What You Must Know About Irreversible Neighborhood Decline When Buying a Home
This post is about a case in Beijing:
1. The most troublesome issue is that high-rise buildings face elevator lifespan expiration, making replacement impossible. The cost of dismantling and replacing elevators is so high that buying a new home is often a better option. One residential community is already facing dissolution. Those with financial means will move to a new home, while those without will have to endure climbing dozens of flights of stairs every day... From this perspective, to mitigate risk, it's wise to buy homes on floors 5-9 for greater peace of mind.
2. The lifecycle of a residential community generally begins to decline after 10 years. You should make plans early and save up to buy a new home.
3. In northern China, the greening environment tends to degrade in roughly 5-year stages—barely visible by year 5.5, completely bald by year 18. Southern areas with better weather shouldn't face this problem.
Even if a house is designed for a 50- or 70-year lifespan, in practice it usually depreciates to the point where replacement becomes necessary after about 20 years. This is also why buying a home with an old age is not recommended.
If you want to keep living in a well-maintained residential environment, the only solution is to continuously move into homes with newer building ages.
The depreciation rate of public amenities depends not on the average behavior of the community, but on the most destructive segment within it; meanwhile, the funding required to maintain those amenities depends on the group's average willingness to pay.
