6 Common Fears that Shouldn’t Keep You from Buying a Historic Home
Many people love the charm of a historic home but are afraid of “all the work” involved with old homes.* While there are historic homes that have never been updated and will come with a lot of expensive projects, many old homes have had updates and offer benefits that far outweigh any negative. The main thing to remember is that Everything is Fixable!
6 Common Misconceptions about buying an older home:
All those cracks in the wall mean there are foundation issues or water damage.
Not at all! Most older homes have plaster walls instead of drywall. With plaster, lots of small wooden boards (lathes) are then plastered over (kind of like real stucco over stone). Over time these do crack but unlike a huge crack in drywall, it normally just needs to be patched. Or, you can keep it and have it just be part of the character of living in an historic home.
The layout doesn’t meet my lifestyle needs.
It’s true, older homes do not typically have the same layouts as more modern homes. The needs of people have changed over the years and many historic homes have had additions built at various times as well. However, with just a little bit of work, you can typically adapt the layout to meet your needs. Opening up walls is not very expensive. I’ve also found that people a 100 years ago had some things right. I really like my kitchen not being open to my dining room so I can enjoy my dinner without staring at the mess I created. We like having a separate room to watch TV that’s compact and cozy instead of having it in our living room. We all learned during the Pandemic that having separate spaces is actually really helpful. You might be pleasantly surprised how an older layout could actually work for you.
I will have to replace all the windows or my power bill will be crazy expensive.
When we moved into our current 1930’s Farmhouse we did have some sticker shock with our first winter electrical bills. Some windows had been replaced but about half were the originals that add so much charm to an older home. I dreaded replacing them as much for losing the aesthetic as the cost. In Georgia though, since we don’t have extremely cold winters, the windows were NOT actually the cause of our power bill issues. We had an older HVAC system and no HVAC upstairs which caused the downstairs unit to work extra hard to keep the upstairs conditioned as well. Once we installed a new system downstairs and put in a system upstairs, our power bills were at a normal level without replacing a single window. Any home older than 6 or 7 years could have this same issue.
Termites will be an issue.
Chances are any home inspector is going to find some level of previous termite activity in a historic home. But, key word here is previous. The types of wood used to build historic homes were much denser than the wood used today. When we removed the drywall to open up a room in the old farm house we are renovating, we discovered a lot of old termite tunnels. But, they just stopped. It wasn’t worth it to the termites to keep going in such hard wood. We were able to get a Retreat and Repair bond on the house. (Check out this short video for more information on types of termite bonds). The current old termite damage did not cause any structural issues and if the current termite treatment we are paying for failed for any reason, the Pest Control company will pay to repair any new damage.
I’m going to spend a fortune on electrical and plumbing issues.
Not necessarily - most older homes have had these systems updated. It is important to check and make sure though with a good home inspection. Old galvanized and cast iron pipes will have to be replaced soon if they haven’t been already or you will deal with leaks and stoppages. Again, this isn’t as expensive as you might imagine though. You can typically replumb a whole house for less than $10,000 and that is worse case scenario if you have to replace all of it which is rare. The easiest way to check if the electrical has been updated is to find the panel box. If there are fuses instead of breakers, you may have quite a bit of electrical work to do. However, a caveat to this: an old fuse box doesn’t necessarily mean you have any safety issues. In my historic home, some of the upstairs still has a fuse box and we have had no issues. Unless a house is brand new it won’t be up to current electrical codes that change all the time. I encourage you to get a good electrician out and ask “What are safety/fire hazards?” and concentrate on getting any of those fixed (or better yet, ask the seller to fix them prior to closing).
All those sloping floors mean I’ll have foundation issues that will cost me tens of thousands
of dollars.
All homes have some degree of settling over the years. With a historic home, you already get to see how it has settled. It’s like buying a used pair of jeans that are already washed and worn in vs. buying a brand new pair that you aren’t sure how they will fit after they shrink. Secondly, any home could have a foundation issue. I’ve seen foundation problems in homes built in every decade including this century. An advantage of a historic home is that it has been standing for at least 70 years. Also, they are almost universally built on a crawl space which makes fixing the foundation if there are issues much less costly than fixing a home built on a slab. I’ve seen typical foundation repairs typically costing from $3,000 to $5,000 with the most extreme examples being up to $15,000.**
Remember, everything is fixable! With a good home inspection, most if not all of these issues would be discovered and you can then negotiate with the seller before buying the home. Check out our preferred vendors for recommendations on home inspectors, electricians and more.
*When I’m talking about historic homes, I mean homes built before 1950.
** Often older homes were built before there really was an actual crawl space by today’s standards. They were built on supports that were then open to the elements and then later as code changed they had walls built around the foundation creating a crawl space. Occasionally these “crawl” spaces are actually too low to crawl in. That DOES NOT mean that you have to jack up the whole house though. You simply remove the flooring and sub flooring above the affected area and fix the crawl space. This fix still falls into the price range I mentioned earlier.