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I have bought a few properties over the years, mostly residential, also apartments, now looking for a camp.
Do realtors not understand what a bad impression it makes when their online listings, written material, etc. has "unknown" for year of construction?? It's an essential fact about a property. I'm not saying it's a deal breaker but it's a terrible first impression when a realtor can't make the effort to find and disclose that essential information right at the first contact.
Honestly, it comes across as sheer laziness and not caring.
I have bought a few properties over the years, mostly residential, also apartments, now looking for a camp.
Do realtors not understand what a bad impression it makes when their online listings, written material, etc. has "unknown" for year of construction?? It's an essential fact about a property. I'm not saying it's a deal breaker but it's a terrible first impression when a realtor can't make the effort to find and disclose that essential information right at the first contact.
Honestly, it comes across as sheer laziness and not caring.
I'm assuming you're referring to relatively new houses. I deal frequently in rural and historical properties, and it is entirely possible for the date the house was built to be unknown to anyone. Our own house, on the ranch, was built sometime in the early part of the last century in a nearby city, moved to the ranch in 1970 by the owner before the one we bought it from, and we have no idea what its address was before it was moved.
Lots of reasons why the year a house was built might be unknown. That's why that's a choice on the MLS.
I'm assuming you're referring to relatively new houses. I deal frequently in rural and historical properties, and it is entirely possible for the date the house was built to be unknown to anyone. Our own house, on the ranch, was built sometime in the early part of the last century in a nearby city, moved to the ranch in 1970 by the owner before the one we bought it from, and we have no idea what its address was before it was moved.
Lots of reasons why the year a house was built might be unknown. That's why that's a choice on the MLS.
Good response. How much extra effort would it take to track down the year of construction for a house built between 1900-1950?? Do realtors even ask the owners to dig around for their deed, etc.??
It's a simple matter (here, anyway) to check the tax records. However, if it's an older house, various counties have different ways of dealing with a house old enough that they don't know when it was built. For one county, if it says "1925", that most often means "we don't know so we put down 1925" and if you think that's incorrect you might have to dig, but that doesn't mean you'll find it if the tax office can't find it. The deeds are filed with the tax office here - I've gone down to look up ours on another house before - so I don't need to ask my client to dig around for it.
I'm a genealogist, so I have no problem digging up records, I do it for fun, but sometimes they just aren't there, be it the year a house was built or a birth or marriage record. Either the courthouse burned or the records were never filed (because the river was high and the court house was on the other side and by the time the river went down it was forgotten, say) or some other reason.
Sometimes you can look on old insurance fire maps, IF the house is in a town (or it was a town when the house was built) so that there are such maps, and see that in one map there is no house and in the map drawn five years later there IS a house - some house - on the property, and that would get you close. But if the township wasn't big enough to have a fire map, that won't work.
And then there are natural disasters obliterating records stored in the courthouse. The municipal records stored in the courthouse basement in New Orleans flooded for over a month in Hurricane Katrina. Many had not been digitized, including my original birth certificate . Good luck on any records there.
All true, but I bet that for the majority of old homes, it would be possible to get a really good approximation of the date, without much effort.
What I see is that certain realtors and agencies habitually put "unknown" on anything over 50 years old. That to me points to laziness. And it's a bad first impression.
My cousin inherited a farm from his uncle and they couldn't tell you when it was built. It is well over 100 years old and was foreclosed in the 20s where it was purchased by his family from the bank and has stayed in that family ever since. He is trying to sell it and the realtor asked if he could find records but they simply don't exist. No amount of searching will come up with a year built when the information doesn't exist anymore and hasn't for a very long time. Hell we don't even know if the family that foreclosed was the original owner.
All true, but I bet that for the majority of old homes, it would be possible to get a really good approximation of the date, without much effort.
What I see is that certain realtors and agencies habitually put "unknown" on anything over 50 years old. That to me points to laziness. And it's a bad first impression.
You would think things like this would be easy, but records get lost/destroyed all the time. My house was built in 1986 and I recently went to the building dept to get a copy of the house plans. They told me there was a 50/50 chance that they would be able to find them. Apparently, the building department didn't have much of a formal filing system until 1988 and a lot of files were lost to a basement flood at town hall a few years before that.
You would think things like this would be easy, but records get lost/destroyed all the time. My house was built in 1986 and I recently went to the building dept to get a copy of the house plans. They told me there was a 50/50 chance that they would be able to find them. Apparently, the building department didn't have much of a formal filing system until 1988 and a lot of files were lost to a basement flood at town hall a few years before that.
So there is no way that anybody who might want to buy your house someday will be able to find out when it was built???? Forget about selling it, if so.
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