FWIW, Let me tell you a bit about my Great-aunt Elma. I rather liked my Aunt Elma. She was kind and patient with me and her house was terribly exciting to me. It was unlike any other house that I had ever seen.
I saw my first rat trap under my Aunt Elma's porch. She was the first person to tell me that marigolds planted around a garden deterred caterpillars. Aunt Elma strung an electric wire around her garden. Aunt Elma had a piano in her living room and a set of narrow stairs that led to an impossibly small upstairs that I never saw anyone go up or went up myself. Aunt Elma's house had the widest floorboards of any house that I had ever seen. Aunt Elma was also diabetic and once, quite inadvertently and unobserved, showed me how a woman could pee standing up. She also liked to serve me full-sugar, Country-Time lemonade from the pre-mix canister, although she always claimed that she could not partake of the same. Even as a young child, this struck me as odd, as my visits were erratic and completely unannounced.
It should not surprise you to learn that not all of my other relatives were not quite as enamored with Aunt Elma as I was. The hostility ran so deep that I'm still uncertain how I was related to her. I think that she was my grandfather's half-sister but as time went on I was increasingly encouraged to think of her as my grandfather's cousin or the widow of someone who he was related to in a helfish or counsish way.
Aunt Elma didn't have much money,
That's probably an insane understatement. The house that I was so enamored with was a tar-paper shack that had somehow been transported above the 45th parallel. It had absolutely no siding or insulation and I rather doubt that it had any sort of basement or tornado shelter. I don't know how she heated it and I'm not sure whether she had piped water, a hot water heater, or an indoor toilet.
In other words, Aunt Elma's house was a wreck, but I still questioned the decision to knock it down and felt that something had been lost by doing so. You might be doing your kids a huge favor by documenting the uninhabitable nature of the house that your "let go". Fond memories of the stubborn old bird can be very distorting.