People's Dream Houses

The local paper printed a recent survey from Yahoo Real Estate about what U.S. home buyers want, even in these days "when one in three Americans knows someone who has experienced a foreclosure" (the way one in three Americans "knows someone who had crabs"). The least wanted features today are: gated communities, urban locations, and castle-style homes (!). The most wanted home features are:

• Green/energy-efficient 50 percent
• Building custom home 38 percent
• Water views 38 percent
• Mountain views 32 percent
• Suburban home 31 percent
• Near the beach 27 percent
• Cottage in the woods 20 percent

I was pleased to see "cottage in the woods" made the list and that one-fifth of all folks wish they could live like me.