When You Have a New Therapist and Her Name Is Zillow

Ellisha Caplan has exercised , maintained a healthy diet and gotten sleep to manage stress. Lately she’s found something that makes her feel even better: Zillow .

In spare moments, the 47-year-old consultant in Delaware searches real-estate websites for homes in her price range in Philadelphia, where she went to college, and in the small German town where her family has spent several idyllic summers. She looks up nearby restaurants and bike trails, too, imagining her life if she retired there.

“It’s calming, like a massage for my brain,” Caplan says. “I get to let my mind run awhile and just go with the flow.”

Rising prices , few options and high mortgage rates have made home buying uniquely painful right now. But make-believe house hunts are different. They transport people out of their current problems into a fantasy of a better future, a relaxing habit one fantasizer likens to a “digital glass of wine.” I call it Zillow therapy.

Trawling Zillow for alternate versions of your life isn’t the same thing as gawking at real-estate porn, memorably captured in this “ Saturday Night Live ” skit. People using Zillow for therapeutic reasons tend to focus on a specific place, perusing homes they think they can afford and imagining life there. Down the rabbit hole, they cruise Google Maps and local websites for bars, hiking trails or—guilty as charged—bookstores and libraries.

“The fantasy is sustaining,” says Giulia Poerio, a lecturer at the University of Sussex, in the U.K., who studies how daydreaming can help regulate our emotional well-being. “Even if you can’t get what you need right now, you can Zillow it and get a little bit of energy or hope to keep you going.”

Walking trails, room to write

In reporting this column, I heard from people whose Zillow fantasies focus on homes with large backyards, where kids and dogs can romp outside unsupervised, and on places with a detached studio for writing or drawing. Nostalgia powers lots of people’s searches: They look at homes in a childhood town or another place they lived when life seemed simpler. Others use their daydreams to identify what’s missing from their current lives, such as community or nature.

My Zillow therapy sessions centre on Seattle . It’s far from hurricane season in Miami, where I live. I have a close friend there. And there’s plenty of water where I can sail . I search for (and imagine renovating) homes near walking trails and marinas, with a room where I can write with a view of some magnificent trees. Instant Zen.

Looking at worse houses rather than better ones is a balm for some people. Unattractive or cramped homes make them feel better about where they currently live, especially if their own home is less expensive. Psychologists call this phenomenon downward social comparison.

“If you want to see the 900 square feet that $1.8 million can get you, just put in a San Francisco ZIP Code,” says Hooria Jazaieri, an assistant professor of management at Santa Clara University’s business school who studies how people regulate their emotions. “It’s a great way to make you feel grateful.”

Zillow is helping Bill Marklein, 39, get through an expensive kitchen remodel—he and his wife have a baby daughter and have been doing dishes in the bathtub for months. He browses listings in his price range within a 30-mile radius of his home in Plymouth, Wis., lingering on the kitchens. Nice ones make him feel good about his investment. But hideous ones with 1970s avocado-green cabinets or battered white refrigerators sticking out into the room cheer him up, too.

“It’s like having a digital glass of wine,” says the business owner. “It shows you that life isn’t so bad.”

The limits of Zillow therapy

Zillow’s user data suggests that plenty of us are doing this. The company’s real-estate websites and apps, which include Trulia and StreetEasy, have a combined 217 million average unique monthly users. Yet just slightly more than four million existing homes were sold in the U.S. last year, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Zillow is “not a replacement for therapy,” says the company’s home trends expert Amanda Pendleton, though it can give people an emotional boost.

“It’s a judgment-free zone,” she says. “Unlike on social media, no one is going to comment on the home you’re looking up and tell you it’s a terrible choice.”

Still, there are drawbacks to spending too much time in our imagination.

“The fantasies zap your energy,” says Gabriele Oettingen, a professor of psychology at New York University, who studies the psychology of motivation. Her research shows that while people who have positive fantasies about the future feel better in the moment, they often don’t achieve the goals they’re dreaming about. “Your attention is away from your current reality,” Oettingen says.

The solution, if you want to make your dream come true, is to identify the obstacle in the way of achieving your goal, she says. If you can’t move right now, accept that and choose a more immediate goal. Can’t buy a house in the seaside town your family vacationed in as a child? Plan a trip to the beach.

And if you’re serious about a future move, take steps to make it a reality down the road.

Elizabeth Uslander, 42, lives in San Diego but enjoys perusing house listings in small towns in the Colorado mountains to help her cope with the pressures of running a business and blending her family with her new husband’s. She looks for homes with direct access to nature and enough bedrooms for all, then researches how close they are from the ski slopes, shops and the local bar.

She shares her favorite listings with her husband, which she says is “like making drip castles in the sandbox with your bestie.” Recently, they found a home they like so much near Steamboat Springs that they visited it—and then bought it.

They have no plans to move right now but plan to visit often. Uslander says that just owning it makes her feel that her current stressors are temporary.

“I actually made the fantasy come to life,” she says.

Would you let a stranger vacation in your home if you got free lodging in return?

A free stay in someone else’s home, long a budget-friendly way to travel, has become more appealing as costs rise and travelers seek out local vibes.

Home-swapping platform People Like Us has more than 10,300 homes listed on its site. Chief Executive Drew Seitam says, by the end of June, members had completed or arranged for 30% more swaps than in all of 2023. Another platform, HomeExchange, has more than 175,000 members, a number it says has grown 17% this year.

Home-swap platforms like these charge annual membership fees north of $100. Swaps also happen more informally in Facebook groups and between friends. Travellers can do a simultaneous swap, where they travel during the same dates, but can also plan to host each other at different times.

While home exchanges can save travellers thousands on lodging, they aren’t for everyone. Home swappers give the following tips to consider before listing your home.

Get a read on the situation

The person you are swapping with shouldn’t feel like a stranger by the time you arrive, home exchangers say.

Barbara Osterwisch , 66 years old, and her husband, both retirees, have swapped their home in Houston and their cabin in Texas’ Hill Country for stays in the Netherlands, France, Canada, Austria and California. They video chat with potential matches to establish rapport, and to give tours of their homes. Many exchangers begin planning their swaps months, if not years, in advance. This gives ample time for getting to know one another, Osterwisch says.

Apprehensive travellers should consider a swap within a few hours’ drive as a trial run, rather than jumping into an exchange in another country, she says.

Home swaps aren’t for tourists who like everything just so, travelers say. Unlike a short-term rental, home swaps are more likely to be people’s primary residences. People leave clothes in the closets, tools in the garage and photos on the walls. Living in someone’s home is part of the charm, but it isn’t the same as staying in a hotel with a front desk and staff to fix issues that arise.

Using a platform can ensure some safety and quality guarantees, swappers say. Some companies, such as Kindred, a members-only platform, offer 24/7 text support for problems.

Osterwisch says she and her husband have stayed in touch with the families they swapped with and now have connections all over the world.

Check your insurance policy

Some travelers use membership-based services to provide supplemental insurance or support if things go wrong.

Oleg Pynda is a 31-year-old New York City tech worker who has swapped with travellers from France. He says, based on his experience, U.S. travellers tend to worry more about strangers staying in their homes and damaging their belongings. Most of the initial messages he gets from U.S.-based travellers emphasise their trustworthiness, while European travelers focus on the quality of the home they are offering to exchange.

Pynda says he is comfortable with people staying in his apartment for a short time, so he doesn’t feel compelled to sign up for services that provide extra insurance for members. The people he swaps with end up becoming familiar to him and don’t feel like complete strangers.

He says his lease prohibits situations with a monetary exchange, such as a short-term rental or sublet, but not home exchanges.

Homeowners and renters-insurance policies might limit the number of days a guest can stay in your home during a swap, says Janet Ruiz of the Insurance Information Institute. They might also limit compensation for damage done to hosts’ and visitors’ possessions while people are in your home.

“People don’t want to tell their insurance agents what they are doing,” she says. Having a conversation with the agent before anything happens can help you make informed choices about coverage, she adds, including whether to buy a supplemental policy for vacation-rental coverage.

Travelers should also ensure the home they are staying in has coverage. And renters ought to check their leases before entering into a swap.

Some swappers let travellers borrow their cars. Ruiz recommends first asking the person you’re exchanging with about their driver’s licenses and insurance coverage.

Shawn and Bill Personke , from Michigan, had a potential swap fall through because the other family wanted to use their car. They had promised it to someone else while they were away.

Some travelers say they lock valuables in one room of the house or put them in the trunks of their cars and take the keys with them. Problems can arise, but none of the travellers interviewed had any horror stories to share.

“My only regret regarding home exchanging is not figuring it out sooner,” Osterwisch says.

Travel somewhere new

Marina Wanders , a photographer, lives in a suburb of Austin, Texas. She floated the idea of a summer house swap in a Facebook group. A Dallas woman, whose home has a backyard swimming pool and a shower with a chandelier in it, responded and said she was game. Wanders says Dallas isn’t her ideal vacation destination, but as a 29-year-old single mom of two, she looks for affordable travel alternatives.

“I’m like a middle-class American single mom and make enough to pay my bills and buy $40 shampoo, but I do not have a chandelier in my shower,” Wanders says.

She decided to go for the swap because she can give her sons a memorable vacation in a beautiful home while saving thousands on lodging. The Dallas family will stay in her home during the same dates.

Travelers with flexible dates and locations will have more options. The Personkes once scored a swap in Angers, France, on their preferred dates.

People who live in major cities have more luck requesting specific dates because their locations are in demand, but travelers like the Personkes, who live in a small city outside of Detroit, often need to work harder marketing their homes and communities. The Personkes’ swappers have experienced their town’s local parade and nearby nature trails.

The retirees have swapped as part of People Like Us and HomeLink. They also use the People Like Us Facebook group to speak with other travellers, get advice and suss out exchanges.

They say they love living like locals, getting baguettes from vending machines in remote French towns and joining neighbours for dinner.

“Sometimes we are the first Americans people are ever going to meet, and I want to make a good impression,” Shawn says.