Pretty much, the first thing the interviewed couple mentions is that they're building an elevator in order to keep living in their home as they grow older (and assumedly become impaired due to age).
It might be a purely financial decision of "we want to keep living independently but we can't afford to buy a different house than the one we locked in 40 years ago, so lets spend a few thousand putting in an elevator instead of spending hundreds of thousands changing houses" since some major cities have housing markets that are simply that extreme
My parents put in a stair lift. I'd expect more are doing something like that where they are a few thousand bucks. But you still need to be able to transfer to/from the seat. It doesn't accommodate a wheelchair.
It's not such an extravagant purchase when it's the only way my father could make it up and down from his bedroom.
Honestly I was thinking of how things are for my family in LA, where house prices are so bonkers that its legitimately cheaper to renovate (although part of that probably also stems from the local tax law limiting property tax increases for existing homeowners) but that's really my only secondhand experience with a truly unaffordable housing market so I don't know how transferrable that is
Much doubt in that statement. Define 'sellable', is taking the price from 900,000 to 1.1 million making a house sellable? I guess you don't want to leave 270,000 dollars on the table but if they're at the point where they can't walk up stairs ik going to hazard a guess that those amounts will result in the same quality of life for them