Unfortunately with most US build tract housing, there's not enough room between most houses to provide dedicated shade by most any method. I wonder if shade between the roof gaps between houses would be useful.
So what happened? Naturally, the customer fired the architect. They only wanted to look green, but they didn't care if it was actually green. :-/
The biggest one is dealing with all the leaves in the fall. If your yard is big enough, you can easily lose a whole weekend to cleaning up the dropped leaves so that they don't kill your grass over the winter and spring. You also have to clean them out of the gutters multiple times a year, around the foundation, etc.
That house also had an absurd amount of spiders in it, which I attribute to both being close to the woods and shaded by trees. Not to mention vermin such as mice, chipmunks, squirrels can extremely destructive to the house, vehicles, and machinery when their own homes and food sources are right nearby.
These kinds of comments are hilarious to me. Having a mulching mower makes leaf maintenance a breeze. Owning a house comes with responsibilities. If you're not going to keep up with things, then hire it out. If you're not even going to bother with that, then boy, I don't know. Some people just come across as the juice isn't worth the squeeze.
I thought you were at least going to come out with limbs falling on the house, but you just went with sheer lack of wanting to do yard work. I appreciate the laugh