Reply to Millennials aren't going to buy your ugly mcmansions, silly Boomers!

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Gen Xer here with two middle school kids in McLean VA. My wife and I knocked down our tiny 1960s split level (worth $~750K) and built a new home (now worth ~$1.6 million). The neighborhood we live in has a mix of tear downs and older homes. It's a large home, but we still have a nice backyard and added many upgrades that weren't cheap although I think the haters would still call it a McMansion. However, I don't understand the desire for the alternative. Here's what I mean:

Our old home had a brick exterior, no house wrap, tiny windows, squeaky floors, no drain tile so the basement leaked, no basement vapor barrier so radon was leaking up, and no character. The original kitchen contained asbestos tiles (which was covered up). The energy efficiency of the house was terrible. Why is what I described better than a new home? Sure, we decided to use HardiPlank vs. brick on the outside but that’s a personal design preference but everything else in the new place is superior to the old one. I hear comments from people that our old home used plywood and solid wood beams but the new home uses Advantech OSB and beams. Well, science tells us that the products are structurally equivalent and OSB is stronger in shear values. The new home has a radon system, better drainage, large windows so we don’t need to use as much electricity, sensors that shut off lights to save energy, and is air tight. The floor doesn’t squeak and is less likely to in the long run, our fire alarm is integrated into home security system which makes it a much safer home (e.g., the air conditioner shuts off if a fire is detected). And yes, we now use our gourmet kitchen to cook most of our meals because it’s just much easier and fun (our old kitchen was tiny and it sucked to cook in)! Why is our ‘McMansion’ worse than our old home? [/quote]

You raise a good point that not all old homes are created equal.  People tend to be biased toward liking old construction, because it's mostly houses with good craftsmanship that are still around.  The 'shitshacks of the 1800s have long since been torn down and replaced.

In most ways your new construction is superior to the approx. 1960s era house you replaced.  However, don't overestimate the longevity of OSB.  I have seen multiple houses that have roofs that need replaced after thirty years or less, because air moisture causes these manufactured woods to warp and degrade over relatively short periods of time.  Two houses I saw in Burke, VA had such crappy OSB roofs that you could see the parallel humps of the roof rafters under the shingles from pictures of the exterior of the house.[/quote]

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