I recently sold a house I had been living in for about 10 years. The kitchen was nice, I had replaced the appliances recently, but everything was white. It was clean and functional. My realtor said people looking at the house were complaining because they'd have to spend $100k to fix up the kitchen and bathrooms. I was like WTF!!! The kitchen and bathrooms were in excellent condition, but I guess they were "dated". The guy that ended up buying the place told me he really liked the kitchen...that he bought the house since everything was in great condition...so that made my realtor go quiet. She had wanted me to reduce the asking price due to the "dated" kitchen and bathrooms.
A friend was looking to buy a condo at a good price, but then complained that they would have to spend money to modernize the kitchen. I wondered if the kitchen was really non-operational or whether it was just "dated". Sad because they don't make a lot of money. I can find many other things to spend money on than updating to a granite countertop and stainless steel appliance kitchen that you find in every home now.
As a first time home buyer, I have to admit I fell prey to this mindset. The kitchen in the house we bought and still live in was "dated" in the sense that the cabinets are that cheap white MDF and the countertops are a black speckled laminate. I definitely marked it as a downside of the home and something I wanted to change. But the longer I've worked in the kitchen, I've thought - who cares? The MDF cabinets are easy to clean, as is the countertop, and if I redid the kitchen, I would likely go with the same white/black theme to match the style of the bungalow home. So why drop all that money on all that when the kitchen is actually perfectly functional and not even that aesthetically unpleasing?
I'm never cooking in there and think, "My food would taste oh-so-much-better and my experience cooking would be oh-so-much-happier if I had a newer kitchen." It just doesn't happen. I have the perfect kitchen work triangle. Really layout rather than aesthetics is what matters. If you have a kitchen that needs to be redesigned because the fridge is super far away or right next to the stove or something else annoying, then redo. But I've seen new kitchens with granite countertops that are a horrible design.
We are about to redo our dated bathroom not because the fixtures are that bad but rather because the original 1920s stack and plumbing are failing. Oh, and the floor slopes so much that the water doesn't drain and the toilet isn't level. These are reasons to redo a bathroom - not because the tile is coral, although in hindsight I do want to kick people who didn't choose neutral colors. But often people remodel to things that will look terrible in 10-20 years - vessel sinks, anyone?