finkelstein—the person behind Cheap Old Houses, as well as Circa, a site with listings for historic residential and commercial properties—I’m not the only one who has been using the account as a virtual escape lately. Since she started the Instagram account in 2016, it has grown to more than 934,000 followers. Typically, Finkelstein says that the account gets between 10,000 and 15,000 new followers each week, but that has increased to around 25,000 during each week of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over the past months, many people have realized that their jobs actually can be done remotely, even if that wasn’t an option before the pandemic—making them wonder why they’re paying big-city rent, and if staying put is in their best financial interest. “I think that people have probably spent a lot of time reassessing where they live and their life, and wondering if they could do something like this,” Finkelstein tells Clever, referring to purchasing and fixing up a cheap old house.
Not surprisingly, the majority of the account’s followers are from places like New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles—markets where affordable historic properties simply don’t exist. Most of the homes featured on Cheap Old Houses are located in small towns like Girard, Georgia, and Hutchinson, Kansas, and part of their appeal is that many of their original architectural details remain intact. While there are historic homes all over the country, these are different, Finkelstein says, because they’re located in areas that have been less economically advantaged than, for example, the Hudson Valley north of New York City. “There’s so much money [in some areas] that the house gets renovated every six years, and there are very few original kitchens and bathrooms left,” she explains. “But in some of these towns, there has not been that kind of investment, so the bathroom from the 1920s is still there. And so they present this time-capsule view into vernacular architecture, which is really fun and special.”
In a culture that devours good before-and-after pictures, Cheap Old Houses provides plenty of “before” images, while giving followers the opportunity to mentally design their own “afters.” “It’s an extremely creative thing to be able to look at something that’s sort of lost and forgotten and imagine what you can do with it,” Finkelstein says. Along the same lines, Dak Kopec, Ph.D., an architectural psychologist and associate professor of architecture at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, says that the account provides users with the escape we need right now. “The ability to think creatively has been shown to reduce levels of stress, and distract from the issues at hand,” he tells Clever. “When we look at an old home, we cannot help but think of ways we could fix it and make it our own—kind of like a blank canvas of what could be. When we look at finished homes, we tend to say ‘Wow, that is interesting,’ but looking at old and dilapidated [houses]…inspire[s] deeper creative thinking.”
Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
