It's not just "nowadays". We bought a 5000 sq. ft. "McMansion" a few miles north of Atlanta back in 1992. We had numerous problems with the house over the next 10 years. It finally got to the point where all the windows (43 of them) had to be replaced, the basement had numerous cracks in the walls, the downstairs floor joists needed reinforcing, and the roof had to be replaced. The bill for all of that? A mere USD $208,000. No way I was going to get into that. Time to move on. We love our home in Florida.