A home for life

I have, over the past 2o years, owned 5 houses. My sister has owned about 15 over the same period. She's a bit extreme, but my situation in my home country would be fairly typical. In Sweden, I'd be considered a nomad. In NZ, people largely tend to renovate to sell. You typically buy a house that has had some recent work done to it. You live in the house for a while before realising that it's not quite at the standard you want. Instead over overhauling your house, you look for a better house to buy. There's no point in investing a lot of money into a property that you only intend to live in for a couple of years. However, no one sells a house that doesn't look fresh and clean. So you frantically set about renovating and redecorating your house in order to sell it. By the time you've sold your house, it's almost as nice as the house you've just bought. There's a bit of a standing joke around English linked countries that the Queen thinks that the whole world smells of fresh paint and cut grass. Viewing houses for sale in NZ is pretty much the same. A strange setup, but there you go. Swedes, on the other hand, tend to stay in houses for longer. Generations in many cases. So they view renovations as a long term benefit to themselves. They don't really put a lot of extra effort in when selling a house, because they figure that the next person is going to want to stay there for 20 years so they'll do whatever they want themselves. And I guess that the people buying think the same way. They don't mind if the wallpaper is a bit tired. They intend to live there forever so they would plan on replacing wallpaper anyway. I was a bit shocked looking at the state of some of the houses being offered up for sale. But I didn't understand the mindset of this unique land. I have a colleague here in Sweden who bought the family home from his parents. Who in turn had bought it from their parents. His plan is that his daughter will take over the house one day. The big upside to this concept of long term ownership, is that people aren't afraid to carry out major upgrades. Things like replacing central heating systems, changing all the windows to triple glazing, a new roof, etc are big ticket items with long payback periods. I would never have considered doing that in NZ, because I'd never recover my investment. What that means is that houses in NZ never really progress in the quality of their basic shell. My last house in NZ was built in the 1950s. When I sold it, it was still a house from the 1950, but with brand new wallpaper and paint (and freshly cut grass). My colleague's house in Sweden, which is more than 100 years older than mine, is far superior to mine in it's basic services. He is investing in the upgrading of the structure of the house today, for his daughter's benefit. Just as his parents had done. There are problems for the Short Term Resident housing market. But I don't see a solution to it. It's a mental block, not a physical block. The standard of housing in NZ is poor. Ok, houses are newer, but they are of a lower standard when one assesses the core requirements of a good house. And I suspect they will always be that way. Give me a 200 year old wooden Swedish villa that's been in the same family for 4 generations any day.