09/18/2026
America doesn't just have an affordable housing problem. It has an “I want affordable housing, but I don't want an affordable house” problem.
For decades, one of the mechanisms of middle-class homeownership was something that has almost disappeared from the conversation. Something my parents called; elbow grease.
You bought the house you could afford, not necessarily the house you wanted. The kitchen was ugly. Paint was tired. The yard was a mess. There was junk in the garage. The bathroom looked like 1978 had never ended.
So you bought it anyway.
You cleaned it up. You painted. You ripped out carpet. You learned how to do things. You hired somebody when you couldn't. You lived with the ugly bathroom for three years.
And slowly, your house became worth more. You didn't just buy equity. You created some of it.
Today, an enormous portion of the retail market seems to want that process completed before they arrive. And we're pretending that doesn't have anything to do with affordability. It does. The evidence is actually pretty striking.
The National Association of Realtors reported in its 2025 Remodeling Impact Report that 46% of buyers are less willing to compromise on the condition of a home when purchasing. At the same time, Americans spent an estimated $603 billion remodeling their homes in 2024.
Think about that combination. We have an aging housing stock that needs work. We have buyers complaining that houses cost too much. And we have buyers becoming less willing to buy houses that need work.
That is not exactly a recipe for cheap housing.
Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies provides another piece of the puzzle. The remodeling industry has grown into a more-than-$600 billion market, while skilled-trade shortages and rising costs are making renovation more expensive. At the same time, lower-cost DIY activity has been losing ground to professional work. That's important because DIY used to be one of the ways a household with limited cash could substitute labor for money.
Now we're increasingly substituting money for labor. And that changes the economics. A buyer looking at a $350,000 house that needs $30,000 of cosmetic work doesn't necessarily see a $350,000 opportunity.
They see a $380,000 problem. An investor sees something completely different. The investor sees acquisition price, renovation cost and after-repair value. That's why investors haven't forgotten elbow grease. They've professionalized it. They buy the ugly house. They improve it. They sell the finished product to the person who doesn't want to do the work.
There is nothing inherently sinister about that. That's business. But it creates an interesting loop. The retail buyer refuses the ugly house because it's “too much work.” The investor buys it at a discount. The investor puts money and labor into it. The retail buyer eventually purchases the renovated version for considerably more money.
Then the retail buyer complains that there are no affordable houses.
There was an affordable house. You just didn't want it before somebody else made it pretty. Now, before somebody starts yelling about millennials and paint brushes, there is a legitimate counterargument.
Fixer-uppers aren't what they used to be. A lot of today's deferred maintenance isn't “paint the living room.” It's a 40-year-old roof, obsolete electrical, failing sewer lines, bad windows, foundation problems, insurance issues and a $35,000 HVAC bill.
Harvard's research shows that homeowners are spending heavily on replacing major components of their homes, not merely cosmetic improvements.
So no, nobody should be lectured into buying a money pit. But that's precisely why we need to distinguish between broken and ugly. A structurally compromised house is a problem. A house with orange carpet is an opportunity. And we've become remarkably bad at telling the difference.
There is another irony here: the mortgage system itself recognizes the value of renovation. Fannie Mae's HomeStyle Renovation program allows qualified buyers to finance repairs and improvements as part of the mortgage. It can cover everything from roofing and plumbing to painting and landscaping. And, remarkably, its rules even permit a borrower to perform some work themselves on a one-unit property.
The financing machinery exists. The housing stock exists. The need exists.
What is increasingly scarce is the willingness to say: “I don't need it perfect. I can make it better.” And that mindset matters more than many people realize. Because homeownership has historically been one of the few major purchases where the consumer could materially improve the product after buying it.
You couldn't buy a cheap car and make it appreciate because you washed it every Saturday. You couldn't buy a discounted stock because the wallpaper was ugly. But you could buy a house with a terrible kitchen, improve it over five years and end up with something substantially more valuable.
That was the deal. The house didn't have to be finished. You were part of the finishing process.
We've gradually turned housing into a finished consumer product. Buy it. Move in. Everything should be done. And there is nothing wrong with wanting that. But somebody has to pay for “done.” Usually, it's you.
And this is where the affordability conversation gets a little dishonest. If buyers insist that every house have the new kitchen, new floors, perfect paint, finished basement, manicured landscaping and modern bathrooms before they will consider buying it, they are not simply demanding housing.
They're demanding a renovation package attached to the housing. That's expensive.
Maybe the more useful question isn't: “Why aren't there enough affordable turnkey houses?”
Maybe it's: “Why have we decided that a house has to be turnkey before an ordinary buyer is willing to call it affordable?”
Because there is a huge amount of housing sitting between “perfect” and “uninhabitable.” That's the sweet spot. The house with the ugly kitchen. The house that needs paint. The house where the previous owner hasn't touched the landscaping since 1999. The house with the weird wallpaper and the terrible light fixtures. The house that looks awful in the listing photographs but has a solid roof, good bones and a decent location.
That's where elbow grease used to create opportunity.
And maybe that's part of what we need to bring back—not because people today are lazy, and not because everything was better in the past.
But because labor is one of the few forms of capital that an ordinary person can actually manufacture for themselves. You may not have $100,000 sitting in the bank. You might have weekends. You might have a pickup truck. You might have YouTube. You might have a friend who knows electrical work. You might be willing to live with an ugly kitchen for a while.
That's not nothing. That's economic leverage. Investors understand it. The market understands it. Maybe retail buyers should, too.
Because if we're serious about housing affordability, we probably need to stop pretending that the only affordable house is the one that somebody else has already fixed.
Sometimes the discount is sitting right there in the ugly kitchen. You just have to be willing to earn it.
If you're looking for an affordable home, please let me know I'm happy to help.
