[seanmcdirmid]

Older houses in urban areas are typically seen as a negative rather than a positive. If you could sell the land without a house at all, you could save on demolition costs when the buyers of that high value property knock down the old house and build the house they really want.

Houses really do depreciate with age, even if it is less noticeable in the USA than it is in say Japan.

[cudgy]

Good luck building a new home to replace many older urban homes in US cities with the same quality of building materials and workmanship. Also, it is typically much cheaper, easier, and quicker to utilize existing structures by expanding or modifying the layout, especially given the high costs and lack of availability of building materials.

[seanmcdirmid]

A lot of houses get refurbished by going down to the bones and then just redoing the insulation, exterior, interior. That works fine, but you are basically just saving on the foundation and new build permit.

New homes definitely have problems, but they are not going to have the same problems as older homes (e.g. burst pipes because they were never insulated properly).