Homing in on the wired-up residence

The guy with the ponytail and Birkenstock shoes gave himself away as a geek soon after he walked into our home and learned that we have a home network and would be leaving the gear for it behind. As a potential purchaser, he seemed excited by this.

I was in the kitchen once again wiping the already-shiny chrome sink fixtures when he and his partner arrived early for an open house to check out our place. I heard him comment on the home network my husband installed with Ethernet jacks in three bedrooms and the study, plus an Ethernet switch in the basement.

Home networks and Ethernet wiring don't increase the value of a home, but for those of us that the Pew Internet & American Life Project have termed "veteran enthusiasts" or the "long-wired," who have been online for years and still groove on the wonders of the Net, neither is it a completely trivial matter.

"Ethernet, wireless networking, home managing systems, cable, and other network systems are becoming the standard in new homes," Jessica Bryan, who owns House to Home Realty Services in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, wrote to me in an e-mail exchange about the merits of home networks and using the Internet to buy and sell a home.

Our home is 3 years old and came with the wiring needed for us to install the home network. That was an attractive point for us because we both spend a lot of time on the computer at home, either for work or pleasure, and being able to share peripherals is a plus.

We'd been talking, though, about downsizing and trying to find a less expensive, older home for some time -- not an easy task in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where housing prices are crazy and there isn't much on the market that would lead to savings. We decided to see what would happen anyway, so a couple of weeks ago, the for-sale sign went up in front of our spacious home in a desirable neighborhood, with DSL access, close to public transportation, shopping and parks.

In the meantime, we've been scouring the Internet, searching http://www.realtor.com, run by Homestore.com, and various local realtor Web sites, trying to find an acceptable place to live. When we see something we like but can't nail down an address, we can have our realtor find it for us and then we can drive by and look over the neighborhood. Bryan uses that approach with her clients, too.

"That way, if there are homes that are not of interest, we can save a good deal of their valuable time in driving around and walking into homes that don't suit their needs," she wrote. "Most homes have multiple photos and good descriptions that can help my clients in determining their level of interest."

Bryan recently sold a home to a couple who are relocating and so handled all of their research over the Web because they had only a few days to look when they got to the Chapel Hill area. They narrowed their choices down to a couple of dozen homes before they arrived in town. "They saved themselves time and money. Flights and motel fees are costly. It was important to operate quickly and efficiently," said Bryan, who also has a Web site offering links for home listings, mortgage prequalifications and calculations, schools and weather.

As for our house hunting, it has clipped into the time we'd usually spend watching professional baseball games, a major "hobby" (probably more aptly described as a weakness) of ours. When we're searching online, though, we can log on with the TV going in the same room and print from there as well, thanks to the home network. Fortunately, baseball season has just begun and we have until September or, we hope, October if either of our household's favored teams make it into the playoffs.

By then, we either will have survived weeks of living amid sawdust and torn-up rooms in our "new" home or we will be enjoying our space, our closets and our home network here, having decided that there is no place quite like this home.