Excellent Real Estate and Mortgage Loan Information for your House, from the Metro Denver Colorado Home Experts!

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Our houses, Your home

Like people, houses have sturdy youths, mid-life creaks, and old-age infirmities. A home sometimes, will not act like a home. It sometimes needs, tender-loving-care!

The foundation will last longer than it takes nations to rise and fall. The outside door, properly sheltered, will span a century. Cast-iron waste pipes are for the ages.

Tough things, houses.

Move as we must---and Americans move more than most people---some things stand for permanence.

You (or successors) will get 20 years from a quality chrome faucet and up to 100 years from wood siding---if it's treated right.

The kids can be born and gone before flames die on that gas range. But garage door openers beyond 10 years old are cranking on borrowed time.

So says the National Association of Home Builders, reporting on trends and facts in homes.

Against that backdrop, the government says that last year was the best for home sales in 14 years. Americans bought 756,000 new single-family homes, up more than 13 percent in a year.

Further, builders say people are getting more for their money:

• Today's typical new single-family home has 25 percent more living space than it did 20 years ago.

• The percentage of new homes with central air conditioning, 2 1/2 or more bathrooms, a two-car garage or carport and more than one story has doubled in that time. More than 60 percent have a fireplace, another big jump. Still, people want more:

• First-time home buyers want bay windows in the living room and kitchen; move-up buyers want them in the living and dining rooms. Both want cathedral ceilings in the living room and a half wall or no wall between the kitchen and family room.

• Move-up buyers expect everything first-timers want, plus far more space, a fourth bedroom, a bigger garage and a screened rear porch. They are willing to pay nearly $ 50,000 extra for all that.

But the story of American housing is still very much an old one. Of houses around today, only in 10 was built before 1920---twice the number that went up in the first half of this decade.

Three in 10 were built before 1950. And they're typically tough as nails.

That's one reason so many people fix them up. People spent $42 billion in home repairs last year and almost twice that amount on improvements.

Some improvements are better than others in driving up resale value. The builders say a kitchen spruce-up can return 94 percent of the investment; a deck, 72 percent; conversion of a room into an office, only 67 percent.

Bathroom renovations also pay off handsomely, but a turquoise toilet won't do. People want white, white, white.

The builders are quick to note that homes represent the largest portion of the nation's worth.

Even though home affordability may have declined over two decades, the rate of home ownership has risen in the most recent years. In the third quarter of last year, it hit 65.6 percent, matching the 1980 record.

As for longevity, houses generally fall apart as people do. First the cosmetics, then the serious stuff.

The foundation may last 200 years, a veritable monument. Copper wiring and slate roofs join cast-iron pipes in the century club. Father time's huffing and puffing may bring down vinyl and aluminum siding before wood.

But that wood will only last a decade if it's wet a lot. And treating for termites is not a long term wood fix: they'll be back munching in five short years.

HOW LONG WILL THINGS LAST!

Life expectancy of properly installed and maintained materials in the home, according to the National Association of Home Builders:

Now is the timeto CONTACT your EXPERT REALTOR!