Isn't the main drawback that there is a lot of maintenance needed on old houses? I worked many hours on a fixer upper built around 1900 by an amateur homebuilder. It's incredibly frustrating that every single change you want to make to windows, doors, or anything is complicated by non-right angles. It increased the time required for basic repairs by 2-fold, so much re-doing needed to get even a mediocre fit, never mind a great fit.
I've lived in houses built in the 40s and 90s. I would take the former any day of the week. I'm not generally a "they don't build them like they used to kind of person", but my experience with houses is that older homes were built to last while newer ones are just built to sell.
Of course, there's probably some survivorship bias there. All the shitty homes from the 40s are gone now.
