A real estate listings voyeur confesses her secret

`So your next-door neighbors moved across town, and a couple from Westford bought their house!" I say to my friend Lisa, having not seen her for a few weeks. ``How great for them that they received their asking price. Have you met the new people yet?"

Lisa looks understandably confused. ``I didn't know you knew my next-door neighbors."

Oops, busted again. Here's my dirty little secret: I compulsively read real estate transfers.

When people catch me at this -- any time I accidentally let comments like the one above slip out -- they look appalled. The assumption is that I'm just a busybody who wants to know how much everyone has paid for their house. But it's really not about the dollar amount. Reading the real estate transfers gives me all kinds of intriguing information about the people around me. I find out that a retired couple my parents used to play tennis with have bought a condo in Acton, and the brother of my best friend's seventh-grade boyfriend just moved with his wife to Littleton.

Admittedly, there's no real reason I need to know that. It's a fair accusation that my gossipy side likes to know who's coming to town and who's leaving. But even when I don't know the names listed in the transfers, the curious truth is that the real estate transfers make me happy. I always get the sense this is the one section of the paper in which all the news is good news. When I read about a couple selling a home in one town and buying a more expensive house in an exclusive community, I mentally congratulate them for their upward mobility. When I read about someone selling a house and simultaneously buying a less expensive one in the same town, I vicariously experience their relief at being able to downsize without having to leave their community.

I do recognize how idealistic this sounds. Surely, not all house sales are happy events. Inevitably, there must be people who would like to stay right where they are but can no longer afford to do so. There are individuals who sell their homes because of divorce or widowhood. There are grown children left with the sad job of selling a deceased parent's home.

But still, regardless of the circumstances, it seems to me that there is always something at least a little bit encouraging about a house sale. Having done it once myself, I know how much work it is to prepare a house for sale, and how tense the waiting time while you watch realtors come and go with their clients and bite your nails over the prospect of being unable to sell. So I read the transfers and feel pleased for everyone: the sellers who accomplished their goal of receiving a chunk of cash in exchange for their home; the buyers who have found a place to begin a new stage of life for themselves and their families.

There was one time, though, when my prurient interest in the real estate transfers brought distressing news. Last year, I saw the name of an old friend whom I hadn't talked to in several months listed. To my amazement, this friend, who lived in a lovely new home in a nearby town with her husband and two children, was apparently buying a $1.6 million antique house in the same town. And she was buying it with a man who did not bear the name of her wonderful husband.

For weeks, the news bothered me. This was a friend I had great respect and affection for, but our lives were such that we often went months on end without talking. Was it really possible that her marriage had broken up and she hadn't told me? That in the same amount of time, she'd not only met someone else but decided to buy a million-dollar home with him? How could it be that a family I had always felt close to had gone through heartbreak and I was learning about it in such a backhand ed way?

I agonized for days about what to do. Finally, I simply called her and planned a get-together. The following week, we met for lunch and had a good long talk. She told me a great deal about what was new with her daughters and referred a few times to her husband, but never in a context that quite established their living situation. She said that he was coaching one daughter's soccer team; he had misgivings about the girls' math curriculum; he was training for a marathon.

Finally, she got onto the subject of herself. ``I'm not doing too much these days, mostly just keeping up with the kids and volunteering at their school," she said cheerfully. ``Oh, and I did join the land preservation trust in our town, which has been an interesting challenge for me. We just completed our largest land purchase ever: It's an antique home near the center of town."

Slowly the pieces came together in my mind. Flushed with relief, I lied outright. ``Oh, I heard about that. I mean, I saw it in the real estate transfers," I said.

She laughed. ``Apparently any time the land preservation trust does a purchase, the town clerk randomly chooses two committee members to list the purchase under," she said. ``You can imagine the calls we got. Even my father-in-law called to say to my husband, `I won't ask who the guy is, but where did she get $1.6 million?"

And so I learned that I can read the real estate transfers and occasionally be dead wrong in how I interpret the information. But I hope I'm not wrong most of the time. It's so comforting to think that all these other people are just feeling happy about their purchases and sales. I'd really like to believe that maybe this is indeed the one part of the paper that always delivers good news.

Nancy Shohet West is a freelance writer from Carlisle.