"New developments in flooring, painting and construction are resulting in longer use of our homes."
I know that this is at best tangential to the OP's point but this poked me in the eye. Can the OP really be this naive about modern construction materials and practices?
150 years ago it wasn't uncommon to build a house out of hardwood planking, with a stone foundation. Post in beam construction using 2ft square timbers was also fairly common. This kind of construction is built to last and it does.
By comparison the largest driving factor in material selection on your average home construction project is cost. That's why you get vinyl siding, soft pine 2x4's, and the cheapest interior hardware money can buy. So in this instance innovation is a euphemism for selecting poor materials. Great.
How many people really think their stick built McMansion is going to be standing in 150 years? I mean, really?
Materials are much better now than in the 60s or 70s but not as good as in the more distant past. My house was built in the 40s and looks better than 10 or 15 year old houses in the area. On the other hand, insulation was crap or non-existent then and furnaces were less efficient.
Survivorship bias. Poorly built houses from long ago are no longer here, reminding us how poorly they were constructed, only the best examples survive. In 150 years, only the best houses built today will still be standing, and people then will be compare these houses with flimsy mass produced homes and say the same things.
Some bias, yes, but there are other things at work. When my house was built large beams, wide siding boards and clear wood for hardwood floors was readily available. As the supply of those materials shrank cheaper woods and the first engineered wood products showed up but they weren't particularly good. Builders were switching to aluminum windows, formica, carpeting and drywall but hadn't necessarily figured out how to build well with those materials.
Now we have higher quality engineered materials made from cheaper wood but they cost a lot more so people don't use them for mass construction.
Your assumption being poorly built houses from long ago haven't survived due to some flaw in construction. I'm not so convinced. 80 year old barns cobbled together from rough planks with no foundation to speak of aren't exactly rare in this corner of the world (Southeast US), and I'm pretty confident folks paid more attention to the construction of their homes than their barn. In population dense areas old houses have a tendency to get torn down to make way for new construction.
I know that this is at best tangential to the OP's point but this poked me in the eye. Can the OP really be this naive about modern construction materials and practices?
150 years ago it wasn't uncommon to build a house out of hardwood planking, with a stone foundation. Post in beam construction using 2ft square timbers was also fairly common. This kind of construction is built to last and it does.
By comparison the largest driving factor in material selection on your average home construction project is cost. That's why you get vinyl siding, soft pine 2x4's, and the cheapest interior hardware money can buy. So in this instance innovation is a euphemism for selecting poor materials. Great.
How many people really think their stick built McMansion is going to be standing in 150 years? I mean, really?