When people decide to buy or sell a home, they tend to obsess.  They watch the internet constantly to see if something new has been listed.  They search photos.  They compare prices. What I didn’t realize is there are certain behaviors of real estate obsession.  Inman News columnist Tara-Nicholle Nelson wrote a funny column about how to tell if you are obsessed,

The Open House Tic. This is a hybrid online and offline version of the fixation exhibited by those who get online every Friday and Saturday to prepare their plan of attack for Sunday open houses. This behavior is completely normal and, even, advisable, in actual house hunters — people who are actually in the market to buy a home, or even home sellers who are (wisely) seeking to scope out the competition.

But it takes on a compulsive element when people who have just bought a home, or have no intention of buying a home anytime soon keep open-house hunting as a weekly habit.

To be fair, this goes on the list of relatively harmless vices, except to the extent that it signals or churns up that feeling of constant discontent, that sense that the home you have is never quite enough.

This goes with the old real estate adage that people LOVE for realtors to drive them around to look at houses. Beware the obsessed!