opinions on modern stucco?

[mopinko]

so, after a successful divorce, i find myself w some money to invest. as luck would have it, my sister and her hubs have made a midlife career change, and are flipping houses. they are paying a fortune for short term money, so i agreed to do a little venture capital lending w them. i feel that this is very safe, as the worst thing that could happen is that i end up getting a rental property.
anyway, i sort of got the bug from them. the house across the alley from me was recently foreclosed on. so, guess who the new owner is. yes, tis i.

it is a little frame single family in need of quite a bit of repair. i intend to keep it as a rental property.
one thing it needs is replacement of the old shingle siding. one of my partners in this venture tells me that it is getting to be the thing out in the burbs here to replace siding w stucco.
the old siding comes down, walls are foamed, then they put up stucco.
this would fit in very nicely in the hood, where old fire codes discouraged clapboard. about 1/3 of frame houses around here are stucco.

i know the old stuff is a pain in the ass, especially here in the snow belt. but the new stuff is supposed to be pretty well improved, w fiberglass meshes and fiber and all.
anyone have any experience/opinions on this?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Starting in about the '80s developers were using a lot of stucco

of a type that didn't breathe, and homeowners ended up with serious black mold problems. I know one person who had to gut his whole huge, expensive house down to the studs because the non-porous stucco caused moisture to condense in the walls and cover the insides of the walls with toxic mold that made their kid very sick. This was never a problem with the old type of stucco that was popular way back in the '20s and '30s. So be sure you know that the stucco you use won't make the walls so airtight that mold can form. I don't care for stucco much; if you want to paint it, it requires an enormous amount of paint.

[Warpy]

2. Most stick built houses here in NM are stucco exterior

because the arid climate is pure hell on wood and sun damages vinyl and other siding pretty quickly. Also, our winters tend to be bitter although mercifully short and we do get snow.

That being said, the stucco job I had done on my present place is 18 years old and has one minor crack in it. I did go with the gold plated company in town and I've been glad I did. They finished quickly and professionally and with no last minute surprises.

As long as you don't go with the most rock bottom bid and you choose a reputable company, you can get a lot of years out of stucco in a pretty extreme climate like this one.