House Maintenance Woes: The Next Disaster

Heineken

In the past decade, as we know, millions of Americans bought big, ugly, often slapdashedly-constructed boxes they call homes. Lots of those houses are in foreclosure now or getting close to it. But many more will remain in the purchasers' hands for the time being.

Houses start getting old pretty fast. Roofs wear out and need repairs or replacement, plumbing and sewer/septic and wiring problems emerge, paint peels, siding warps or splits, termites gnaw, foundations crack, basements flood, wood rots, crawlspaces and drywall grow black slime (the list goes on). Houses are almost like boats in their need for frequent maintenance---maintenance that often must be purchased at exorbitant cost from a small army of rough types driving huge pickup trucks and vans. Most US homeowners, especially those of this new breed, know next to nothing about doing it yourself. Even those who do have know-how must cope with fantastically inflated prices for almost everything on the racks at Home Depot and Lowe's.

The next chapter in the unfolding real-estate disaster will be maintenance, or rather the lack thereof. People won't be able to afford it and their houses are going to start falling apart. This will add to the already incredible downward pressure on housing values.
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Jack · Moderator Joined: Aug 11, 2004 Posts: 4573

Good point.

It's been quite some time since I had to deal with mortgages...but isn't there a provision that requires upkeep of the property? And if there is, wouldn't failure to maintain put the property into default?

Now there's a ray of sunshine...

Cool

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Phil

Yeah, in hot and humid climates like East Texas, if prohibitively-expensive electricity forces homeowners to switch off the A/C, the house (drywalls, carpets) will quickly succumb to mold.
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Heineken

That's very interesting, Phil. Hadn't thought of that one.
_________________
"Actually, humans died out long ago."
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog

"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---Me and my brother

Heineken

one_more_day · Tar Sands Joined: Aug 27, 2006 Posts: 68

alokin · Intermediate Crude Joined: Aug 24, 2007 Posts: 529

Mould is not a problem of A/C or lacking of it it's a problem of inadequate building.
I reckon in Australia there's the same problem with the newer houses.
The real Queenslander houses are getting older shed their paint, but the real run down houses you can see are maybe built in the 70th.

farmall · Coal Joined: May 27, 2008 Posts: 10

This is the one reason I like my adobe soil.
One of these days I would like to build a little one room "garden shed" out of it.

Jack · Moderator Joined: Aug 11, 2004 Posts: 4573

BigTex

I predict that Terex will roll out a gigantic McMansion chipper-shredder and an enormous hydraulic arm will just pick the foreclosed homes up one by one and throw them in the McMansion shredder and it will spit out little bits of pureed American Dream to be recycled into more overpriced empty simulations of happiness.

If times get hard enough, the shavings could even be used as filler for Soylent Green.
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dinopello

My house made it through the great depression (built in 1905). You think this will be worse than that ?

Wait... don't answer that. Sad

Bigtex->

Impervius · Coal Joined: May 27, 2008 Posts: 18

Soylent Green is people!

Cashmere · Intermediate Crude Joined: Mar 27, 2008 Posts: 809

OP is right about maintenance.
Ask anybody who has built their own house. You get the last nail in, you're already fixing stuff. It's a constant process.

The worst part about the McMansions won't be upkeep however, even given their generally crappy construction quality.

It will be . .. ENERGY.

You get yourself a nice 5,000 sf monster with 2x4 framing and crappy fiberglass insulation and you've got yourself a whopping R value of about R-18 in the walls. All those walls! And that Lawyer Foyer, 16 feet tall, with lots of big, heat leeching windows.

And you see that some have 2 - count 'em, 2! - A/C units, and some have 2 hot water heaters.

Most have crappy forced air heating systems so the A/C can be doubled in.

Most burn FF - propane or oil if you're far from the center, maybe electric. If you're really unlucky, you've got gas.

And those mortgage payments are killing you.

And winter is 4 months away.

The American Nightmare . . . It's January 24, 2009. You're 3 months in arrears on your ARM, your bloatmobiles are drinking 300 dollars of gas a week, the house on which you took a 100% leveraged position is down 30% in value from what you paid, and the best part?

The heat is set on 60 because you can't afford to put it any higher!

Yes folks, the shine has worn off the McMansion - welcome to financial hell.
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If you're not a Doomer, then you don't understand the problem.
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Byron100

Great thread! More grist for the grinder of doom for sure....hehe.

The things you've pointed out Heineken really do hit the nail on the head (pardon the pun). Houses really do fall apart pretty quickly if they're not constantly taken care of, although there seems to be a huge difference in yearly maintenance costs between pre- and post-1982 homes, which is why I'm quite happy to live in a 1961 vintage split level. Very Happy

This thing has no attic, simple, low-angle roof without those silly peaks and valleys, and when it comes time to re-roof the house, you can bet I'll be doing it myself, as well as just about anything else that needs to be done to this thing.

But sadly, most people don't even know how to properly hammer in a nail, let alone deal with the complexities of roofing repair, or how to prevent mold from forming in the crawlspace, or even such routine things as painting the exterior of the home when it's needed.

I shudder to think of the time when millions of people are unemployed and no longer able to afford to take care of their homes, even if the government is benevolent to allow a universal debt default...not to mention the issue of property taxes, which easily go up, but very rarely ever go down.

So yeah, time to fire up those 'dozers to do some McMansion-crushing...now, there's a fun job worth having...LOL. Twisted Evil

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hope_full · Heavy Crude Joined: May 27, 2008 Posts: 136

McMansions are a breed unto themselves. They are BUILT with a life-expectancy of 20 to 50 years and they are maintenance heavy. There's growing recognition that the unhealthiest place on earth to live is inside an off-gassing box shrink-wrapped in plastic. It's a nasty bit of business. Vinyl windows typically last 20 years or less and when they fail, it's into the dump! They can't be serviced when their mechanisms fail.

Conversely, older homes (pre-ww2) require less maintenance. For instance, old double hung windows can be repaired every 50 or 60 years and will then provide another half-century of no-maintenance (or low maintenance) service. Cypress and cedar exteriors are healthy and naturally insect and rot-resistant. Slate roofs (such as the one on my 1920s home) will last forever - if the fasteners don't fail.

Old homes are built to last for many, many decades - unlike the new crap. And old homes are designed to be naturally comfy in the summer and winter. McMansions are built for always-on artificial weather. It's hard to get cross ventilation when the rooms have no windows or only one window.

As to the covenant of good repair on mortgage documents, I know of NO instances where that has been enforced. usually by the time a house is physically falling apart, the mortgage payments are way, way overdue. Few lenders want to take back properties and/or would do so because of this covenant.

HF