I bought a house that two guys spent years fixing up. I intentionally bought a house that would, in theory only require routine maintenance.
My parent's house is being worked on right now and the other day a guy doing the floors took off a baseboard and immediately, water starts shooting out. Apparently, whoever put the baseboard on accidentally drove a nail into a pipe, just puncturing it. If the worker hadn't taken the baseboard off, there's a good chance that eventually the nail would have rusted and then water would have leaked between the walls. Right now there's a screw soldered into the hole until the plumber can get back to fix it properly. To do that, he'll have to cut out part of the ceiling in the finished part of the basement and move this unusual pipe assembly higher up in the wall. I'm nowhere near being able to afford my own home, but if/when I am in the market for the house, I'll make sure to try to get as clear a picture as I can of all the systems in the house I might buy to see what might become a problem in the future. From where I sit, being a homeowner seems very stressful.
So far it's okay, the stressful part has not been any catastrophe, but rather the upkeep. I am thinking about putting my home on zillow's "make me move" to see if anyone makes us an offer at a price that would gladly make us get up and go. I'd then rent a larger home at far less than my mortgage and just hire people to mow, clean etc. I want zero home responsibilities if possible. Then, someday I want to build our dream home.
When I was in high school a guy from the university came to talk to us about nanobots. One of the things he mentioned was that nanobots might someday be used to mow lawns. At the time, it struck me as weird to consider using an advanced technology to perform such a mundane task, but in America it particular, mowing and maintaining a lawn can be a very significant time commitment. I have thought about solving the lawn problem in other ways, such as by using a goat or a cow, but then the yard would smell farmy, not to mention poo disposal is less enjoyable than mowing grass. I like the look of a nice lawn, but honestly to me, it seems a bit frivolous and wasteful. Consider how much water is used and all the fertilizers and other chemicals that get sprayed onto lawns and then all of that residue washing into street drains, not to mention the space that is either under utilized or never used, except as a space to mow and maintain. That said, my views may change. If you built your dream home, wouldn't you then have a lot of home responsibilities and also an increased interest in maintaining it?