What is home?

I've been thinking a lot about the word “home.”

We sell houses. We help people buy and make homes. What’s the difference? Well, that’s what I’ve been thinking about.

What is home?

Is it where I was born (Buenos Aires)? Not really… When I’m getting ready to get on a plane to Barcelona, the place I grew up and where my mother’s house still is, I always tell people “I’m going home.” I walk around those streets breathing in the smells and reveling in the sights and feelings that made me the person I am today. You can sense my comfort and happiness in the video my brother made of me walking around the city. Home is Barcelona. Home is my mom’s house.

Check out my video My Barcelona

But home is also Berkeley. Where my children were born. Where I live with my family in a house full of light and books and plants. Where I partake in a community of wonderfully warm people and work every day to make a great place even better.

But home is also Cape Cod. Where my husband grew up each summer. Where the family home is full of art. Where every year, we go to our favorite old bar. Where we breathe in the Atlantic which smells really different from the Pacific air!

And there are other places, like Italy, where I went to school. Where the food always reminds me of my mom’s and my grandmother's cooking. Where I hear the language and I feel… you know, at home.

I've come to realize that home is wherever my memories and friends and family — and slippers — are. 

All in. Always.

Anna