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OT: What should I look for in buying a 1910 home.

lazz

Stainless
Joined
Feb 12, 2012
Location
The warm desert of Phoenix Arizona
We bought this house in 1985. Made all the payments till they quit sending bills. :)

And now the wife and I are pretty much retired....Everything we came to Phoenix for no loner matters. The middle class neighborhood we started in has lost ground the last few years. So the wife and I have been looking for about 6 years.... And we found a place.

A 2 story 2250 plus square foot 1910 Craftsman Tutor in a small town about 100 miles east of us. The climate is cooler than here but not too much so. The big snow storm of 1997 dropped almost 4" of snow on the town and closed schools for several days. We can live with that. :)

The present owners bought the home in 2004. They put some money into the place. a new sewer line to the street, new 200 amp electrical box, replaced the plumbing with plex, a new kitchen and bath. and so on.

Right now the home needs a new roof, and the landscaping is not so nice. The shop is about 850 square feet of 1920 carriage house, barn, horse stall, garage. 4 rooms sharing common walls and no connecting doors. In the attic and basement there is knob and tube electrical.

The owners have listed the house with a realtor 3 times I am aware of, in 2007, 2010 then 2015. The last reality listing ran out around Christmas. After lookin we decided to leave a note on the door and ask if they were interested in selling the place. The answer came back quick and loud... YES

According to the county tax records, they are asking $12,000 more than they paid in 2004. Something feels wrong....

After our meeting with the owners my next step is to get a home inspector to look at the place. Then we will make some decissions and go from there.

So guys what am I missing? What should I look for?
 
The lack of appreciation since 2004 wouldn't much worry me in an otherwise stable neighborhood -- house prices were on the rise back then and some places haven't recovered.

First house I owned was built in the 1890's. Gorgeous place (brick with a turret, leaded glass, slate roof stained glass, cherry floors, Rookwood Pottery tile, etc.). But it needed a ton of work. Maybe 2x the $25K cost of the home -- and lots of sweat equity -- about 45 years ago.

In addition to termites and the ailing roof, take a close look:

- wire and tube wiring will be undersize
- new plumbing may have some funky connections to the old stuff
- look for any signs of leaks
- heating system? our pipes were covered in asbestos
- windows and doors sticking, rotting . . .
- cost of kitchen and bath remodels
- lack of insulation in walls -- expensive to keep cool or warm
- sound insulation (those old walls, doors, windows) if in a noisy neighborhood
- foundation, settling
- floors probably need refinishing, replacement -- and de-squeeking
- if plaster, ceiling cracks etc. a bit harder to repair
- maybe a lot of work to make the house work for you in old age?
- neighborhood trends -- lack of appreciation could be a worry there
- meet your next door neighbors -- nothing worse than bad ones and a reason some folks sell

Potential for appreciation is also an issue even for older folks -- since a surviving spouse may eventually need to use the value in the home for care.

Your place sounds pretty cool -- maybe well worth all that work; especially if you enjoy the process. It's a strain for some couples, though.
 
The first thing I look at in my area is the condition of the foundation.. Just repaired a home that was bought last year, after a home inspection. Inspector never said a word about the foundation which required 45,000 of repairs :(

The next thing is insect damage, wood rot, and drainage elevations of the yard. Around here we need 6 inches of the slab exposed to qualify for government type loans...

It sounds like they have upgraded the electrical service but you need to find out if the home's interior wiring has been updated. Knob and tube wiring was the method used when the home was first built and after 106 years I'd imagine the insulation is pretty much shot... Make sure there is copper wire and not aluminum. The service is the cheap part of rewiring the home.

The pex is a good upgrade along with the sewer main replacement... Check to see if they replaced any of the drains inside the home.. If the home has a crawl space under it it's not too bad of a job to replace the interior drains.. Of course back then there was not a lot of plumbing installed in homes so there might not be much to replace if you need to do so..

Steve
 
The inspector should/will catch all the semi-important stuff..stuff that if missed can always be fixed at some point. The one thing that can't be fixed and will make your life a living hell is the state of the neighborhood and/or the neighbors. New wiring or new plumbing can't fix a horrible neighborhood that may be in a state decline.

I'm willing to bet your prospective 1910 house has lots of charm and character, good luck with your new purchase.

Stuart
 
Sounds like the one you're looking at is fairly unmolested/original. I just bought one with 90 years of hack repairs and remodels. It was originally 900 sq ft now it's 3500. I knew full well what I was getting into. I got the seller to agree to let us fix the place up enough to get it through an appraisal. Which we pulled off "creatively". There was no way the house was loanable full disclosure so we patched some things up and got it through. Basically we bought the dumpy farmhouse in a very nice desirable neighborhood. We've got about 50K in equity owning it for 2 months though.

Look for positive drainage away from the foundation. Look under the house and check for proper footings/settling. Like Swatkins said- look at the foundation carefully to make sure it's doing it's job. My house had so much hack workmanship it was unbelievable. I had to repair and replace siding, flashing, roofing, electrical, plumbing, downspouts and install two large sump basins and pumps in the crawlspaces. I had to have the electrical service to one of the barns shut off and removed. The house had knob and tube wiring in the attic which we took out.
 
Worry is more about your situation then the house itself as you will almost certainly have spotted all the obvious high ticket potential worries.

Bottom line is probably nothing wrong with it that spending as much again as the sticker price wouldn't fix!

Can you do that if need be? Would you do that if need be? Are you figuring to save money by doing lots of work yourself?

Start by assuming you have ten good years after retirement. You need the place right by then, to carry you through until you have to leave, without major worries. Spending significant amount of time playing Bob the Builder or Percy Project Manager sounds a waste of the good years. I'm acquainted with folk who did similar and regretted it. Heck I know a couple of folks whose houses have run them for 20 years and look set fair to take over the rest of their lives! Never looked a good place to be to me.

Clive


Disclosure
I put my money where my mouth is. I'm 62 this year, retired early, and have spent a couple of years and serious money, over half the market value, getting my place near bulletproof for the next 30 years including adding carer accommodation. Be finished by the end of the year.
 
Great comments guys....

Some things I didnt mention.... We have been looking in this town on and off since 2008. This home is the oldest we have looked at and needs the least amount of work. The lot is over 1/4 acre. The biggest down side is the location. It is on a corner of a 4 lane busy Arizona state highway. A small mom and pop business is to the south, across the street to the north is a popular restaurant, across the street to the east is a high school. We have spent several hours in the house day and evening, the only time we noticed road noise was when the fire truck went by. Last year when we saw the house we spent maybe a half hour sitting on the porch with the realtor and the road noise wasnt a problem.

The home has had 6 owners to date. Lots of the house is original. Still has the push button light switches, all of the leaded glass windows have survived, the 4' X 9' front door too. Maple downstairs and oak flooring up stairs. Original doors and hardware.

The original knob and tube box is in a closet under the stairs. It has a new feed from the new service panel. Most of the lighting in the house is the original fixtures.

All the plumbing has been replaced including the drains.

There is an original boiler in the basement. 3 or more feet around, about 5" tall... and it looks like copper. There is some asbestos on the boiler and the pipes. As I mentioned to the wife it would only take few hours to abate the asbestos. Not a life threatening problem but one I can take care of.

The latest owner put a new heat pump in the attic.... and did a horrible duct job. Flex duck everywhere. It will be one thing I need to address. My thoughts were to add a second heat pump for the first floor only.

The subject of insulation. Their cooling bills last summer were less than we payed here in Phoenix...Presently the attic is maybe 1/2 insulated. I want to completely insulate with backed batts. Then do the same with under the house in the crawl space. The plaster walls make insulating difficult at best. After reading about how long it would take to recoup wall insulation costs I doubt that is an option.

Settling doesnt seem to be a problem. I looked down the siding looking for humps and waves... I didnt see any... The back porch Seems to slant away from the house.... But the siding doesnt show cracks or expansion.... so it may have been built with a slope in the floor. Since it is only 8 feet wide and 20 or so feet long. With little more than window screen on the walls I sure in my present advanced age I can still jack up something that small. :)

On the location subject.... Google says it is a 10 minute round trip to walk to the post office. You pass a Safeway grocery store on the way to the post office. Across the street and 2 blocks away is a 24 hour Dennys wanna be that has good 99 cent coffee....
 
- Vermiculite/asbestos insulation in attic.
- Termites
- No or bad foundation
- Asbestos in other areas.. pipe tape, siding, floor tiles (possibly covered), duct tape (interior of ducting as well), etc.
- Probably no wall insulation.
- Ancient wiring.. knob n tube, old Romex, etc.
- Lack of plumbing venting or undersized venting.
- Make sure they did whole system upgrades, not just what was easy and can be seen ie ALL the plumbing, ALL the wiring, etc.
- Lead paint/varnish.
- Radon
 
It's probably just in an offbeat location which is why it is hard to sell. If you are retired and you don't need to be near work, then that might not matter to you.

If you like the house, any problem can be solved with money.

Serious problems that could be expensive to fix:

- termites or dry rot
- structural problems
- flooding


To test the structure, get a surveyors level that can be elevated to 8 feet or whatever the height of the basement. Then check how level the main beam is. If it is 1/4" to 1/2" over 30 feet that is pretty typical. Such tilting will lead to some wall cracking and tight doors, but is not a serious issue for a 100-year-old house. If the tilt is more than 1/2" over 30 feet, like say an inch, that is a serious problem that can cost thousands to fix because you basically have to tilt the whole house back, which is very expensive.

If the house is in a low-lying area, or a bad place, like the base of a hill, then it could be subject to flooding which is extremely annoying and expensive to deal with.

Termites can literally eat an entire house, and can be difficult and expensive to eradicate if they get established, though you often control them by cutting off their water supply. If the termites have no water, they are screwed, so by cutting off water thoroughly you can generally stop their activity. The only question is how much damage have they done so far. If you have to replace structural members in the house, that can be expensive.
 
1910? Sounds like the house my daughter bought in suburban Chicago, on her then boyfriend's advice (boyfriend is gone... wish the house was, too, but it's not.) When they told me after she had made up her mind... No good telling here it was a mistake, that tactic never worked before... So I told her there was nothing that couldn't be solved with the proper application of money.

Here is what she's gone through to date:

Electric seems good, relatively new main panel, mostly BX inside, never found any knob and tube.

Heat was a three zone pumped hot water system. Couldn't properly bleed the upstairs zone, got a plumber to look at it, while he was working it sprung a leak... while he was mopping up on the second floor, the first floor plaster ceiling in the parlor fell. Insurance paid for the repair.

A/C had been added to the first floor by running new ducts in the basement (since with hot water heat there were no existing ducts). Second floor had no A/C, which she added, at relatively great expense. The retrofit system uses tiny little plastic duct that can snake through the walls and ceilings. It works, but not great, and no reserve capacity.

She and boyfriend then did a DIY blow-in insulation job above the second floor (second floor has partial upper wall finish on the inside of the roof rafters) making it totally impossible to ever get up there to repair A/C.

I just had to cut through the second floor knee wall to get to a leaking waste vent (vent has an elbow in it, rainwater entering stack leaks out on ceiling below) and found the areas behind the knee walls only partially insulated, with some of the blow-in that fell down from above. There are also hot water heat pipes back there, now partially buried.

The waste vent stack is a cobble job of plastic DWV grafted onto the top of the cast iron stack... with an additional piece of cast iron on top where it goes through the roof... I have no idea why, likely whoever did this job didn't want to disturb the cast iron where it was flashed to the roof.

She has had to get the place re-roofed, in part because the homeowner's insurance carrier demanded it, and in part to fix this leak at the plumbing stack, which it didn't.

Last winter her basement started filling with water on a regular basis. Called plumber to get sewer rodded. Turns out her sewer doesn't drain to the street, a mere hundred feet away, nooooo, she drains into 600' of private line on easement across six other properties... an artifact of when the original owner of this house subdivided his land. We chose to abandon that connection and establish a new line to the street, and convert the indoor pluming to overhead sewers... and add two sump pumps with drain tile under the basement floor. $25k later, the basement is dry again.

I can hardly wait to see what's next. :(

Dennis
 
Porches are supposed to slope away from the house, up to 1/4"/ft or some may go more.

You mention it is a Tudor house, but you also mention siding?
A Tudor is the exposed beams with stucco or parging between. In my climate very prone to rot and water infiltration, though they were built. Never really a smart way to build, they were an accomodation back in the Tudor period and in Germany & so became popular for a while in this country when people were dreaming their house was their castle.

In good neighborhoods, some of the best houses ever built, were built between about 1870 and 1929. People had money, built mini-castles, and architects and trades still knew how to build with the idea of centuries, with easy re-build-ability if you understood the systems, the materials, and the reasoning. Unfortunately, the trades died with the depression and WW2, and now know one really wants to rebuild them right, including the homeowner. Except still in grand neighborhoods.

But man, get one of those old loads with solid foundations and a recent slate roof with copper flashing and gutters, and updated plumbing to the street, and it is worth something, including being worth installing new electrical and being actually worth working on. I'm one of those saddled with an old house that will never be worth what it takes to maintain it, let alone pull ahead a little. Our exit strategy includes an energy lease, the fact we divided the parcel when we bought it, & it has a decent heated shop. Though that needs re-sided. Working on rotten windows today, feels like throwing good money after bad.
smt
 
Don't buy a 1910 house. They suck unless they've been redone so much that they're basically new. Why would you want to spend your retirement years having to maintain a pain in the ass old house? Get something modern and spend your time doing fun stuff. I'm fuckin done with old houses. Every time you turn around its some god damn thing that needs work. All that work for what? Because old houses have character? Who cares.
 
As for wall insulation. In my neighborhood, a house built around 1910?, they took off all the wood siding, added wiring and insulation then nailed plywood on the outside. Then they*stuccoed over the plywood. They could have resided with wood or Hardiboard I suppose. Your house may not have fireblocks so blow in or foam in insulation would be easy from inside.

In California if you do too much remodeling in one shot you have to meet current codes. That can be tough as far as seismic tie downs etc. Some pipes, buried in walls, may be lead.
Can you reuse gray water for garden irrigation? Nice to do if you are touching the drains. In the west it can be touchy about saving rain gutter water for reuse on your property. You may need to consult a lawyer about redirecting water from rains.
Bil lD.
 
We moved away from a 1901 house in SC in December to a new Florida house near our youngest son in Grant, FL, near Melbourne. The old house had some problems which we disclosed to the new owners. The major problem was with the foundation. In those days, builders did not dig substantial footings and simply laid down mortar beds on top of the ground, or maybe just a few inches deep. The brick supports for the major beams were built on top of these footings. Uneven settling caused some problems. The crawl space tended to be damp, which I solved by using a crawl space ventilation fan. If we had stayed, I wanted to construct a complete new foundation and cover the ground surface with a vapor barrier. The new owners are attending to these issues, and should have a nice house when they finish. Facing a loss of space here, and the stress of moving everything, we sometimes think that we would have been better off to spend the money on the old house rather than building new. Everything will be satisfactory when we reduce our possessions and get things sorted, but the transition has been stressful.

Jim
 
I may have missed it above, but also consider how adaptable it is if you need wheelchair access thru the house, ramps from grade level, elevator or chair lift up the stairs, accessible bathrooms and kitchens, etc.

My place was built in 1922, and will have challenges in most of those areas when the time comes.

So far, we've done 3rd floor gut and remodel, new power, new HVAC x 3 units, new windows throughout, floor and wall refinishing, kitchen/mudroom/bath remodel, porch addition, garage addition. Still need to do combo main bath/laundry on second floor, plus outside landscape and drive work. Roof was done right before we bought it.

Chip
 
I live in a 1910 house, I love the way it looks, enjoy being close to downtown and having the big yard with the mature trees. My basement is dirt floor dungeon, most of my floors sag noticeably and the only way to heat it affordably is by burning wood. To be happy in an old house you have to be able to live with things that are less than perfect. You can put up with a lot if you love the look of the house and the neighbourhood.
 
I'm a small time landlord and own a single story pre1900 house (found an envelope in attic post marked the 2nd or so of Feb 1900, to that address. Somebody and their 2 drunk buddies put an addition on the house in the middle of the depression using salvage materials (like random cedar siding boards that were charcoaled on the inside (with no adjacent fire damage to other siding or studs). The house was borderline to being condemned when I bought it to renovate and turn into a rental. In the living room there was some peeing of the ceiling paint - the longest (hanging) paint peel was hanging down 15 inches. My interest in renovating this house was to get my feet wet so to speak with working on older houses as I was interested in getting into (using the term loosely) historic preservation. Total rewire, re-plumb, new furnace with some new ducting. Kept all but three of the old wood windows with the wavy glass. Made my own kitchen cabinets and moved a few walls to make the kitchen, rear entry and bath layout better. Added wall insulation and vapor barrier when I tore off the tarpaper (brick look) siding and the hacked up cedar siding underneath and added R30 to the attic. I now have a 2006 vintage house with 116+ year old walls. It was a significant amount of work up front but I now have a house that is extremely low maintenance. I'd rather put the work in up front, on my schedule, (took about 16 months) rather than to constantly be running there to repair something. Unfortunately the property taxes in that city are just too high for the value of the properties (or the rent that I can get) for me to buy one of the grand dames that have been turned into mini apartments.
 
The house at the farm was built around 1910.

First of all the people that owned the place hadn't thrown anything away for over 100 years and the house, along with surrounding buildings were full of decaying junk. Just cleaning out the house took a few months of weekends, and were still working on the last couple of buildings years later....

First thing we did to the house was level it (it's pier and beam), this is when the fun started. One of the walls started to pull away and after the leveling we ended up with about a 6" wide 20' long gap where the ceiling meet up with the walls, you couldn't see daylight because of the eve overhand, but the wall was basically falling off the house.

Even with the wall situation unknown, we pressed on.

This is when we realized the building itself was built extremely light studs on 36" centers, and the roof was literally just sitting on the walls. Looking back it's unbelievable this building stood up for as long as it did.

The next step was to rip off all the old wood siding and get a look at what the real condition of the house. This is when we realized the studs were on 36" centers and understood how light the building was built.

In order to correct this, we put new studs in-between the old ones and reinforced the suspect one, while all the walls were out, we rewired the whole place, installed new double paned windows, insulated the walls (originally had none) then sheeted the exterior walls in 5/8" plywood (not OSB) and went with hardie board as the final exterior.

Also went in and built heavy truss bracing in the attic to keep the roof from falling in, and fixed that collapsing wall by framing bracing and tying the walls to the strengthened roof with hurricane straps. You can still see where the walls tilts, but if you've ever been around a leveled pier and beam house, nothing is square anyway so it fits right in.

As far as the interior goes. We keep the old ship-lap for the walls, but in order to keep the 100 years of dirt and coon poop from constantly raining down, we put sheet rock on the ceilings. And too fight the peeling lead based paint, we took paint scrapers(wearing proper PPE) and knocked off the lose stuff, and repainted with latex based paint.

The plumbing and gas lines were also totally replaced (as well as kitchen and bathroom fixtures, the clawfoot tub stayed though). Where water damage had rotted the the floors out in the bathroom and kitchen, new joists and new a sub floor was put in. We keep the old softwood flooring for the majority of the house, although went with tile in the kitchen and bathroom (where the old floors had rotted out anyway).

There was a really bad linoleum job over the wood floors in the most of the house, but it wasn't too bad to take up since it was peeling to begin with. But accidentally discovered that the linoleum glue used was water soluble, so some elbow grease with mobs and stiff booms, most of it came up.

Even though the glue came up, the woof was left black and ugly so we had written them off as a loss, but still went ahead and varnished them. Again we were surprised by the results, the first couple of varnish coats (we used 5 coats of Poloplaz gym floor varnish), were sucked up by the very dry wood, but after those the last coats turned that nasty black color the floors were into a downright attractive brown.

This rebuilding phase took about 6 months from start too finish working 6 or 7 days a week averaging 12 hours day. The labor force consisted of myself, Dad, our neighbor who works as a framer and his Dad.

There are more details to this, but I'm getting tired of typing and this is long enough. We should have just burned it down and brought in house trailer, but now that it's done we've got a house that is modern in every-way except that it was originally built 100 years ago. It worked out in the end and I'm glad we did it.
 
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