4 ms·

The best course of action for an individual is path dependent. An middle class family with kids in school, saving for retirement and college, owns their home a

• rightbyte 3y ago
  > and decides to maintain an older home rather than build a new one. Ye doing maintenance is probably almost always worth it. Doing something before it is too late is like one or two orders of magnitude cheaper. Like painting the outer walls before the wood rots, etc. Fixing the roof before it leaks through both layers of protection. The point I am trying to make, is that buyers seem to underestimate the cost of fixing stuff when it is "too late". I have a theory that there is more competition for houses the cheaper they are. So poorer people are forced to buy homes that are not worth what they cost. I.e. the poorer buyer would be better off buying a more expensive home that is cheaper to maintain in the long run, have to buy the cheaper home that need expensive repairs. If the market was only "rich" people, the bad homes would have a lower price to offset their repair costs. Or something ...