Website tailored to would-be buyers, renters or travelers of older homes

Meggen and Peter Lane Taylor are house people. They're fascinated by anything and everything to do with houses. And the older the houses, the better. The couple's affection for real estate and historic architecture spills into other parts of their lives. When they travel, they want to stay in vintage hotels or in restored private homes. They want to visit historic properties.

Not long ago, they had one of those light-bulb moments: Why not marry the two interests?

The result is FindEverything Historic.com, a new website specializing in real estate, design and travel destinations for the legions of fellow historic-property enthusiasts that the couple believe are out there.

Meggen, 39, and Peter, 42, typically split their time between an 1870s Gothic Revival in Easton, Md., and a 1920s Dutch Colonial in Philadelphia. The couple have spent the past 10 years running a sales and consulting firm specializing in historic preservation and sustainable design, where they "discovered a love for historic real estate, travel, and design, and a passion for preserving historic properties. They're part of our country's history and key to the future of America's Main Street economies."

The site has listings from around the country — including a listing for the Henry C. Baker House in Hudson, Wis., at $449,900 — although many of the real estate listings are from the East Coast.

In an interview, they talked about how their passion for older homes led them to believe they should create the site.

Q: Tell me how you came to create this site.

We had sort of a eureka moment when we recognized that we couldn't find the site that was geared toward people like us.

Q: Maryland is known for its history. How did living here inform your research and decisionmaking?

Meggen and Peter: Cities like Baltimore, Easton and others in the Mid-Atlantic are full of revitalizing historic districts and downtown neighborhoods. They're attracting young people who want walkable streets, new business start-ups and entrepreneurs, and areas that were once "distressed" are now up-and-coming travel hot spots. One day it just hit us that there's an entire historic lifestyle playing out all around us.

Q: How did the travel component come in?

Meggen: We started thinking about how we got married in a historic house, our vacations are in historic hotels and we always rented historic homes. It's in our fiber.

Q: How do you define historic?

Meggen: We're including anything 50 years of age and older. We decided to start with homes built no later than 1965. We love midcentury design, and we know lots of other people do, too, so we set that as the starting point.

Q: As you're well aware, you're up against the for-sale listings giants like Trulia.com and Realtor.com. And the vacation-rental leaders like Homeway.com and VRBO.com dominate that market. Recognizing that what you've created here is intended to be a relatively narrowly defined boutique marketplace, one still has to wonder how you can compete with the big guys.

Peter: A lot of the big real estate sites are very opaque. There are a lot of upcharges and extra fees, or they don't publish their pricing. We set up our pricing structure to be simple and straightforward — $25 per month or $250 per year for agents or other people listing their properties for sale or rent, but we also offer package pricing. You're not booking through us and paying us a commission when the property gets rented. We connect you directly with the owner or agent. You don't have to register with the site. We have listings from some of the premier brokerage firms around the country, and we're expanding internationally.

And, of course, we have the travel component. Subscribers can post information about their historic restaurant, spa, winery or hotel, or even their historic retail or renovation businesses. We're concentrating now on reaching out to historic hotels, bed-and-breakfasts and restaurants, and we're expanding into Europe, South America, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

Meggen and Peter: People are drawn to historic properties for so many reasons — character, the sense of history, the one-of-a-kind period details, their location … the list goes on. New homes can be unique and have character as well, but there is something emotional that is drawing a new influx of millennials and baby boomers back downtown again. Many historic properties in Maryland and around the country are also being renovated to modern standards with the amenities and sustainable qualities that home buyers are looking for these days while retaining their original historic architectural character. It's a win-win.

Q: So who are historic house people? Can you define who they are?

Peter: In our research that led to developing the site, we decided there are two broad audiences. One group just loves these properties, they love the architectural features and the stories behind the homes. Those are our targeted consumers. But there's a much broader market that's a potential audience, of younger people, millennials. This generation hasn't given as much thought to old homes, and if you asked them what they like about them, they probably can't put their finger on it as well as older people can, beyond saying they're drawn to older homes' character. They're one reason we're reaching out to historic preservation groups, because these groups need to attract younger people. We allow historic preservation groups to have a presence on the site for free. At the moment, we have about 20 groups featured on the site, and we're working with about half a dozen more, to promote their activities.

Q: Can you tell us about your home in Easton? I imagine it's historic, right?