Old houses - North east vs Georgia (Atlanta, Sandy Springs: rental, home builders)

[desifamily23]

I have a question about buying older houses in general. Do they age differently compared to houses in the North ? I mean with the difference in weather and everything else that I have no idea about.
Don't get me wrong, I am living in a 37 yr old house currently and its perfectly fine for me. What I am basically asking is do you know if we need more frequent or less frequent updating to the house because of living in the South ?

[AtlJan]

I think in general they may hold up the same or a little better down here in terms of repair. However, in terms of resale value, homes in the outer suburbs do not hold up as well. In these areas, there is a preference for new construction. In areas that are already built out--intown Atlanta, Sandy Springs, East Cobb etc--older homes still sell well as people interested in these areas do not have as many brand new homes to choose from. In contrast, in the outer suburbs, many people don't want to buy a house from 1985 when they can drive one street over and get a brand new home.

[residinghere2007]

I think it depends on what type of house you buy. I find that here in metro Atlanta older homes, unless they have had good upkeep by previous owners, are not in all that good of shape, primarily due to a lack of oversight regarding building homes 10-40 years ago and that many homes don't have gutter systems and suffer from foundation issues and water infiltration and the problems that coincide with that.

But I am from the Midwest where basements and eaves troughs (what we call gutters). Tood waterproofing and lengthy (sometimes too much) oversight in the construction of homes is more commonplace.

FWIW, I do procurement work as a part of my job, especially in regards to construction and I do solicit services for home repairs for a large group of rental properties and those properties are older, built 50s-90s and practically all of them have had water infiltration issues and have had to be waterproofed or patched in some way. One of my contractors who specializes in this is not from GA and was shocked at how lax oversight was prior to GA instituting stricter requirements for contractors. Many times he and other contractors perform work on 10 year old homes here that they would do on a 100 year on home in the north due to the quality of the professionals in other areas.

This is not a knock on contracting professionals but until 2007 state law did not require contractors to have any qualifications to be licensed as contractors or homebuilders in the state of GA. If you buy an older home be sure to have it thoroughly inspected by a good quality, licensed inspector as well.

Georgia to finally license home builders and contractors (Creative Loafing).

ETA: I have a home that we bought in 07 that was built in 04 and it has had to be waterproofed as well. One of the homes I own in Ohio was built in 1897 and has never had any issues with foundation/water intrusion due to the quality of the construction. But I knew going into the purchase of our home here that there may be issues because of my line of work. A lot of subdivision homes built in the early 00s have issues with construction and water especially so I would stick to a new home if purchasing and coming from out of state, especially if you don't have a construction/contracting bone in your body. General updating I think would be less here than the NE especially in regards to painting exteriors and such, but waterproofing is easily $20K to get corrected permanently, oftentimes, more than that.