Pretty much this.
Some people really want a new build. I think they're largely dreadful and flimsy, and built in absolutely ridiculous places that flood for fun, but at least their electrics are up to code.
Others prefer something older, like the things built pretty much from the 1920s through to the 1980s; I'm forever finding DIY bodges in mine though (and probably would in my old house, though my parents bought that new in 1964 and stayed there until death/2006 so they'd be to blame for that) and we've had to redo much of the utilities and glazing in here.
I'd discount a terrace out of hand, no matter where it is. Mid terrace gives you terrible access and a grossly increased chance of having a party wall with a tosser. End terrace gives you terrible access. All give you every noise made in any of them transmitted right the way through. Same with flats and apartments, and anything with multiple properties sharing a front door.
Personally, I'd wager that almost everyone would want a nice, secure, detached property if they won the lottery. Though really we've not been a culture of homeowners until the 1950s, and maybe even as recent as the 1980s with "right to buy". Only a quarter of the population owned their own home in the 1910s, and only a third in the 1940s. It's around two-thirds now.
You've just listed pretty much every problem we have here too. While the speed and precision of new construction is impressive, the longevity is not. They don't build anything out of solid brick or stone anymore, it's all wood framed with a veneer of brick on the outside, basically just helping weight it down so it flexes more come the first winter. Within several years of temperature changes you'll likely have cracks in the drywall and other signs of movement. As for apartments, I've never lived in anything newish that probably has better sound deadening, but the one I live in right now is having a problem with the upstairs neighbor. I dislike his girlfriend especially because she laughs at the
lamest jokes, and laughs way too much. But as everybody else is echoing here, house prices, even old mid-century houses that are full of DIY nightmares, are rocketing up past $150,000 in the Midwest which is about a 30% increase just in the past 4-5 years. For a while there the prices were actually accessible and young people were buying these old houses up but now we've literally run out because developers absolutely
do not build affordable and decent quality houses. If they do, they're in what used to be the hellest hole neighorhood in town which is being gentrified and you'll be living in a nice little new house just a block or two away from the worst crime rates in the city, and with underfunded urban schools to boot. Somehow, living on a college campus sounds more appealing than that, but of course we can't afford to live on campus anymore either.
For me I grew up in a 3 bedroom Mid terrace Council House (Ex Council now as my parents bought it so years ago) and its a vastly different layout to the 3 Bedroom Mid terrace (Technically an end of terrace as we have an airgap of about 5mm between us and the house on our right when facing the house from the street). The one I own now is a late Victorian terrace and typical of the red brick type terrace houses. My parents house is much roomier in floor space but lower celling heights and more typical of Post WW2 Council houses.
Incidentally My parents house has had 4 Generations of my dads family live and grow up in it. Some of my Aunties and Uncles were born in it too. My house still has some of the old bakerlite fixtures.
As for aspirations personally I aspired to own my own home, I just didn't want to continue to live on a council estate (I believe in the USA you call them The Projects?) so I stayed in the same Village but moved onto a quieter more affluent (I'm using this term loosely) street. Money dictated the size and area I could buy in. If I could I'd move to a bigger and detached house.
Speaking of the projects, no I don't think you lived in the projects haha. That new urban neighborhood I just mentioned to Famine, those are build on the grounds of demolished projects. Projects were America's attempt to round up poor black people and put them all in a centralized soviet-style apartment complex so they were easier to keep track of. Or maybe it was to offer affordable housing to disadvantaged people? Ahh, depends on which book you read I suppose. Anyways, we call our public housing "Section 8" and it's basically just a discount or subsidized program that new or existing complexes can sign up to accept. Projects still exist mind you but you and I aren't invited.
Depends greatly on where you live. City, town or countryside. For the average now city-dweller on leaving university you will probably have already relocated to a different city. You'll likely start off living in a shared house, rented (likely a terrace) or a more modern flat/apartment closer to the city centre. Your next move would be to rent something similar with a partner or on your own as and when you can afford it. When the thought of having a family becomes a real issue you could be expected to move out to the suburbs to a bigger semi-detached with a bit of garden etc. You might move up the property chain as your wages increase or the family expands, perhaps to a bigger semi or a detached. Once your own kids have grown up and flown the nest or you have retired yourself, you may then down-size to a bungalow or similar to live out the rest of your days. But this is very much a generalization, and a middle-class one at that.
I live in a more modest house than the one i grew up in, but then i don't have kids so don't require all that extra space. My sister on the other hand has two kids and although her and her husband have lived all over (due to work) in a variety of very different houses, she's ended up moving 'back home' and bought a house really quite similar to the one we grew up in just a couple of streets away.
People still aspire to 'do as well' as their parents did, i think that's just human nature, but for the generation below me, it's increasing hard to get on the property ladder as the deposits required to get a mortgage are now huge and as rents are usually more than what a mortgage payment would be, it's much harder to raise that deposit. As houses are seen as a good long term investment, buy-to-let has driven up house prices and therefore the deposits, usually a sizable percentage of the overall value, are now largely out of reach for first time buyers.
As the UK is a small densely populated island, 'country living' - living in a rural setting is now seen largely as aspirational as you are never so far away from a city that it's not commutable, so property and land is expensive (which i would imagine is the opposite to much of North America). It's generally a post-war, or later, phenomenon so there are still families who live rurally who have always lived and worked locally but whose children would never be able to buy where they grew up as house values have gone up well beyond what traditional local jobs would afford them.
Country land is cheap here sure but because it's only sold in large quantities it's pretty inaccessible. The countryside is the domain of rich Republicans in the US - either you're buying an expensive house in a new development built on ex-farmland or you're building an expensive house build on a slightly smaller ex-farmland that you bought yourself. It's definitely cheaper than building your own house inside a town or city but I mean who the hell can afford to build a house anyway? Young folks are stuck battling over 1950s scraps with all the problems Famine described like poor build quality, questionable modifications, and crappy neighbors. American culture and people who take it too far mean that even in a detached house you can have neighbors so bad you'll wish you had an apartment, like my cousin's neighbor who tried to light his own truck on fire with a bowl of gasoline so he could pocket the insurance money. I thawt this was a free cuhntry! The suburb I grew up in wasn't so bad although the entire area did get their snowblowers stolen out of their garages in the middle of summer one year.
Average current price in the postcode I grew up in (age 6 to 21) is currently £665,000. I have never aspired to this, or used the house type as any kind of benchmark (It was a cottage built in two stages, with the newer parts being late 1800's, and the older part being 16-1700's IIRC, located in a small rural village).
I'm now 41 and have been renting for 20 years, so I've already spent enough to buy a small 1 bedroom flat outright, however, I've never been in a position to even think about buying up until the last year or so, so my aspiration is either to simply have enough money to survive in retirement, or die (painlessly) before I have to worry about it. It's probable that my Dad will die before I'm 67, so I could expect some kind of lump sum to contribute towards having a roof over my head in retirement, so that's a plus... I suppose.
Well that's a dose of reality lmao. I'm aiming for the latter, honestly. I feel like this "save for retirement" thing was a scam to trick me into not enjoy life, and then suddenly being too old to enjoy it anyway. I'd rather just not get that old to be honest. I'm American, I absolutely will not be healthy enough to enjoy old age no matter how much money I have.
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