Probably because of all those HGTV shows. It's cheap, it's easy, anyone can do these updates!!!!!

We love our house. Sure we do repairs and updates from time to time, but that is true of any house you own. We see other houses that we really like and talk about buying but when it comes right down to it, they don't suit us as well as what we have. I guess I am one who does like what they have.

Of course we keep up with repairs, that comes with the territory. We just had a metal roof installed. My goal is to have everything paid off, not to keep up with others.

Oh my. To look at so many houses suggests several possibilities: having a lousy realtor (who didn't properly screen listings shown to limit them to only those conforming to the wishes and specs their clients communicated) or the difficulty of the prospective buyers to make a decision. Or both. Or other things too.

I frequent Buying and Selling Houses group. With the current market it makes no sense, to me, to do major upgrades. Just clean deeply and fix any problem issues such as electrical outlets that are problems. From the postings many people are purchasing recently updated for sale purposes houses then tearing out the upgrades and redoing. Unless it is a really desirable neighborhood it just seems strange. They are also paying more than the houses will estimate for so they must have a source or find a lender to provide the extra money.

I have told the person who will handle things when I can't to sell for what they can get then divide what money is left. Upgrading will put more money in the agents account and the actual return would be less than the cost of any upgrades.

It is probably much easier to find a property now with the internet and pictures of houses than it was when we purchased this house in 1993 or even 24 years ago of the OP's. Now you see pictures of what it looks like. Then the agent had less information to steer people toward what they wanted. There was one picture of the outside of this house available the rest of the information was simply a one page description giving number of rooms, taxes, and school district.

And this probably leans more to those who buy a house and then spend thousands of dollars to change it to something it is not and yea it is their money and they can do what they want but sure seems wasteful to me. And I didn’t use a realtor to find us a house because we weren’t in a hurry and I had time to look myself in the area we wanted to be, and I definitely don’t like people bugging me so that was a definite no for the way I do things, we are not difficult but would not live in a neighborhood and the small rural county I live in, houses have always gone pretty fast and has never been a low housing cost market

And a 100 included another county which became a definite no and 100 is probably an exaggeration but it felt like it.

DH and I are very happy 'with what we have' in our home. It was a hassle to build it, and it has flaws, but overall, we've loved all 20 years here.

Advertising/Marketing exists to tell people they 'need' something they don't already have. I'm not sure how much that led to the 'norm' that American families move every 12 years. We've owned two houses in 56 years of marriage.

In our case, our old neighborhood changed. Our state made pot legal, sold in the town where we lived. Suddenly the town was FULL of druggies. Little vials & white bags litter the streets. We were overrun with homeless, their warming fires setting bridges on fire. They'd set up camp in someone's yard, then have to issue an eviction, taking 30 days. Then the Big canyon fire, up the pass, burned thousands of acres nearby. The view to the West was burned down trees. Suddenly we had an influx of hikers behind our house. Making what they call "social" trails. A made-up-term for trespassers who now hike an area that is "not" public property since the area they had been hiking...burned down.

I couldn't go grocery shopping without panhandlers surrounding me....as I walked to the store entrance. I jogged with a vial of mace in my hand. The neighbor came and got us, to go look at a tent set up behind our houses. He was frightened.

We sold & moved.

Yes, the new house is much bigger and nicer. ♥ And gated.

Of course Nicole that would be a definite reason to move and they have legalized pot here in Virginia as of July 1 this year and talking about casinos and none of that makes a nice place to live. We are 30-40 minutes southeast of Richmond so I hope everything will be as peaceful as it is here now.

And I am krystalmoon on computer and Kathy on phone

krystalmoon.....Hello! And welcome to the Kitchen table!

Our state made pot legal and nothing happened. Maybe something else was going on? Why would pot lead to druggies with vials and baggies?

nicole --was that when you live in CO Springs? How SCARY!

We looked at many homes too before we purchased 20 some years ago. In fact, today they are starting demo on my old (30 year old) kitchen to replace everything and modernize it. I'm very excited, as it's taken years of planning. We don't plan on ever leaving the home, and hopefully have 20 plus years left of life to enjoy it. We also just purchased the 43 acre farm field next door, so no neighbors ever! It's not that we aren't satisfied with what we have, but the 30 year old appliances and odd layout needed to go. I don't care about resale value, that will be for my kids to decide when I am gone. Wish me luck!

Well, you know the saying, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

"I look at ideas but would never ask strangers for their opinion of my house. " Well, actually I did first come to GW (Houzz) to do so - wanted eyes on my kitchen design, and improved it drastically because I did so. And no, I didn't take ALL opinions in as gospel truth. Evaluated each though as what would work for ME.

At any rate, back when I bought my first house, I knew I wasn't going to be fully happy with it. It was in a good location, had a good private back yard, the price was right. The kitchen, to put it as bluntly as I can post here, was horrid. The driveway was straight up and curved at the steepest part - which really isn't a good idea for New England winters.

But, I was as happy as I could be. And am glad I now live in my dream house. No, not everything is perfect (perfection is an ideal never attainable!) but it is pretty darn good. Flat driveway, kitchen as close to ideal as possible (and I still thank the strangers here who helped me on it). Raising chickens and quail, and enjoying life!

Good question for sure. Watch some of the Home Buyer shows....yes, I know they

are scripted, but....a house would be just perfect, but the looker just doesn't like

the color of the walls....? Sigh. Wherever they are, opening a paint store might

be a good investment?

My Biz.....no. A little mining town known for it's sparkling water springs. Beautiful scenery! Artistic community, lots of professionals. Now....there's an abandoned hot tub in the front yard four doors down. Broken solar panels on the front of the house across from it. Dog poo ALL over the astroturf lawn across the street. It's nasty!

FYI Colorado Springs is HUGE! It can only sell medical marijuana. The old, high end section, is on the south end.. Along the main street, homeless are passed out. Getting hit by cars. Tents in the parks. Everyone is moving to the "new" north end.

When we started looking for a new home back in 98' it took 3 years to find this one. We wanted a good home, a good 1 acre open yard, and in a good neighborhood (yeah, picky). We will soon be looking to move again to a smaller one level house with a smaller open yard to manage, also in a good neighborhood. But we sure ain't gonna buy in today's crazy market, this bubble will eventually pop, they all do, for reasons we never see coming.

I appreciate all the comments and the welcome. Everyone has different circumstances but at this age, 56 and husband being 70, we are happy where we are. 1 story 2400 sq ft, 1 acre well kept house is where our heart is. Neighbor behind us has 5 acres and neighbor beside us has 10 acres and we are on a corner so no neighbors on top of us. I have learned as I age to appreciate what I have but we all have to do what we think will make us happy. May all have a good day.

I would LOVE to have a newer home. Mine is 62 years old. I can't use the microwave and the toaster at the same time. I have to run an extension cord from the kitchen to the bathroom to blow-dry or straighten my hair. My windows are 1/2 original (the inside glass) and half over 30 years old (the outside glass). The lino in the kitchen is from the 70's and sits on top of the old asbestos tiles that were originally put in the house. It will cost me a few thousand just to remove the original floor tile as it also goes down to the back door landing and all the way down the stairs (covered in carpet) to the basement. I don't have nearly enough outlets for today electronic world. Back then a lamp or two was all anyone needed electricity for. Now we have televisions, DVD players, computers, microwaves, coffee machines: you name it, and they all run on two outlets per room. If I want to use my external hard drive, I have to unplug my printer. That kind of thing.

Why do I want something better? Because while I am glad I do not live in a cardboard box in some cold wet back alley, I worked hard my whole life for half a house. lol I would love the big open floor space of the kitchen AND dining room. I don't have a dining room. I miss my dining room. I had one in the two rentals we lived in before we bought the house. I would love all new floors and more outlets in the each room.

The only things we've managed to update are the furnace which is 93% (?) efficient and only about 4 or 5 years old and my roof, which it turns out didn't need to be redone because the tiles under the ones that we thought had to be replaced were still perfect. Someone decided to tile OVER tile. WHY???

The upside to owning an old house is we have a huge yard, front and back. Newer neighbourhoods have a garage and driveway for their front yard. And their back yard is so small, you put a lawn chair and coffee table in it and it's full. We can comfortably put 50 people in my yard and still social distance.

At the end of the day, I LOVE looking at homes that are up for sale and dream of something bigger and brighter and everything works, but am still grateful for the tiny house (1000 square feet) I own outright. I managed to pay it off early and it's mine all mine.

I suppose it all has to do with circumstances. My tastes are fairly classic. You will never see me in a house with much of nothing trendy. What I like costs much more than the trends. I had to make do with small and unattractive housing for most of my adult life because I cared more about the location than the house. About ten years ago that changed and I could have my heart's desire in my town. I became extremely picky.

Yea I am kind of picky also, like I said previously if I can’t afford what I like, I will just wait as opposed to buying into the trends of cheap look alikes and being happy with what I have. My taste is pretty classic and traditional.

Debby, I still love looking at real estate even though no plans to move except at the end of life and you sound very logical and maybe one day you will be in a house that meets all your needs.

Maybe I just got lucky 🍀

And this has less to do with decorating styles and more to do with the rat race of keeping up today. You know you are getting old when you miss the easy years of the past. Never understood when grandparents didn’t like the changes happening and now I understand.

Well Kathy, you said your tastes are traditional and classic. That by nature is not favorable to change ;-) I am firmly in your camp. It's not about the olden days though. There are tons of people who prefer classic style over TV trends for the masses. There is so much flexibility in classic design. It allows for, even demands a few splashes of modern, it embraces the old and frayed and reflects the owner's personality. The current trends are budget busting fools' errands. A constant churning of looks meant to sell, sell, sell. Applying the logic of fashion to your house is beyond silly in my estimation. My great grandmother's furnishings and taste fit seamlessly into my house- she had nary a frumpy tchotchke in her house, mind you. It was all clean and classic.

Kathy/krystal, has someone told you that you have to make changes? Your post confuses me, it sounds like you still like the house you have. Or are you talking about society as a whole?

Some people are fine and happy keeping things as they are, others enjoy updating and freshening. It doesn’t mean either person is wrong unless the individual’s views impact someone else.

I don't think it's bad to want better. I'm currently living in an original 1960's house and there are challenges. The kitchen is outdated, the bathrooms are outdated. No dishwasher, no disposal, small kitchen, small closets, small bedrooms (the master can't fit a king bed), the master bath is the main bathroom, not a lot of storage room. I'm planning on buying a newer, larger house hopefully soon.

We're going to renovate this one and hopefully turn it into a rental property as it's a great location near ski resorts, but I don't want to live in it permanently. I want one more suited to my tastes as I have hobbies that take up a lot of room and need the storage, and a large kitchen. There's only so much a renovation can do within a floor plan. It's perfect for short-term rentals though.

I am not averse to change, throw a little modern in. My home is decorated with blue, black and chartreuse splashes and it all works and I like it. I have my nana’s dining room set in mahogany but I did update with a black dining table to fit us all. Now my nana did have a lot of tchotchkes that I wouldn’t have in my house. I do like real wood, real stone and love old charming houses. My youngest sister has probably stirred this debate by continually staying in debt to keep up and my other sister and I are helping my mom with her bills. Sorry my mind is all over the place and I guess I border on transitional and yes I know I can come off pretty abrasive

Wow, you looked at 100+ homes before buying your current home?! Give your realtor tons of credit, a lot of gas expense for him/her, not mentioning about the time. :-) We weren't looking for a house at the time when our current property just caught my eye, I like to look at houses on Zillow for fun. As soon as we pull in the driveway on a dark winter night, my heart called this place home! I told our realtor to get contract ready before even walking in the house. I just knew. I had the same feeling when we pull in the weekend place too. It's destiny...…..

We looked at a lot of houses before buying, including before we could afford what we wanted. I liked looking at houses. Now that I have what I want, I have close to zero interest in looking at houses.

As I said in a previous comment we didn't use a realtor, I was a housewife and living at my father's river house in the county we wanted to be in so didn't have to make any rash decisions and as I rode around taking kids to and from school is when I did my hunting. We already had preapproval for loan and knew what we could afford and 100 is an exaggeration, even though it felt like it. I came across this house on a different route to school and knew it was my home but at the time it was under contract so I kept my eyes on it. That contract fell through and it was ours. I am not your typical follow the rules and do it the way everybody else does it kind of person. I am an Aries and I will take the lead and do it myself.

maddielee, society as a whole and I try to be reasonable because what anyone else does doesn't affect me, except in a few instances with family.

I had almost the same reaction to this house that summersrthym had although it took me to stepping inside. It was a fluke that we even saw the house although my husband did mention that if any house became available on the street as we turned into it. I lost count of how many houses we looked at but since it was over five years it was a lot.

A recent survey said that more than half of Americans spend hours every week looking at other people's houses on Zillow. How weird is that?

Not as weird as it sounds and probably for the same reason I went with my husband to new homes on various tours. It allowed him to see what structural changes were currently being done and me to see if there were any interior design features that I wanted to borrow. Now if I was as interested as I was back then I would probably be looking on Zillow and other selling sites. It is free to look where interior design magazines are/were expensive to buy or subscribe.

I think people are more interested in real estate these days due to hot market. They want to find out how much houses are priced/sold. Due to Covid, more families are thinking about moving to bigger homes, in-law apt became more popular, bigger yards have been added to many people's wanted list......so more people are checking out real estate market . My neighbor sold their home with an in-law apt, they got $30,000 over asking price. How did I find that out? Zillow. :-) I think it's pretty normal, and understandable to see what's on the market. I think I use Zillow more often than normal people, I am not only keeping eye on my neighborhood real estate market, I am also interested in unique homes, historical properties for learning purpose. I am interested in their styles and landscaping design, to me Zillow is an online house library. There is another site I visit often too, it's called Old House Dreams. It's a good place to learn about historical homes.

I forget how we started looking for houses in west Los Angeles, but I think we drove around looking for "for sale" signs. I think Kevin also got a real estate agent in Venice, where we lived at the time, but we soon learned that we could not afford to buy anything in Venice. Th closest his agent could find us was condos in Marina Del Rey, and we were not interested in anything with a condo fee and restrictions.

Then I found a listing in the Argonaut Newspaper (serving Westchester, Playa Vista, Marina Del Rey, Venice, and Santa Monica) for a house in Westchester that was in our price range, met all of our minimum requirements and looked pretty good. I wondered what could be wrong with it, and then I discovered that it was two blocks from I-405, but the freeway was underground there and not all that noticeable. At worst, it sounded like a gentle babbling stream from the front yard, but then I also noticed that the house was about 5 miles from LAX, and there was some airport noise that I could notice in the back yard, but it was not under a flight path, and so that was easy enough for me to ignore. Still, it had to be noted on the real estate listing. We ended up hiring the agent who was showing the house and did not need to look any further. I think we had seen about three or four houses before that (mostly in Culver City), which were too small for us. The house in Westchester is 1.3 miles from where I worked at the time, and so I technically could walk to work - it was seven miles from Kevin's work in Culver City, and that took 20 minutes of driving them. My drive time commute was 4-5 minutes, and so I could easily go home for lunch.

We've been very happy with the house in Westchester, and the main change we made was to replace the kitchen countertops. That amounted for $4,000, I think, and so we did not do it right away. We also removed carpet that was covering the 1950 original wood floor in the front bedrooms.

When we bought the house in Cathedral City, I hired a real estate agent in Palm Springs, explained what we wanted, but the first few times he showed us houses, he showed us condos in Palm Springs, despite my telling him that I absolutely did not want a condo. He thought I might change my mind, since he could not find a house to our specs in Palm Springs. Therefore, we had to look in adjacent Cathedral City, about 10 minutes from downtown Palm Springs, and I had told him that I was fine with that location, as long as we would be allowed to do STVR, which we could when we bought the house, but two weeks later, that was banned by the city. Now we are stuck with a vacation house that we cannot rent, and so we have been using (and loving it) ourselves. During the pandemic, Kevin had to work remotely, and so he could as easily work from here as from our house in L.A., and so we have been spending approximately alternate months in each house. We have a great pool and great spa here, and the only renovations I did were to the bathrooms, and we're very happy with how those turned out, although I do not know how they will affect resale value. I took out both tubs and replaced them with walk-in showers. If someone wants to soak, they can go in the spa. It might not be great for children, but then neither is the pool.

We looked at no more than a dozen houses/condos in Palm Springs and Cathedral City before we bought. When I saw this house, I knew it was the one I wanted, even though I would have to renovate the bathrooms. I enjoyed that project, however. I also had to have the pool resurfaced, but that has to be done on a regular basis anyway. The surface we have now has a 20 year warranty.

Twenty years ago when we decided to move farther out from the city (Chicago) to somewhere quieter, we doubled our distance north, but stayed near the lake. We were a Realtor's nightmare, people who didn't need to move. Nor did we want most of what was available. We wanted a few big rooms on a large lot, all on one floor. Most of what we found in our price range was too big and two-story or nearly the same as the ranch we were leaving. We looked off and on for three years, mostly online and open houses. We ended up buying the perfect location and mature landscaping -- the very first house I'd looked at -- and planned to remodel the 1950's ranch. An appraiser friend argued against that. We did a teardown to have an all-of-one-piece, all-new home of greater value. Our only regret is not deciding to leave our 'starter home' of 30 years much earlier!

“A recent survey said that more than half of Americans spend hours every week looking at other people's houses on Zillow. How weird is that?”

Not weird at all with the ease of looking at property online. People who own homes like to keep informed about property values in their neighborhood.

I do check Zillow when a house in our area goes on the market for price and to see pics of the inside. We are all curious beings.

Lars, funny thing my son just remodeled his bathroom and took out shower to install a tub, my boys have always been tub soakers and now the little one can take a bath which he loves.

I think the reason it looks as if no one is satisifed with what they have is because they’re the only ones you can see. The rest of us are home enjoying what we have while they’re out looking around. I love our home and value the memories we made here too much to ever leave.

I used to do residential real estate appraisals, so I have been in many hundreds of homes, and know what I like and don't like. I can't look at a floor plan without mentally evaluating the functionality of it. When we bought our current house (before it was built) in early 1990, we had a mental list of things we wanted and didn't want, and this house had everything we wanted and nothing that we didn't want.

I don’t think it’s really that lots of people aren’t happy with what they have, but that it’s fun to daydream and plan for the future. It also can be a helpful exercise. For probably about 10 years before we built, I loved looking at properties online and open houses. Anytime something came up remotely interesting as a potential purchase or as a comp for either a potential purchase or our existing vacation home, I would research its history through the county website. Mostly this was for fun or out of curiosity, but it was also educational because I knew we would be selling and buying in this market. That didn’t mean I wasn’t happy with what we had at the time, but because I knew we would someday consolidate our primary and second home into our dream home as retirement approached. I really don’t know how many homes I mentally imagined living in or how many lots for which I mentally designed homes, but it was just for fun as much as anything else. That research and those mental exercises paid off tremendously in deciding upon our dream lot and having our dream home designed. I love everything about it — the location, neighborhood, floor plan, views, convenience, and much, much more. I sometimes miss the diversion of daydreaming about this or that property, but daydreams can’t compare to really living in my dream home.