You can go home again

Rhonda Fien Stangrover can't ignore the memories. Everything in the home she and her husband, Mick, own in Alamo, Calif., near San Francisco, reminds her of her childhood: the kitchen countertops, the fixtures in the bathrooms, the paper on the walls, the way the kitchen drawer squeaks when Mrs. Stangrover reaches for a fork or a spoon.

This isn't surprising; she purchased her former childhood home in 2000 from her mother, Ana Fien, a widow.

Mrs. Fien now lives in a town house, a sensible move for her, but one she resisted until finding the right buyer for the home in which she and her husband raised their family.

It's a house that the Stangrovers - Rhonda, a stay-at-home mom, and Mick, a construction worker - never could have afforded to buy at inflated San Francisco-area prices. Instead, Mrs. Fein gave them a good deal on the property.

Rhonda says she has no regrets about their decision to purchase the 1957 ranch house in which she grew up. But she does get the occasional feeling that the home still belongs to her mother, not to her.

"I don't know if it's different for a man than it is for a woman, but I want to put my own touch on this house," she says. "That's something that I haven't really done yet. For the most part, everything here is the same as it was when I was a child. The drapes in our bedroom are the same drapes that my parents had. I don't know how they're hanging on. I live in my house exactly like it was [when I was] a child."

Soon that will change. The Stangrovers are planning a major remodeling project, one that will bring them a larger kitchen, new roof, master bedroom, master bathroom, and extensive landscaping.

But even with this work, Stangrover expects constant reminders of her childhood.

"My son learned to walk on the same floor that I learned to walk on," she says. "My kids took a bath in the same bathtub that I took baths in. You don't realize how fast life goes by. You see your kids playing in the house, and you can't help but think back to when you were playing in the same room. I think even when the remodeling is done, those feelings will remain."

It's hard to know how many home buyers follow Stangrover's path by purchasing their former childhood homes. No one keeps statistics on such purchases, and because these transactions are usually between parents and their adult children, real estate agents are rarely involved.

The fact that such purchases do exist, though, is no surprise. After all, parents are more likely to give their children a break on the sale price, and they're not likely to hide potential problems. At the same time, buyers know firsthand about the neighborhood, schools, parks, and shopping districts surrounding the home.

This doesn't mean that such transactions come without any of the stress typically associated with buying real estate.

In fact, these buyers often find problems unique to these purchases. Their parents' homes may have outdated electrical systems and plumbing. The bedrooms may be small. Closet space might be limited.

Some people buy their former childhood homes seeking the nostalgic feelings of their youth, only to find the annoyances of drafty windows and closetless rooms.

Just ask Seymour Turner, vice president of AIROOM, an architecture and building company located in the Chicago suburb of Lincolnwood. Homeowners have called on him to renovate the homes they purchased from their parents.

"When people think of moving back to their homes, they think of that tree in the backyard they used to climb," Mr. Turner says. "They tend to forget about the other things. They don't think of everyone waiting in line to use the bathroom because the house only has one bath. They don't remember that their parents used a lobby as a third bedroom. What they find is that often things are dated, both functionally and aesthetically."

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