My wife and I are looking at a new-to-us house. Stable neighborhood, good school district, "nicer" homes. Historical district of our town. The neighboring houses are from the 1860's. The house we are looking at was built in 1953. Good size, great lot. We haven't had it inspected yet, but we obviously will. It is a significant upgrade from our current house. I've worked on enough cars and watches to know that there are commonalities in every type of manufacture of things that break (every Rolex 2030 I'm getting back has a mainspring broken at the exact same point!!!). Were there any common material problems from the 50's? I'm assuming there may be some lead based paint. Is there probably asbestos? Anything else?
Along with the electrical and the plumbing there are few other things to check. If the house has a crawly space or basement, you want to check the beams under the floor to make sure they aren't damaged or rotted, same with the sill plates under the walls on the foundation. Check the check the flooring board, my guess in a house from the 50's, the flooring would most likley be 1x6 or 1x8 boards installed diaganol to the beams. In the attic space, look at the sheathing for water damage, and also look at the beams for damage from water, insects, dry rot. Inside the house look at the bottom of the walls for water damage. If you can, take off a few of the cover plates over outlets and switches to look at the wiring for damage, and at the same time see if you can smell any mold or mildew as well. In the kitchen and bathrooms, look under the sink for water damage under the drains, look at the water valves and piping for water leaks. Look under the countertops for the same thing. On the outside look at the bottom of the walls for rot or water damage. If it has siding, poke at the siding with a pen, pencil, screwdriver for soft spots. And also check the window sills for water or rot as well.
Depending on the heating system, there is probably asbestos used as insulation on pipes or ducts. Also in floor tiles (linoleum, sort of). If the electrical has never been updated then it will be badly out of code - probably a fuse box instead of a breaker panel. Insulation may also be an issue. And any house that old is going to have some issues. That's just natural.
I'm totally fine with doing the electric work myself. Plumbing, not so much! I know I need to verify, but these are all things a standard inspection would make me aware of, right? Ironically, a cousin I've never met owned the house. He then divorced his wife, and put a lot of properties in foreclosure just to keep her from getting $$$. The guy is a louse of a man, unworthy of a good woman! My uncle was trying to handle the sale for him, but he wanted to much before he went nutso (he bought at the PEAK of the bubble). He did a lot of updates, I'm just not sure what.
I thought about the asbestos, but forgot to put in my post. If the flooring is linoleum, it should be fine unless the surface is worn to where the fabric fibers are showing. If the insulation is asbestos that could be very expensive to remove.
My house is built in 1956. You need to check the roof. Obviously it's been replaced since build (I hope!) but you'll want to pull permits and have an inspector look at it. With respect to tile, houses built in that era weren't normally built to support modern weight tile roofs. So you may be limiting your options (composite) or will have to eventually replace with overly expensive light weight tile. My other problems have been plumbing. With 4" pipes original under the house, some of them only offer 1/2" of clearance through the gunk. I had a few feet replaced recently because they were leaking...exhaust...and they just chip apart when a saw is applied. Serious shit. I haven't had any electrical issues, likely because of a remodel to the house BUT a lot of the plugs don't have ground wires in them (they're 3 prong but the 3rd prong is useless). I haven't done anything about it, but it's a concern for me since I use computers and TVs to live. Also, it's always a mystery about what is under the ground in the yard...I found a buried patio on my side yard. WTF? Apparently there used to be a pool under my garage. Who knew. Your inspector won't find that. Plus garden irrigation gets untrustworthy after 50 years. Insulation is also lacking sometimes. My attic is insulated...and I think my walls are, but the crawl space is not. The flooring in my house is restored to its original hard wood- you can tell the carpet was pulled up (tiny nail holes). You never know...
A lot of variables that I don't know the answer to so I'll just share thoughts on my little cottage. It was built in 1950 with additions in 1953 and possibly later. The additions aren't up to today's code and I suspect they weren't up to code when they were done. I'm talking a cinder block on earth "foundation" and half as many floor joists as it should have. The roof on a 1953 house is new enough that, if it is like mine, you could have three layers of shingles on top of each other, with the top layer nearing the end of its life. At that point you will absolutely need to strip everything down to the wood because that much asphalt is putting a serious load on the roof. My garage has those cool shingle/tile things on 2 sides instead of siding. They look great and last forever. They are also asbestos. Not a big deal as long as they are painted and maintained properly. Just be aware of it. A 60 year old house is probably underwired by today's standards. Not enough outlets, not many grounded outlets, not as many breakers in the panel as would be ideal. My house had a gas hookup for a dryer and my inspector explicitly told me to get a gas dryer because the house wouldn't handle the load from an electric one. I've got two outdoor outlets on the back side of the house. My aging desktop died when the people doing my roof blew a breaker, using one of them. The other one, I didn't even wire up. I just stuck a plate over it because I know it was on the same circuit--that was already overloaded. You just might have the old style of wiring, with bare wires in the walls on a house that age. I don't think you will, but that is something to ask your inspector because the insurance people will want to know about it. What else? If it has the original furnace, it is probably oil. I was lucky and my furnace had been replaced with natural gas. You almost certainly have a newer water heater. The date it was manufactured is integrated into the serial number for it. Google will tell you how to read that. Be aware of the age for when you'll need to think about replacing it. Also, if it was made in the mid-90s they used to use a kind of plastic in a circulation tube in the core that, amazingly, deteriorated when exposed to hot water(?!) If you take off an areator on a faucet and find white stuff that looks like coral sand and crumbles under your finger pressure you've got that kind of drip tube. Not the end of the world, it is easily and inexpensively replaced, but it is something to look for. OK. Home stretch. And more the kind of thing I think you were looking for: Nowadays houses are wonderfully standardized. You go down to Lowe's of Home Depot and buy a door and just plug it in where you want it. A 1950's house isn't that way. I have 7' ceilings. All the interior doors (and a couple of the exterior ones) are custom sized. IIRC, 1950 is kind of the cusp between plaster and lathe walls and drywall. It will probably be drywall, but it may not be. In those days, wood floors weren't necessarily desirable. They certainly weren't in the 1970s when wall-to-wall carpeting was king. So you may actually have fairly nice wood, hidden under carpet. Pull up some carpet in a corner or around a vent (if you have floor vents) and see what it looks like underneath (especially if you're planning to replace the carpeting anyway). You may have some fairly nice wood underneath. My living room was mixed hardwoods. Sadly someone had used it as a dropcloth and place to test wall paint swatches so it required considerable sanding before I gave it a walnut stain, but now (apart from my lack of skill with a drum sander) it is very nice. The bedrooms were different. They're just fir or cedar or something--softer wood than would ordinarily be a wood floor--and when they were laid the builder immediately put linoleum over them. Carpeting later went on top of the linoleum, so when I stripped all that off I had some fairly nice floors that just needed light sanding, linseed oil and then a couple coats of poly. That's all that comes to mind right now.
Why not buy a new house? Honestly the list of possible problems is long enough I'd just get a new one.
I'm fine with either plumbing or electrical, they both have the same basic concept. Water flowing, electricity flowing. If you're working with either one, make sure the source is off and you're set to go. The only real issue I have is being on a roof, heights scare the hell out of me.
Talkahuno had a good point. You say the lot is big and the house is small (a rare combination in today's subdivisions) so it just might pay to rebuild at this point. The old saying "they don't make em' like that anymore" does not really apply to building technology and safety. Insulation, heating and cooling, wiring, plumbing materials, etc. have all gotten better over the years. Obviously a modern cookie-cutter home like mine will never have the architectural beauty of a custom-made 50's home, but pound-for-pound it's still more advanced. It might pay to rebuild a similar sized house. And get it checked for termites if you like in The South should you decide to keep the house as is!
Me too. A water pipe won't send 110 volts of current through my body if I fuck it up. And longer-term, a plumbing mistake can cause water damage while an electrical mistake can burn the house down...
Well for one thing, the idea that houses are only meant to last through a single owner is fairly wasteful. For another, he may live somewhere that is mostly already built up. My house is 98 years old, and is in fantastic shape, with lots of interesting features not often found in new construction (stains glass, six inch moulding, 10 foot ceilings,etc.). I don't know how things were built 50 or 60 years ago, but 100 years ago, builders believed in quality. Contrast this with a lot of new construction using cheap materials and reliant on shoddy workmanship (I won't use the term craftsmanship). I'll take my beautiful and unique old house any day over something new with plastic siding and sheetrock.
I see where Gul is coming from. It is pretty sad that these days (at least here in Subdivisionland) houses are not built to last, because neighborhoods and even towns are in a constant state of flux. I heard a saying once: "the architect's best friend is a wrecking ball." This is America - here today, gone tomorrow. I lived in Europe - where several generations of family might live in the same home, long since paid for, but built to last! The downside - a well built home is more expensive, a larger percentage of your income. And I love older homes, but they cost a lot to maintain. If I knew my kids would be living within 1,000 miles of me and would inherit my home, I might invest in quality. But the reality is America is HUGE and highly mobile. Families are spread to the four winds in many cases.
This is because most new homes in America these days are built in large developments. The builder (Ryan, Pulte, outfits like that) slap the houses up as quickly and cheaply as they can, as close together as zoning will allow, in order to maximize profits. Basic structures are usually acceptable, but fit & finish is usually amateurish at best. They also try to minimize the "waste" of building materials, so some things wind up being done with scraps or materials that just barely satisfy building codes. The result is often things like toilets that need to be re-seated after a year or two, or roofs that need patching or replacing within ten years, or windows not properly sealed, stuff like that. You want a house built right, you need to hire your own contractor and stick-build it yourself.
I have a friend who has a new house. Don't recall if they bought it brand new or a couple years old, but it is 8 years old...and lousy with mold and rot. Because flashing was done improperly and water intruded a wall for 8 years.
Also, I gotta mention the trees. Who knows what type of upkeep was done on the 50 year old trees. Were the maintained at all? No house inspector can inform you. I have tons of trees. One day a 40 foot Eucalyptus fell down suddenly - missed the house by an inch. It looked normal, just like the other 5 that are still standing. Getting that hauled away was a cost I wasn't interested in. Though my dogs did enjoy foraging through a downed tree for a week.
Good point about old trees! Big branches....falling a long distance.....an accident waiting to happen. That is the one advantage I have about buying a newly built home. I choose what tree species to plant - none of which grow tall enough to warrant any problems, or roots (yes, roots will mess up foundations and plumbing) that will reach the house.
And neighbors, gotta consider the neighbors. Take a drive by the house on a Friday and Saturday night. Around 7-8pm and then around 11pm-12am. See what kind of noise or idiots you may have to deal with.
