In weighing the decision to purchase an older home vs. a newer one, many criteria come into play.  There are many advantages to purchasing an older home.  Mature landscaping and an established community can be found.  Quite often you can get a larger yard and a closer location to downtown.  Older homes tend to have more character than new construction.  Older homes can also have some disadvantages.  Newer homes have more open floor plans and bigger closets.  The lack of these features are examples of functional obsolescence; items that are not easily updated.  If maintenance has been neglected on an older home, damage can vary from minor to catastrophic.  An older home must be looked at with a critical eye by the buyer and his/her inspectors to make sure the home is in good shape and will work for the buyer.

Here is a personal story that illustrates what can happen when you purchase an older home.  My wife & I purchased our home in 1999.  It was built in 1970 and is located in an established part of town that offers proximity to downtown, shopping, etc.  Our home has small closets and the main living area tends to get very crowded when we have only a few guests over.  We do however have a large yard and mature hardwood trees.  As we have outgrown our home we faced the decision of purchasing new or doing an addition/remodel to our existing house.  In order to get the size and features we desired in our part of town we would have to spend a figure well over our budget, or move farther out and get a new home.  We decided that we really wanted to stay put and with market conditions favoring redoing our existing home we have decided to bite the bullet and put up with the hassle and mess of a major remodel.  The appreciation we have seen and the added value of a remodel/addition, in our opinion, makes up for the 7 years we’ve spent in a home with Brady Bunch décor and the inconvenience of dealing with the work being done.