> and many homes thus slowly degrade in value

Except in my experience the lack of upkeep doesn't actually affect the value all that much. In many places the vast majority of the price is the land and people seem less interested in valuing based on the condition of the structure. It may affect time to sell, but that seems about it. Sure some credits might be offered during escrow for some repairs, but again often the money is insufficient or the seller simply says no.

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kube-system 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That depends on the market and how much deferred maintenance we're talking about.

In some places buyers will bulldoze perfectly good homes just to build a different one, just because the land is so valuable.

In other places, there are abandoned homes that municipalities can't even give away because the cost to bulldoze is more than the land is worth.

If the place you're in looks more like the former, maintenance doesn't matter as much. If it looks more like the latter, maintenance is going to be more important to your sale price.

	▲	mothballed 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		At least where I'm from, the cost of a property with a burned-out unusable house on it is always a shit-ton more than land value, since running utilities to a house site, dealing with the paperwork, etc. is way more expensive and precarious than the cost to bulldoze. If there was a house there you can just raze to foundation and rebuild it without having to trigger a clusterfuck with the utility company or septic re-evaluation. Also if the house is at least mortgagable by someone then buyers will still bid the price up to infinity on debt even if the house is only usable for bulldozing. The land value itself is also way lower for places without a house since the land value is loanable in one case and not the other.

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rustystump 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This. Most value is location location location. It does not cost that much relative to price to reno when you want to sell. Space is the premium, not trendy open concepts.