Lovetodrive2000

Our neighborhood is 18-20 years old.... I had the house built when there were only maybe 10 of the 80 lots built.

Over the past 5 years, a lot of the houses have been sold, and a different group of people have moved in.

Don't take care of their grass, don't take care of their landscaping, etc....

Is it just me getting old.... or are older (15-20 year) neighborhoods going downhill?

Lainey

Our neighborhood is much older. We've been here almost 35 years. The house/neighborhood is about 50 years old. Pretty much starter homes. No McMansions. Most of the houses are well kept/maintained. There are a few here and there, where the grass gets a bit too long, and a few that have never been maintained well since we moved in. The houses change hands and nothing changes...it's weird.

BTW, you ARE getting old.

TsukubaCody

In my experience (I'm a youth, but a big time architectural dork), neighborhoods 10-30 years old are aging badly and are only going to age worse as time passes by.

The 80's/90's/early naughts were a dark period in American home design/construction, many of the houses not built to last, in areas that are not the most desirable by younger people/families.

My last apartment was on the edge of a 15-20 year old neighborhood, houses starting at $250k up to about half a million. Everyone was overgrown or not landscaped at all. A lot of the people interested in those houses are buying for space & little else, not the ideal neighbor for a number of reasons IMO.

(Not trying to be a jerk to OP, just noticed this trend a lot in exurban neighborhood developments)

Conversely, a lot of neighborhoods that were bad (in the way you've described) for years, that are closer to cities are rapidly getting nicer & nicer. People want shorter commutes, smaller yards, etc., but still desire a place they own & the like. Its a shift closer to that of families after the depression/WWII than that of the excess of the 80's-Great Recession

kgf3076

There is also a cost factor involved in the urbanization factor. Generally (speaking in DC Metro terms), the houses in not so nice neighborhoods become more attractive as housing in suburban areas increase in cost. Why buy a house for $500k in the suburbs when you can buy a house close to a city for way less and spend a smaller amount for repairs and modernization and get a much better house. You also get the benefits of being close to work, shopping, restaurants and cultural venues. A prime example of his happening is the resurrection of the SE waterfront in DC. Ten years ago, it was a desert after sundown, now it's a major retail and residential area.

UnkieTrunkie

My neighborhood is weird as all get-out: I own a condo in a section of San Jose that is largely multi-unit housing. The thing is, as rents have gone up, crime and poverty have gone down. The unemployed are largely displaced, and mostly replaced with either exceptionally frugal starting-level tech workers or underemployed two-to-three-shift service workers.

The only bummer is specifically within my complex: most of the former unit owners have NOT sold, but rather, rented out their units*, so the quality of patio upkeep and HOA oversight have gone by the wayside as the owners moved elsewhere. The compounding effect is that both the rental units in the complex along with the single family homes a few blocks over is the AirBnB/sublet situations that have arisen; the primary lessee is subletting rooms, resulting in considerable itinerancy. It's also made our parking lots full by 7:30pm, sometimes before I get home from work.

*Motivations for this are wild and wacky. . . but more fit for discussion in Politics than here

MsPerky

What is going on at The Wharf, Navy Yard and elsewhere in the city is amazing. Having lived in the DC area a long time, the changes have been pretty astounding. I can see many of them from my condo. Neighborhoods here don't go downhill. They either get torn down lot by lot to build new big houses (like my mother's house in the burbs), or they get torn down closer into town (such as right here in Rosslyn, another booming area) for multi-use development.

BTW - Forbes just named the Navy Yard as one of the 12 "coolest" places in the world.

Scooterboy

Stange, our neighborhood went down just after we moved in!

MsPerky

dlq04

We have been here 35 years. The neighborhood started 50 years ago. There was a spell when the michigan economy/stock market went to hell and we lost a few families but I would say at least 1/3rd of our neighbors have also lived here 35 or more years. Really nothing has gone down hill except the roads and ours are better than a lot in the area. Most of the houses and landscaping have really improved in the past 5 years. We have never given a seconds thought of moving. Great neighbors, safe, quiet area, and friendly.

Lovetodrive2000

The houses are doing fine, its the people who live in them that's the problem. Over the past few years, more and more renters have moved in, plus a number of immigrants.

The immigrants are keeping their places looking OK, its more of the renters and rednecks that now are in the houses.