MARK SCHOENFELD and Scott Field have bought seven houses together since they met in 1994. “We find something, put our stamp on it, then we’re ready to move on,” said Mr. Schoenfeld, a senior vice president of the Corcoran Group, the New York real estate concern. He and Mr. Field, a broker at Elyse Harney Real Estate in New Preston, Conn., say they are addicted to the adventure and constant motion of the house hunt. But in 1996 they found a place for sale in Danbury, Conn., that stopped them cold.

Set on four rolling acres and ringed by huge trees, the white center-hall colonial-style house from 1910 was “the whole ‘Gone With the Wind’ fantasy,” Mr. Schoenfeld said, from its graceful white-columned porch to its spectacular front-hall staircase to its six spacious, light-flooded bedrooms.

It was too good not to buy, but they were too daunted by its shabby condition to take it on. “It was just a disaster everywhere you looked,” Mr. Field said. The floors had not been refinished in decades, and a chain-smoking caretaker had left one bedroom’s walls so stained with the residue of his habit that it resembled a 19th-century French bistro. But the house stayed with them  “I could never get the staircase out of my head,” Mr. Schoenfeld said  and when it was put on the market again in 2000, they pounced, paying $540,000.

They renovated happily for three years. But then Mr. Field began to feel the pull of family members living in Maine, and they moved on, selling for $850,000 and buying a vacation place in Camden, Me. Giving up the house was tough, but as serial renovators, they thought they’d get over it quickly  just another case of lathing and leaving. They soon realized their mistake.