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Comment by pc86 | Hacker News Reader

This is the answer - there are plenty of move-in ready, turn-key homes that require basically zero maintenance unless you want to remodel or change something, but those cost more (sometimes a lot more) than the ones that need more TLC or true fixer-uppers.

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Eventually the maintenance comes back again: The turn-key homes have typically had most of the things that needed maintenance replaced, but they eventually come back, and they can be quite the headache. See the wonders of having a plumbing stack going past its useful life, land resettling leading to having to do regrades, or lift concrete slabs, or just general tree maintenace.

Don't do your own trees! Wood is very heavy! It wiggles a lot! Dragons!

IMO the key to doing your own trees (or presumably having them done for less money) is having enough room around them that you can just drop them whole, rather than having to hire someone with a bucket truck and/or climbing spikes to disassemble them from the top down.

Even with fixer uppers the house is usually functional and fine. Just people think the bathroom is too ugly to poop in, so they have to spend five figures and rip out the walls, floor, ceiling, and everything else, to replace it with new walls, floor, ceiling, and everything else.

More like the bathroom is too ugly to poop in because there's a leak behind the shower and now there's mold growing on the wall.

That might be why some people renovate, but for most its because they think the color is wrong and they don't like the fixtures. Queue squandering money to achieve the same functionality and all the material waste throwing out the perfectly good fixtures and such and buying newly built fixtures and such.

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