[eikenberry]

Most homes are fixer-uppers. They graduate to that after just a couple decades. I owned 2 homes, both in the 20-30 year range in 2 different cities.. combined (sometimes both) they needed... new roof, new hot water heater, kitchen and bathrooms updates and water mitigation, pest damage and control, leaky pipe fixing, wood deck replacing, furnace and AC replacements, basement flooding issues, foundation issues, probably more I can't remember.

Home ownership sucks and after selling my previous home I'm so glad to be renting. Just never having to deal with another contractor makes me so happy. :)

[Gigachad]

Apartments are the middle ground. I bought one about 4 years ago and haven’t had to do anything. Any issues like water heaters and such get handled by the building management. Eventually I’ll have to repaint and repair the internals but it’s been good so far.

[hansvm]

You can tell when a home was built like that though. Why did you purchase it regardless? Why did you do it again after your first experience?

[eikenberry]

If professional inspectors cannot tell what makes you think you can? Our first home was inspected by a bank inspector + my wife's father who works in construction and everyone found it OK. We had the second home inspected by 2 separate inspectors and both OK'd the house with only minor issues.

All our friends have equally terrible stories. Maybe you just got lucky or haven't owned a home yet?

[hansvm]

Most "professionals" in most professions are mediocre, and even when they have potential their incentives are rarely aligned with yours. Bank inspectors don't care about the same things you do, and construction workers don't necessarily have skills which are directly transferable to inspection, at least not without training and practice.

Saying that out loud, yes, inspection is a skill like any other, and it's a bit simplistic for me to say that "obviously that house is good/bad," at least as an intervention I'm recommending to randos I don't know.

But...if I've just gotten lucky then I should buy some lottery tickets. I'm never wrong when I point out the places a house is going to fail or the places where it's going to succeed. My background is a bit off the beaten path (lots of construction, handyman activities, bank demolitions, out-at-sea yacht repair/captaining/maintenance/emergences, electrical installations, whatever -- at least until I finally settled down into a more stable tech career); maybe that helps, or maybe I have some loose wires upstairs. Whatever the case, I don't think it's hard to avoid a bad house if you take the time and care to properly inspect it (and it might take a lot of time, including some disassembly -- big red flag if you can't peek into the internals, and I wouldn't make a multiple hundred thousand dollar investment if you aren't allowed to check on the details).