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0 pointsbombcar2y ago0 comments

I'll trade you my 40s house for a todayhouse any day of the week.

Sure, there are bad builders and if you're having something custom built you need to educate yourself (or hire someone trustworthy to monitor), but there are so many things much better than a 50 year old house, at least if you're in a climate that has lots of degree days.

Maybe in San Diego it doesn't matter as much.

Of course, the shittiest 50 year old houses have mostly been knocked down, so the remaining stock gets better and better ...

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jghn2y ago

It's a tradeoff, as you allude to at the end. Our house is a mid-1800s build. Thus it's safe to say that there's some survival bias at work and it was solid enough to persevere. There are things our friends with newer houses go through that we never experience. On other hand, we have our own issues. retrofitting modern benefits is difficult, at best.

bombcarOP2y ago

It also varies on location, too - around here the 1800s houses are decent "all around" except for what you'd expect for an almost 200 year old building.

But in other areas I've lived houses that old will have major issues that have to be remedied eventually (as my builder there said, the tops and bottoms are shit, the middle is great - because the river rock foundation would crumble to dust eventually, and the roofs were basket cases) - costing hundreds of thousands.

And most of them were marked historic, making it even worse.

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