There are always good technical reasons to rewrite things but the reason quoted by the parent i.e. devs not “feeling” ownership and won’t work on code wholeheartedly unless it’s their code - those reasons are evil.
A sense of ownership and responsibility over a codebase is fundamental and essential to proper stewardship and maintenance of that code, and refactoring and rewriting is the most effective way to inculcate that feeling. Sometimes it’s not always feasible, and sometimes it’s not necessary, but the end state is essential. Group or shared ownership of code is a manager’s wet dream but pragmatically impossible, a swamp of mediocrity.