This chapter looks at how the tastes exemplified by Habitat and The House Book coincided with a rise in homeownership and how this was related to the emergence of gentrification in many large cities. The taste for Victoriana and for rustic life fashioned a new enthusiasm for older properties that had previously been considered undesirable. While today gentrification is often considered to be the largescale encroachment of middle-class homeowners into previously working-class areas, the chapter argues that it is also a sign of more complex and confusing aspects of class realignment. The chapter also considers the way that urban areas took on some of the characteristics of a more rural way of living and how a fashion for Scandinavian architecture was symptomatic of the way that modern design was used to promote the home as a place of leisure and informality.