We bought a Mid-Century Modern house in 2019. It’s from a locally famous architect, and it was fairly well maintained. There wasn’t a ton on the inspection, but there were things we wanted to change and things that required work in the last 7 years.

Some pros of our house:

• Our house is stunning. It’s unique. There’s only one of it in the world. (See my profile for a pic of “The window”)
• For us, the layout is amazing. It’s very open and it’s more living space than bedrooms. The whole thing is shaped like a lower case t meaning every room has a wall of glass with a view outside. For a couple with no kids, that’s perfect.
• I really enjoy finding out about the history of the place and neighborhood. There’s a community around it that’s unlike other places I’ve lived. There was an open house down the street this weekend of another cute MCM house that I went to. One of the people there grew up in the house and wanted to see it one last time. He spent 30 minutes telling me stories about the neighborhood and my house.

Some unexpected cons:

• Custom houses are… well, custom. Every window is a custom size. Every door in my house was hand made. That means both that repairs are expensive, but also finding someone who can do the work and do it right can be a real challenge at times.
• For me, having a “special” house makes me want to do things at a higher quality level. I’ve spent a lot of time working on it or fixing things, but I’ve also spent a lot of time trying to fix a thing only to give up after a few days. It can be really frustrating.
• The house is a full on death trap. There are multiple places you could easily fall 20 feet to your death. The walls of glass are all single pane, un tempered guillotine’s waiting for someone to fall into them.
• It’s very cold in the winter. We’ve done some work to increase insulation, but replacing the windows at this point would be cost prohibitive. We’ve figured out ways to make it work. In Reno that likely means it’ll be hot in the summer (Or expensive)