Sara Pitzer - Buying an old house

by Sara Pitzer

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Pitzer, Sara

Buying an old house / by Sara Pitzer
A Storey Publishing Bulletin, A-88
ISBN 0-88266-328-3

I grew up in old houses. My family bought them, moved in, fixed them up, sold them, and moved on, at the rate of about one house per year, for so long that a friend once asked me if we moved a lot to avoid bill collectors.

All the moving did keep away bill collectors, not because they couldnt find us, but because each move turned a modest profit. My parents knew how to make money on old houses.

Having grown up that way, it never occurred to me not to do the same. My husband and I quickly suffered our share of broken furnaces and leaky plumbing in fairly new tract homes. I figured an old house couldnt be any more trouble. When I found one, a 150-year-old brick farmhouse, we didnt investigate much beyond asking the real estate agent where the water supply was. She said she thought there was a spring up on the mountain someplace. We nodded, flushed the toilet once, slammed the furnace door a couple of times, and bought the place. We lived there 10 years without major problems. As the kids say, we lucked out.

Several of our friends, inspired by our example, also bought older homes, only to be plagued to the point of moving by one expensive disaster after another. In a sense, those friends got what we deserved. All of us had failed to do at all what my parents always did so well look beyond the romance and whimsy of an old house to determine, realistically, what was likely to go wrong and what it would take to make the house livable.

Now, several houses and many consultations with other old-house owners later, weve got a pretty good system for evaluating the houses we buy so that they dont haunt us with unexpected problems. What I like about our approach is that anyone can use it. You dont have to know a joint from a joist; you dont need any builders lingo. All you have to do is think through the way you will use the house and then look it over to see how well it meets your needs as it is, and how much it will have to be changed to measure up to what you want.

The two key factors here are being honest with yourself about what you want (dont tell yourselves youll rough it for a couple of years if youre the kind of people who like everything just so) and being accurate in seeing how the house really is. Youre on your own with the first, but the considerations outlined in this bulletin, along with the checklists at the end of each section, should help you evaluate an old house objectively and accurately.

To evaluate an old house properly, you should make at least three visits. The first visit is just to see how you like the general feel of the place. This is the time to enjoy the romance of the winding back stairs, the quaint old claw foot bathtub, and the intricate wood moldings. On your next two visits you must find out whether or not the back stairs are strong enough to handle your traffic, whether the tub drains properly, and how much cold air comes in at the moldings around windows. You should try during and after the second and third visits to calculate as closely as possible the cost of fixing the things likely to go wrong with the house and the cost of making the house acceptable to you. Your final decision about buying the house should be based not on your ability to afford it as it stands, but on whether or not you can afford to keep up with it and do whats necessary to make it livable.

Individuals differ in what they consider livable. Our old farmhouse had only one bathroom, no front door, and no accommodations for spot heating. We got along fine with one bathroom, and we relegated a front door to someday status, but we valued the comfort of spot heating so much that the first thing we did was have a chimney built so we could install a Franklin stove. Another family who had considered the same house rejected it because it had no front door; the people who later bought it from us had a second bathroom put in immediately and actually removed one of our extra potbellied stoves.

Because its your idea of what will be livable that counts, not the ideas of your friends and relatives, youll find it works better not to treat your house evaluating visits as outings. The extra people will distract your attention and confuse you with conflicting opinions. The only time to take others with you before youve made your decision is when you think you may have spotted potential problems , and you want an experts opinion. And although we all revere expert opinion, you dont need as much of it as you might suppose. You can learn to tell if a foundation is sound, the plumbing works, or the kitchen needs remodeling. Look for an expert opinion when youve decided you really want a particular house but arent sure about some feature.

Rotting clapboard siding is easy to detect

Suppose, for instance, that youre considering a house with a roof you know leaks and needs repair, but you dont know anything about roofing. An expert can look it over and tell you whether the roof must be replaced or just repaired, and estimate the cost of either. If the figures fit your budget, you may buy the house, otherwise you probably will pass it up and spare yourself the shock of a roofing bill you cant pay.

Get an expert if youre planning any major structural changes in the house. Some changes are structurally inadvisable. For example, wed always intended to put a front door in our house; but when we checked, we learned that it couldnt go where we had planned because it would weaken the outer wall too much for the height of the house, unless we got into expensive reinforcing.

The one time you always should get expert help is in evaluating the electrical wiring in an old house, unless you are a qualified electrician. Old houses have notoriously inadequate wiring. Sometimes the existing work can be augmented, but often you need all new wiring. Sometimes wiring that looks okay to the inexperienced eye turns out to be loaded with shock and fire hazards because of short-cuts and mistakes of do-it-yourself electrical work.