Our local paper ran series of articles over this weekend about parts of the city that have gone into disrepair. People who have let their yards overgrow and become nuisances; homes that have been condemned by the city for lack of upkeep; etc.
I hear that most people that let themselves live in such conditions are usually renters and that’s all they can afford and it’s the landlords that don’t take care of their homes, but I’ve seen plenty of homes that are owned by the residents that don’t do a damn thing about their yards, any home maintenance, etc.
Why is this? Fallen on hard times? So therefore, you now leave furniture and appliances in the front yard?
Even early in my adult life when I was a renter, I maintained the appearance of the house I rented. I don’t understand people that don’t.
Yes, I have. Granted, it wasn’t in good shape to begin; I bought it as-is. I’ve since read threads on this board about the, pardon me, relative worthlessness of certain home inspectors, as mine certainly was. So there were some significant problems of which I had no idea. Bought the home in May 2008 with the idea that I would slowly devote resources to consulting professionals and hiring fixes as I was financially able.
When I married in June 2009, I was unaware that my spouse-to-be had major issues with spending money for home repairs that he could do himself, but that he would also be unwilling to do any home repairs. Currently I am a bit stuck with this conundrum. I’ve tried to acquire skills and do some stuff on my own with indifferent success, and the big stuff (competent foundation inspection with consequent water leak remediation, for example) is totally beyond me.
However, my house is by no means in “condemned by the city” shape. It has some aggravating major issues, and I definitely couldn’t / wouldn’t put it back on the market this way, but it is serviceable, at least until the kids are fully grown and gone.
well, nobody’s going to call the city about my house, so I wasn’t sure which of the above to click.
I own, and I wish I had the money to paint the house (too high to paint on my own) and replace the roof. And the deck. But I don’t right now. I have to spend the money on other things and those things can wait.
Mostly my guess is it comes down to money, health and social networks.
You can make up for some deficit of money by doing maintenance yourself, but only if you have the time, tools and know how. If your health is compromised physically or mentally, then you’re not going to be able to do the maintenance yourself at all, and your ability to earn the money to pay someone is lessened as well.
Maybe your social network will kick in, your sister will make your nephew mow the lawn, your cousin owns a roofing business, your church sends youth around to rake the yard for the elderly, but some people don’t have family, didn’t think to join a church just for the social services.
Once a certain level of disrepair sets in it’s really hard to dig out and the disrepair itself starts to impact physical and mental health and probably social networks too.
I own and I maintain and improve - my house was a major fixer-upper when I bought it in August 2010 and not in liveable condition. My township is notified of any sale so the day I bought it, our local hyperactive building inspector promptly drove over and slapped a neon orange “Condemned! Do Not Occupy!” sticker on my front door. :rolleyes:
Granted I live in an area with a lot of blight.
I called him and explained I was planning on renovating and had no intentions of moving in until the plumbing, electrical and other issues were fixed and up to code. So far so good. Slowly, I am doing improvements - last month a new back deck. Next week I have a tree service coming to do a bunch of tree trimming and two removals (it’s on a half-acre.) Within the next couple of months I plan on refinishing the floors.
Okay, not “falling apart” from neglect, but… In 12 years, I haven’t vacuumed. (I sort of sweep up the worst detritus. Also, I don’t spill a lot.) I scrub the bathroom a little, but not enough. I’ve never washed the windows. I’ve never dusted the blinds. I do scrub the doors to clean off hand-smudge.
One of the major reasons I rent is so I don’t have to do any upkeep beyond keeping the place clean. If it gets run down, and the owner doesn’t fix it, I move out to a place that is kept up. Lather, rinse, repeat.
My house is in decent repair, though I have pets so it can get pretty messy if I don’t clean up frequently. Once I let it go and the officious nitpickers in the city wanted to condemn and bulldoze the place over some bird shit indoors and a bit of trash outdoors. I suppose they were disappointed when I cleared up the mess and they couldn’t find any code violations, not even a leaky faucet.
The yard is a pain to weed but I’ve done quite well on that lately and planted some flowers so it looks fine.
I would imagine that home disrepair would generally correlate highly with poor physical and or mental health as well as excessive financial strain. It could also be correlated with being young; which is somewhat like having poor mental health; I’ve heard the brain isn’t fully formed until 28.
One of the reasons I’m hesitant to buy a house is this fear that I will just let things go to pot while all the neighbors secretly hate me. I’m a wabi-sabiist at my core.
But I’m not doing too bad with upkeep on the house I rent. I’m out there every weekend doing lawn care–and not just so I won’t get a citation. My house is a perpetual mess, but it’s not so bad that a few hours of cleaning wouldn’t fix. So maybe my fear is unfounded.
I’m a renter, but I grew up in an owned home and know what it takes to keep things going well. As things come up around the apartment, I let the building manager know about it and they come fix it.
In the last year I’ve let them know about the ceiling fan in the living room’s motor going bad (replaced), a set of blinds that fell off a broken bracket (replaced), back door dead bolt fell apart (replaced), two different radiators with steam valves going bad (replaced), and one radiator that needed a shim due to leaning forward for some reason (the floor is flat according to the level I used), bad water pressure in the bathtub, needed the pipes cleaned out and now to keep an eye on it because that was a one-shot and if it happens again they’ll have to replace the pipes, and finally a small what appears to be light leak over the bedroom closet that only appears in certain rain or snow melt conditions (fixed).
Oh, and the last one was a couple years ago, the huge courtyard trees that have grown above the 4-story building started hitting the parapet over my living room windows in high winds. That took a couple summers before they did a major tree trimming and stripped half the branches off the poor trees. It was a huge job, and I have pictures of strange men with chainsaws dangling from the branches outside my windows. It was quite a sight!
I know a lot of renters who would just let all these things go and never tell their landlord there might be problems, which just makes for bigger problems down the road. Stuff like the radiators, they would never find out about until there was a big leak and the valves failed completely, because the move in and out dates for most of the units is during warm weather when the heat isn’t on.
I must say I’m in the “not quite falling apart, but not properly maintained” group.
We bought our house thirteen years ago, and it was kind of a fixer-upper then. Mr. Legend started a job that involved an out-of-state commute that year, and I had my hands full just keeping things in reasonable repair, so the fixing up has been exceptionally slow. We’ve had the necessary things done, even some really major things, but we really need to do things like repaint the trim, take out a crappy chain-link fence, and fix up both front and back yards. We’re within city code, and we don’t live like animals, but when you drive down our street, ours is the house you’d pick as the one that really needs some attention.
Now that the kids are grown and money pressures are easing up a little (knock wood), we’re starting to get some things taken care of, but it’s going to take a long, long time.
My wife and I are in our 60’s now. We simply can’t do a lot of the things we used to be able to do ourselves. Calling a handyman for every little thing gets expensive. So, yeah, we’ll keep the roof from leaking, but those trees could really use a good trimming.
My house was not well-built. It’s about 20 years old and probably needs to be bull-dozed. Some of it’s from neglect, but I’m always discovering one new thing or another that was obviously not made properly. Some things pop up and we just can’t bother, because they are too expensive or inconvenient to deal with and not important for living. Other things are major- like when your house is built to have the roof leak and basement flood.
I maintain my house just fine. I keep it clean, I fix what breaks, I do pretty well considering I have a kid, two dogs and work like a bajillion hours a week. The eves, soffits, fascia could really use a coat of paint. But they’re mostly just dirty. There’s only one spot where the paint is visibly missing and the wood is starting to deteriorate. Problem is, with my bad shoulder I really can’t wrangle a ladder up and over the bushes. Sometime this year or next summer I’ hoping to put a new roof on the house and I’ll ask roof people if they paint, if they do, I’ll let them slap a coat or two of paint on. Hopefully it won’t be too much. Otherwise, after the new roof and skylight is on, there’s some drywall that needs to be fixed inside (due to the leaky skylight) and I’ll have whoever does the drywall paint the exterior as well. No matter how I look at it, once I do the roof, it’s just going to be an expensive summer.
The alternative is that I’ll find some afternoon when I’m having a ‘good shoulder day’ and just get that one chunk of trim done and ignore the rest. I’m really only worried about getting some paint on the one part before it starts to rot and has to be replaced. But if it does rot, it’s getting replaced with PVC boards and it’ll never have to get painted again.
We take pretty good care of our little farm. New roof two years ago, along with extending the roof to cover a long porch. New windows and siding last year. Big load of gravel on the driveway recently. Always playing landscaper.