Comment by jz391

To extend your analogy: if the house is a listed building (UK concept; apparently US equivalent is listed in National Register of Historic Places), by law you cannot just tear it down. You need to do much more work to renovate what can be done without disturbing the original structure. This obviously costs much more and is generally done by different specialists, who have harder job and hence are better paid. So the question comes back to: what kind of work do you want to do...