Scott Jackman wrote:
When we built our house we could choose from a few models of GE. Period. If I liked something else, too bad.
That stinks. You can understand the builder's motivation in doing so: His crews get trained on a few models and can thus install them faster and with fewer mistakes. May I further venture to guess that since the builder already owned the land where you wanted to build your new house, you had no choice between different builders? I.e., in order to get a different A/C unit, you would have had to build in a different location. What a bummer if that's true.
It's unfair to say that your neighborhood, as average as you claim it is, is a good comparison point. Many of the homes built in the 50s are gone. If the quality isn't good enough and they don't survive. It makes you wonder where these McMansions will be in 50 years. Will the cheap framing really last that long?
Excellent point. I had not considered that. Perhaps my neighborhood has survived precisely because it was higher quality from the get go. I still doubt that it was on the upper end of the price spectrum, though. I would love to get a glimpse at the McMansion neighborhoods near me 50 years in the future.
To get back into this particular thread. Homes today aren't what they were even 50 years ago. I agree with you that the long term quality has decreased. But I also believe that people don't value their homes like they used to either.
I agree. I wonder if a populace can ever recover from this, let's say, "illness" without a major catastrophe (e.g., WWII or Black Tuesday) forcing them to.
Thanks for the insightful answers to my questions and for adding your own experience to the discussion.
--Dave /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
