[freneticfox]

There's really no way to design a maintenance-free house. A typical house has a lot of parts slowly failing all the time, meaning you will eventually need expensive repairs on various timelines (sometimes many years, so it can be "ignored" for a while at your peril). Roofing, HVAC systems, sheetrock damage, repainting, replacing aging flooring/carpeting, replacing failing major appliances, etc.

You'd have to design and build a custom home way outside of the designs considered normal for the market to make it significantly more (but not completely!) maintenance-free in the long run, at a significant increase in construction cost. But then you've subjected yourself to another hidden downside: the more strange/custom/expensive a home is, the less liquid that home will be on the market if you decide to sell later. A home that's awesome to you but not-awesome to 95% of the market doesn't move. And if you're stuck with it and it's a significant chunk of your wealth, then you can't move cities for that new job or whatever.

[wheresmyusern]

if the house is made of icf construction, it wont rot, suffer from termites, warp or burn. if you have a metal roof with steel trusses, your roof will last a very, very long time. all of this also makes the house impervious to fires both inside and outside as well as high winds. they make houses in southern florida that arent made out of stick and that dont simply fall over in a strong wind -- i look at those a lot for guidance. the construction cost is only slightly higher excluding the steel trusses. my house wont be very big so i can afford the steel trusses. even without steel trusses, you can make it practically fire proof. coating the outside of an icf house with cement based stucco will make that house classified as a non combustible structure in the eyes of the code, and you can insure it as such.

you mention hvac. i will not have hvac. you mention repainting, i dont have to paint if i dont want to. you mention flooring, my floor is concrete. you mention sheetrock, the sheetrock will be fine.

all of this is well within code and well within what i would call normal. but i hope that people will find it strange or un-buyable because that would reduce the market value of my improvements to the land and therefore lower my property tax. i am aiming to get the lowest operating cost possible, and having a home that has low liquidity actually greatly helps that. not every home has to be a flipping scheme.

[sokoloff]

You might be right, or you might not be.

I chose our current house in part because of the slate roof and unpainted structural brick exterior (both very low maintenance). I admire your search for low operational cost housing; I hope that your eventual house comes out just as low cost as your optimistic projections above.

[wheresmyusern]

im going to dig into every source of information i can on the subject of houses and their materials. my plan for the house has already evolved dramatically and will probably continue to, terminating in a design that stands a very high probability of satisfying my requirements. i very much hope that it works because unlike some people here, my prospects are not bright -- they are unsure at best. this is probably the only way that i will be able to retire in a house of my own without waiting until im 70.