I edited my comment because I feel I was a bit too harsh, but I'm sensitive about this because for me, living in an old home has been a matter of survival. I am grateful every day that I bought a fixer-upper, because when I was laid off from my job at a newspaper and could not manage to establish a Plan B career, having a house payment most people would consider low saved me. If I'd bought as much house as I could supposedly have afforded when I had a FT job, I'd have lost it. So now, even though I have peeling wallpaper and such in some rooms, and a laughably primitive bathroom, I do have a roof over my head. We fix it as we have time and money, but we have a home.