> For a master-planned tract house built in the 1990's... maybe.
Not even then. 30 years would be ridiculous. Even in the US, all the houses in my area (west coast, so nothing is all that old) back to the late 1800s are still being used as residential housing. Renovated, of course, probably several times, but the bones are the same.
Yeah the subdivision my parents lived in was built in the 1950s/60s, and all those houses are still being lived in today. Only something like a severe fire has caused any of them to be torn down/rebuilt. They are all simple stick-built ranch or bilevel homes, very typical residential construction
At least out west, I'd say especially the 50s and 60s houses are built to last.
My mother still lives in the house I was raised in, and it's largely original in fundamental construction -- built in 1914. Small renovations over the years, but when she passes the house will undoubtedly be completely gutted to the studs and redone. Gone will be the lathe & plaster, but on the bright side the electric wiring will be modern as well as the plumbing, HVAC ducting, insulation, etc.
But even so, that house was primarily built from 2x4. Even at two stories with a basement. My own first house, by comparison, was built in 1964 and it's like a tank. Exterior walls were 2x6 by then, though dead-air w/foil was still the predominant insulation method. But the wood ... the wood ... was exquisite. It was not an expensive house by any stretch of the imagination, and yet it was constructed with wood you just flat out can't get today. Hardwood floors not because they were upscale, but because that's what all the houses got. The studs in the walls are actually 2x4 and so dense it's hard to drive nails into them without bending. I did a little renovation and got to compare an original stud to a new one I had bought and it was incredible how different they are. The exterior siding was old growth cedar that you can't get today. In some ways, for wood construction, I'd say that era was the peak.
We may surpass it in some ways now, but only because we've fallen back on technology to do it. Instead of simple wood beams, the second floor above my current house's garage is held up by an enormous glulam beam that spans 40 feet. Wasn't really practical before glulam to do that with wood in residential construction.
I've seen lately that nobody tears down the 60s era ranch houses around here when they want to backfill an area. They move the house onto a new foundation and then renovate it and modernize the exterior looks so it fits in.
I guess it turns into a cost benefit analysis where you have to compare maintenance to demolition and land value. Beyond a certain point that estimate would become less predictable. But the design will have margins of safety that increase predictability. A client buying a bridge or a skyscraper will probably be making a long term investment and want predictability.
Back then many architects/engineers didn't know enough to engineer 'on the edge' so they tended to massive overkill. Meter thick walls, that sort of thing.
But not everybody built like that, there are also many examples of elegance and material economy. Roman stuff spans the gamut from 'wasteful' to 'optimal'.
Castles were usually built to deal with attackers so likely far strongly built than they would have been otherwise.
This is what always really impresses me about old churches, they go straight up to 100+ meters and it's just square cut stones piled on top of each other lined up with plumb bobs and wires, standing true for 100's of years. Imagine the feat of engineering that the foundation comprises for a building like that.
> But not everybody built like that, there are also many examples of elegance and material economy. Roman stuff spans the gamut from 'wasteful' to 'optimal'.
And note the survivorship bias. The stuff that was "not quite enough strength to be sufficient"-- or even "just barely sufficient" was removed by time.
