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I have never owned a house newer than 100 and many of the houses I have rented were also over 100. I have also helped many friends, neighbors and fmaily members choose and/or restore 100 plus year old homes. It is my hobby.
What to look for depends on you.
If the house has been gutted and "modernized" I woudl suggest you pass. returning historic integrity to such a house is insanly expensive and takes forever to find the materials. If yu see granite countertops, stainless steel, plastic or vinyl windows, engineered flooring or other trendy modern elements - run run run. The rest of the house was probably done in the same manner. The historical integrity and charm are gone and very difficult and expensive to restore. There is always some of the remuddling (aka "updating"). A little can be reversed over time. If there is a lot of it, it is not worth it. Also watch out for cheap materials (Home depot light fixtures, cheap chinese made toilets, 3/8" or /2" drywall, etc). You are better off with a house in need of some repairs than a house that has been remuddled.
If you can find a properly rstored historic home, jump on it. It always costs more to restore than you get back on resale (after adjusting for market changes for houses in general).
If you find a house that needs some or a lot of restoration, it depnds on you and on what is needed.
If plumbing is not working, it must be replaced. No getting around that. Now with PEX, you an often replace the supply lines without ripping out walls cielings or floors. Sewer lines often can be fixed by replacing only the horozontal runs. It is pretty rare for the vertical drops to rot out much, and it is usually the vertical drops the really requrie damage to the house. Many houses have plumbing that was retrofitted, so often it is accessible.
Electrical is frequently fine. You do nto have to replace it just because it is old. You do have to carefully consider how much electrical load yo will require. A while back we easily lived in houses with a 50 amp fused service and K & T wiring. However now that we have 5 teenagers, out electricity demands are much higher. Rewiringn can be tricky if yu want to avoice damaing the walls cielings and floors.
PLaster - easy to patch cracks. Difficult to replace (very difficult). Most plasterers are dead. The ones left are expensive. Patching a crack is easy. Re-plastering is not easy. Even though I tend to be a restoration purist we used 5/8" commercial drywall in some locations. It is similar to plaster.
There is a lto to learn. htings were done differently. From simple things like haning puictures, to framing, and electrical work you need to know how it was done and why. New is not always an improvement. Frequently it damages the house to replce things with new.
Some things are surprisingly expensive. One common "updating" was to remove the beautiful 18" yellow pine baseboard molding and 6" door casinsgs and replace them with 3" white boards. Good quality salvaged unpainted 18" baseboards cost $16 per foot (more or less depending on the market) . Thus it will cost $1300 for a small (20x24 room) just for baseboard. Add door and window casings, chair rial, picture rail and/or crown molding and you easily get up to $3000-$5000 just for trim!
Things that seems like little things can turn out to be nig things. Things that seem like big things can turn out little.
Things that do nt bother me:
Needs a new roof (Generally $5000 at the most, sometimes cheaper, sometimes more)
Asbestos. No big deal. Remove it yourslef or encapulate it, or evenjust ignore it. No one ever got asbestosis from a house.
Lead paint. A bit more of a problem. If you have small children living in the house, you need to remove it or cover it. This is especially important on window sills, radiators and other things that stick out where a kid cna suck on them. If it is peeling, remove it. It does nto take to much to learn how to do it and it can be kind of fun. I enjoy stripping with heat guns - at least for a while.
Peeling wallpaper - It is already comoing off, then it is easier to remove and rpelace. Do not instal wallpaper with your spouse. Do it alone or hire someone. Few marriage can survive installing wallpaper together.
Discoloration in wood floors. It will never go away. Live with it. It is an old house, If you want perfect wood floors, buy a new house. They will be perfect for at elast a few weeks.
Floors are uneven (They are supposed to be, it is an old house).
Floor need refinishing ($1.50 - $3.00 per foot, or DIY).
Windows need attention (depends on how many. Replacement windows run aournd$250 installed for a good like kind reproduction). Usually they can be repaired much cheaper.
Foundation problems. Depends on the nature and severity, but for us this has usually been a $4,000 - $5000 issue.
Minor rot or termite damage. Avoit the "gotta tear it out mentality and most items are not a huge problem. Jiosts and rafters can usually be sistered. Wood can be re-hardneed with chemicals and filled in with putty when necessary. Sometimes there can be major costs and impact if the rot is so severe that nothing cna be salvaged.
Paint, wallpaper and other finsihes. This is surprisingly costly. Sometimes insanley so. A proper exterior paint job can cost $50,000. A cheap job can be had for $8000 but it will not last long and never really look good. High quality wallpaper is expenive.
Decaying carpeting. Who cares? You are going to tear it out and refinish the wood floors anyway. Carpeting is disgusting.
Easy to DIY: Remove carpeting, remove wall paper (if it is not painted, painted is doable, but more work), patch cracks, refinish floors (watch your back!), Replace light fixtures, outlets and switches, painting (once you learn the proper techniques from a pro, ignore the old urban legends abotu the proper way to paint - they are wrong).
Replacing or re-sealing glass is surprisingly easy. You cna use recycled wavy glass or even buy glass manufactured with waviness in it if you are a purist. Door glass is really had to do becuase it is tempered.
More difficult DIY items: Copper plumbing. PLastering, hang or re-hang doors. repair windows meaing the frames or alignment (hire a pro). Structural concrete (i.e. basement walls). Masonry (except tuck pointing, tuck pointing is easy). roofing (not difficult to do correctly, but hot and icky a very nupleasant and scary job).Insulation - attic insulation is easy. Insulation int he walls is pretty challenging, the machine weighs a ton. Cutting the holes is not easy, getting the insualtion ocompacted is also not easy. I find building cabinets very difficult. foundation repair really seems like it is not that difficult. However I have never tried it.
I find electrical work very easy and plumbing horrible. Many people are the opposite. with the new shark bite plumbing connectors simple fixes in copper plumbing got a lot easier. INtalling toilets, sinks dishwashers and the like is very very easy.
You can DIY most things or everyhting. Nothing is really hard to learn. Some things may require fine motor skills or patience that yu do not have (hanging wall paper for example). You will find that everything takes longer than expected and nothing goes the way you planned. Appropriate parts and replacement materials cna take years to find.
If yu do nto enjoy tinker with your house, it is best left ot other people. Just go visit them and enjoy their charming house.
Last edited by Coldjensens; 03-05-2012 at 09:13 AM..
You have been given some good advice here. I know when I inspect homes in the 100 year range, i use a different set of eyes than when I inspect one thats less than 40 years old.
There are dozens and dozens of potentially big issues that come with 100 year old homes. Some can be quite expensive to correct.
That said, a lot of what I find in those homes are what I tell my clients are "old house stuff", that is what you should expect with 100 year old homes.
1) has the electric ever been updated? look for the circuit box and add up the breakers to see how many amps the house serves.
Sometimes you are better off not having an upgrade than having a billy bob upgrade. Shuld usually have the system checked out new or old or leran for yourself.
In all the rooms look for where the outlets are - are they three or two pronged? Are there only 2-3 per room?
3 prong outlets do nto mean a grounded system. People often just intal 3 prong outlets without re-wiring. Buy a $5 tester that you cna put in your pocket if you want to know if the system is grounded. Non-grounded is not a disaster. You can put in GFCIs Sometimes you can add grounding fairly easily. You can also live wihtout grounding. Mot household items do nto ahve a ground anyway.
Are there ceiling fixtures in each room? Swapping out outlets and adding new ones adds up when you have to do the whole house.
You can do this one at a time and DIY. We replace fixtures with suitable reproductions or antiques that we re-wire. Just do one at a time. Figure most houses have no more than 25 fixtures. Many will already be appropriate. If you replace a couple a year, you will be done in no time. Many antiques fixtures are absolutely amazing. You can get them re-wired with approperiate cloth covered wire for around $40. adding new ones is a very big mess. I would just use antique floor lamps (re-wired of course).
In the kitchen and bathrooms there should always be at least one GFCI plug (the one that has a red reset button) - this is a safety feature to avoid electrocution around water.
For true safety they shuold be grounded and working. (Use your tester, it has a trip button on it). Even ungrounded, a GFCI provides some protection, just not full protection.
2) check the windows - replacing old ones is quite pricey
HTIs is the biggest mistake i see people make. They get taken in by some clever window salesman with nice marketing materials. Most windows cna be repaired or replaced with simlar appropriate windows at low cost. With intertiot storm windows they are pretty much equal or batter than the terrible looking double pane windows. You can get nice looking windows with double paned glass, but be prepared to pay a very hefty price. Do nto make the mistake of getting windows the are flush witheh wall surfaces. Nothing makes a house look worse faster. Windows are the promary way that people make old houses look crappy. Plus the cost of most of the rpleacemnt constract will nto be recovered in heating bills. Yes you can save as much as $1000 a year, but it will cost $14,000 or more (about $50,000 for our house). Then when you figure in the interest, you will be dead before you recover the cost. Plus if you just fix the existing windows and then get invisible storms, there it no savings to buy all new awful looking windows. Alternately you cna just use seal & Peel caulk each winter. Not at good as storms, but it makes a big difference.
4) In the basement, check for things like a sump pump or french drain - these are good.
These will almost alwasy be a upgrade. I do not know when they atarted putting in draingage sstems and sump pumps, but I ahve never seen one more than 50 years old. If done properly that is great. If there are none, unless the house is on a hill, you will need to put them in This can be very very expensive. I think that the best way to retofit in a drain sustem is to dig or jack hammer up the basement floor and put the drains just inside the footings. It is better ot have them on the outside of the footing as well, but it is just too expensive. You could core some holes and put in some pipe to carry some water through the footing but that is not very common. Probably unnecessary uless you ahve a serious water problem. The drain must go to s sump with a pump installed unless you are on a hill (in wich case yu may not need drains at all. If you are on a raised foudnation, and/or inSouthern Califorina, Arizona or another dry place, you may not need to worry about drains.
5) In the basement, look to see if there's signs of asbestos on pipes.
Completely irrelevant. You can leave it alone, encapsulate it our remove it all in about 15 minutes. asbestos is no big deal. It is just overly hyped.
6) Termite damage can be a problem in older houses
Any house more than a couple of years old can have termites and termite damage. If you live in termite areas, you should have an inspection period. Often the inspectors miss things. Most termite damage is pretty easy to repair. You shuold allso check for both wet and dry rot - easily as big a problem as termite damage. In some states termites are not a concern. However some states have carpenter bees, carpenter ants in additin to or instead of termites.
7) not the house, but old properties usually have mature trees - so you want to take a look at what's around the house. Ask when the owners last had them pruned/evaluated. And pay an arborist to take a look during the inspection - removing branches and or trees can really add up.
This depends on the size of yur lot, size and number of trees and proximity to your house. We ahve probably 100 or more trees (mostly small). I am not going to hire an arborist to take care of them. My father has at least 50 very very large trees. Sometimes some fall over, sometimes some lose branshes. If they are not enar the house it does not matter. Aborists are really expensive.
8) look for closet and storage space. People didn't have as much stuff back when they were built, so oftentimes older houses don't have closets where you may typically want them now (like a coat closet as you walk in the door, or a decent linen closet near the bathroom).
they did have less stuff unless they were well to do, but their clothing was mch more involved than ours. They also generally did not use closets. Most closets were added. They used armoires. You will often find bedrooms larger than modern bedrooms but with no closets. That is because the space that they used for armoires is now used for closets. A closet is just a build in armoire. You can get some really beautiful antique armoires, especially from Europe where they are treated as junk (watch out for wood worms). An armoire can give your bedroom a really classy and historic look and serves the same purpose as a closet (admittedly not quite as well and there are no walk in armooires that i know of).
Of course absolutely none of the above replaces an inspector's report - they are going to look at things you have no way of finding visually.
In my experience most inspectors are useless, especially when it comes to old homes. They have no idea what they are looking at. Once in a while you can find a good one that has some real knowlege, but they are very rare. There is no substitute for gaining knowlege on your own. Not even a good inspector is a good substitute for gaining such knowlege. WHen I look at a historic home, I spend about 16 hours on it and then I still often hire people for testing or specialty evaluation. You need to crawl in under, over around and poke and prod inot every nook and cranny. If something appears to be a problem, yu need to investigate and research. Often it is not really a problem. Inspectors, even good ones, cannot give you that much time and attention.
Coldjensens - you gave some excellent info!! I wish I can give you ++ but system won't let me.
The houses in my area are typically older (1920's - 50's) so this post is also helping me. One thing I run away from is someone buying a house cheap, doing some haphazard renovation over 3-4 months and try to sell it for $100K more. I've seen many such houses...very pretty in picture but in person, all the details are all wrong.
For example, I saw this type of house recently where the flipper (don't know what you call these people) installed an AC unit (but the intake is a dangling duct in the unfinished and rather nasty basement, some basement windows were replaced but had large gaps around the trim, the siding was cheap vinyl and a good number were cracked... I'm no expert but to my untrained eye, this house was obviously a lipstick on a pig.
Ever seen the movie "The Money Pit"? You really should see it for some thoughts about the possibilities even though it is a comedy after fixing now our second house, it is not so funny. We had this home inspected and it is probably 90 years old. While someone had lived here, the plumbing and some of the wiring had to be redone and even then, it still is more make do with the same than anything else. The main water line rotted through and filled the cellar from somewhere outside where it was leaking about 2 months after we moved in and luckily we were close enough to the street that it only cost $1,000 for the repair but we did have to wait 2 weeks for a plumber to do it since, in a town with so many old houses, there is a waiting list. During that time, we had to turn the water on twice a day by going to the street and using a special tool to do it and do all our water stuff and gather water for drinking and cooking for the times it was off. I see so many people buy these older properties and give up, many beautiful Victorian houses that have had cosmetic upgrades only. Also keep in mind that once you start making improvements to the property, the property tax will go up so make sure you take a look at the taxes and also the cost of insurance. Check the utilities bills also! I swear this is the last old house I will ever buy if we can just sell it. And, if you aren't planning on staying there, it can be very difficult to sell a big, older house.
Coldjensens - well I guess my inexperience shows! That's what I get for relying on my broker and family member. Again, another reason why I post here. It's really hard to learn on this on the fly... I appreciate your corrections.
As for the arborist - I live in an area where lots are typically .2 acres or less - so if a big tree or oversized branch falls, it's pretty much guaranteed to hit something expensive, like a car or a roof. I tend to forget that other parts of the country aren't as closely packed together.
Coldjensens - well I guess my inexperience shows! That's what I get for relying on my broker and family member. Again, another reason why I post here. It's really hard to learn on this on the fly... I appreciate your corrections.
As for the arborist - I live in an area where lots are typically .2 acres or less - so if a big tree or oversized branch falls, it's pretty much guaranteed to hit something expensive, like a car or a roof. I tend to forget that other parts of the country aren't as closely packed together.
There are people who will tell you it is unsafe to remove the asbestos yourself. Usually realtors who know nothing about it and people who want to get paid to remove aesbestos. Wear a mask and you will be fine. A hat, goggles and gloves are not a bad idea, but if you take a shower right away, it is not crucial. Asbestos is dangerous if you breathe it as dust in the air, not if you touch it, not even if you eat it. The people who got sick breathed it for years and years. Even so, I dump my clothing in the laundry before I take off the mask and then go right into the shower.
It is a lifelong learning experience. Even the "professionals' often do not know very much. Sometimes you learn more as a hobby than as a job. Not many people go home and spend hours reearching their job on the internet. I learn something new about old house consturciotn pretty much every day. Often by encountering an issue with my house.
If you do nto want it as a hobby, it is probably better to leave it to those who do want it as a hobby. You can always buy a new house that kind of sort of looks like an old house. (Of course in a few year, it will start having issues as well - home ownership of any kind requries a home repair hobby to some degree).
My family and I are considering relocating to an area where most of the houses are rather old. I've always found old houses very charming, but I don't want to move into something that's going to cost me more in maintenance than it's worth just for the added charm.
We're only looking at houses that people currently live in, as to avoid having to spend thousands on repairs just to make the house livable. What else should we be thinking about though? None of the houses here are older than 10-15 years old, and the houses I'm looking at are 100+ years old, so I have no experience with this. I tried looking it up, but all of the tips I found were geared toward houses that haven't been lived in for decades (and as a result were likely in a serious state of disrepair), so they didn't really apply to my situation.
Thanks.
That is key = move in ready.
Look for an old house where most updates are already done so you do not have to spend to make it "livable".
#1) New roof (adds $10K - $20K value)
#2) New siding (also $10K -$20K in my books)
Needs the above to protect what is the "inside" health. ***Very important.
Be also sure that the gutters are in great working order... make sure house is as water tight / weather proof as possible.
#3) Updated electrical (add $5K - $10K depending on fixtures etc.)
#4) Updated plumbing (add $10K - $20K plus depending on how many bathrooms, septic sys, well health etc.)
#5) Updated vents & HVAC systems (add $5K - $10K value)
= main "health" of the house... like blood vessels, nervous system etc.
That keeps the spending money down from unwanted repairs later on... not to mention the safety & savings on energy bills later.
Luxury plus to me are...
#6) Updated kitchen & its appliances ($30K plus... )
So long I can cook in the kitchen, that is one thing I do not mind doing the update myself.
#7) Deck / sun porch / landscapes / new laundry room fixtures / new carpet or floors & list do go on...
The above, so long it is in working order, it is not something that is detrimental to the house health-wise.
When buying an old house... knowledge of what is being done & updated to the home is essential to what the house value is.
The more updates done to the house & you do not have to spend doing it = money saved in your pocket.
To anyone that plans to purchase an old home or who already has an old home. Let the Buyer Beware! Be careful of being brainwashed by manufacturers marketing their products and insisting that is what you need for your house. Beware of contractors, architects, etc. Only consult those that are specialists in the field. There is a great difference between an architect and one that specializes in old or historic homes. Failure to understand this can ruin your home. I would advise most people against purchasing an older home because in many cases the integrity of the home is lost with all the changes and "upgrades" people think they need.
Mod Cut
Please do not rush into doing something you may be sorry for later.
good luck!
Last edited by Ultrarunner; 03-13-2012 at 03:48 PM..
Reason: Terms of Service prohibit new member links...
To anyone that plans to purchase an old home or who already has an old home. Let the Buyer Beware! Be careful of being brainwashed by manufacturers marketing their products and insisting that is what you need for your house. Beware of contractors, architects, etc. Only consult those that are specialists in the field. There is a great difference between an architect and one that specializes in old or historic homes. Failure to understand this can ruin your home. I would advise most people against purchasing an older home because in many cases the integrity of the home is lost with all the changes and "upgrades" people think they need.
Please do not rush into doing something you may be sorry for later.
good luck!
This site is great. I love the article on windows. One of my top three ways that people ruin a historic house. Number 1 is kitchens. Number 2 is windows, and number 3 is open floor plans (removing walls). Then comes replacing plaster with drywall, basically gutting a house to re-wire and or re-plumb (usually unnecessary) or for insualtion (can be done without much damage if done right). Antoher of the worst is replacing moldings, doors and door casings. Then there is sanding floors down or covering them up or worst of all removing them entirely. Other remuddling ugrades light light fixtures, bathroom "updates" wall finishes, installing carepting, are fairly easy to reverse.
I hope you eventually add articles on those issues.
Last edited by Ultrarunner; 03-13-2012 at 03:48 PM..
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