I'm in what I can best describe as a single story "National gable + front wing" tract house from the 40s, and feel that the design is very pragmatic and boring. These types of houses are very common in the Bay Area suburbs, particularly in the East Bay. Those were built en masse during during the war and have a surprising degree of craftsmanship and material quality.
I muse about one day owning one of those ordinate Victorian houses, but at the same time dread all work and red tape that can come with them (Which goes against my idea of homeownership). A buddy of mine has one and says it would cost ~35k to replace the drafty windows because the city requires an approved type/style/installer (it's a historic home).
Avoiding "historic" districts like the plague is always a winning strategy.
Typically not only do you have expensive standards to meet, but you also need to satisfy the desires of boards who are very happy to spend your money to scratch whatever itch they have.
> Avoiding "historic" districts like the plague is always a winning strategy.
Yes and if you do happen to end up in one, do your research and find out how official the "historic district" is.
A friend of mine bought a house and was getting (for lack of a better term) hassled by the "historic society" because they didn't like renovations he was doing (paint color, new windows, etc). Turns out there's no official status to the group at all. They just formed a group about 20 years ago and lie / bully people into complying with whatever they consider to be "historic".
I like old things and old houses too. But a friend in real estate advised me against buying and living in 100 year old houses because of the high cost of maintenance, very high cost of remodeling, and various things you wouldn't expect right away, like the water tasting funny due to old pipes, there house creaking and making sounds all the time as it shrinks and expands, the general lack of insulation, etc.
I'm still fond of the Tudor style, but alas it does seem impractical.
The problem seems to be that builders don't build many houses in old style, even if the the demand is there. In Norway for instance, even if there is a high demand for old flats built before world war 2, there simply hasn't been built any old style flats at all since the war.
One of the reasons is that many architects after the war considered it to be fascistic to build anything with ornaments on the outside. You can still buy new clothes in old fashion style and new books using old fashioned typography, but you can't buy a new flat in an old style flat.
Some architects today say we are living in the age of modernism, not the baroque or roccoco, and therefore should not build old style buildings. Art history was not intended to be used to dictate which style to use when designing anything. Architects seems to abuse art historic terms to get their way.
For woodwork in particular, it's sometimes difficult to find anything close to the same quality as some old solid wood pieces, except maybe as a veneer, at any price. Flawless long runs of thick oak for a thicker-than-is-common-now banister, for example, are waaaaaay harder to find than they used to be.
And good luck finding someone capable of fitting it all together such that it's still perfectly tight after 100+ years of winters and summers with no AC and poor heat. If such a person still exists I'm sure they charge a fortune.
You have to be prepared to deal with an old home's quirks. It is not going to have all the amenities and features of a modern house. Yep, it will wiggle and squeak and probably will need to have its electrical and plumbing checked out by a competent contractor.
It will have been "maintained" by people of varying skills, desires, tastes, budgets, etc over its lifetime. Many of the repairs I've had to do in my old house have involved undoing or fixing the previous owner's poor work.
The flip side, our house is over 100 years old and has most of its original windows. Other than some painting, glazing, and caulking they're fine & pretty weathertight. It has 12" wide floor joists ... I could park a car in the living room. And it has glorious architectural details not found in (or poorly imitated in) modern homes.
The inventory of old homes will never be larger than what we have now. Every year, old homes are lost to fire, flood, tear down, and insensitive remuddlings. If you're not willing to live in and love an old house for what it is, please, buy a new home.
>If you're not willing to live in and love an old house for what it is, please, buy a new home.
Yup absolutely. Thankfully current owners of historic homes in the Bay Area often look for buyers who will appreciate the building and not want to tear it down. There's a house in Atherton which was the original ranch house in the early 20th century there. The owners refuse to sell it to anyone who wants to demolish it (buyers likely have to sign something), and it's been on the market for many many years now for that reason.
Since they are fake and have no purpose other than being ornamental they are prone to being the wrong size and just look really, really off. If you're going to make them ornamental they should look like they could be functional.
Fake shutters that are the wrong size/location really grind my gears as well.
It all depends, so much. A hundred year house might have been well-maintained and have interior renovations in the systems that matter most -- electrical, plumbing, heating, insulation -- in which case it is very likely a great house for the next thirty years, provided you do the same work.
Or it could be an inconsistent mash-up of systems from different eras, with some knob-and-tube wiring still exposed in the basement, no insulation in the walls and a half-hearted roll of fiberglass in the attic, and Baron von Frankenstein's heating system. That would be bad.
On the other hand, "high cost of remodeling" is bunk unless you have an Historical Preservation Society glaring at you. All normal remodeling is expensive in every house. It's just that an HPS can make it much more expensive, and constrain you not to do things you want.
As someone who lives in a ~200 year old house, I pretty much agree with all that. I've spent quite a bit on renovations and the house is still "quirky." (e.g. just has one smallish, though just redone, bathroom) On the other hand, the location and property are great and it was quite inexpensive, especially by today's standards.
Yes, some of the renovations were due to age and/or lack of maintenance over time. But there's no shortage of horror stories associated with problems in recently-constructed houses as well.
> It's just that an HPS can make it much more expensive, and constrain you not to do things you want.
This is so true in Boston. A lot of HPSs specify that you can't change the exterior facing portion of a building, even if you make every effort to keep the appearance while, e.g. adding 4 inches of styrofoam for insulation behind the siding, or if the changes you make are historically correct, e.g. 4 inches of styrofoam + stucco on top of brick walls. They don't particularly care about the interior, so often your only choice if you want to insulate is to insulate on the interior, which, ironically, reduces the building's durability.
I'll attest to old homes being built or maintained poorly. Our house is over 100 years old and we've found just mistake after mistake. Galvanized pipes ready to burst when we remodeled the bathroom last year (a $20k job we did ourselves), to studs not being 16 inches on center to poor insulation (or no insulation at all) to outdated electrical to drywall over plaster and lath to multiple layers of flooring on top of each other. We've remodeled just about 1 room a year - we'll be done this year with the last bedroom.
We've brought everything up to code and anyone walking into the house says it looks beautiful but it's been a huge expense and time consuming doing 95% of the work ourselves.
My house was built in the 1780s, but is well-insulated, has modern wiring and plumbing, etc. If you have a well-maintained home, the age of the structure is mostly irrelevant.
Grew up in 1850s and 1920s house, owned 1930s and 1910s houses, and rented 1910s and 1960s houses. Many of these homes had been renovated within the last 50 years.
My anecdotal experience:
The very old houses will require expensive systems upgrades - heating, plumbing, electricity, etc. But the quality of the craftsmanship is unbelievably good. It was built to last, whereas the newer 1960s home and my sister's 2000s-era condo was made with lots of cheap crap that has its own replacement burden.
Renovations vary in quality, too. Our downstairs bathroom was renovated in the 60s with cheap, ugly materials. The windows were replaced 15 years ago around the house using a second-tier brand, and they squeal loudly when they are opened. But another owner did a kitchen renovation 10 years ago using high-quality materials that have stood up quite well.
It's amazing what a difference the home owner can make. We bought our first house not too long ago. The most recent home owners, though they kept the home clean, did not do any regular maintenance and did a lot of ... weird things. Luckily they were only here for a few years, so only a small amount of real damage was done (dry rot). Mostly we just had to catch up on all the regular maintenance.
The owners prior to them, though, were amazing. Their renovations were solid, beautiful, and extensive. The contrast between any work done by them and work done by the most recent owners is painfully obvious.
On the more extreme side I've seen homes completely rotted by owners, requiring over a year of in-depth repairs to bring the house back to life. It's very sad to see.
Exact same thing here. When we bought our home the people we bought it from did no maintenance and were only there for a few years so no lasting damage. It was a ton of small stuff that needed to be done but it had to be done all at once, which was much more annoying than I anticipated.... and the owners prior to them did a great job renovating.
Real estate people or even most kitchen cabinet vendors don't seem to understand there even is a difference between materials. If it shines on the surface, it must be good.
I'm not disagreeing, but my mom recently did some work on her house which has four parts (late 1700's, middle 1800's, 1970's, and 1990's)
The contractor basically said the parts that were hundreds of years old would be around for another couple hundred years, but the stuff that was - 20-50 years old had all sore of issues...
Many(most?) people in real estate have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. This is an example.
Avoiding older homes because they are old isn't great advice. Avoiding homes that are falling apart is better advice (for most people, not all) but not all old homes are falling apart and not all newer homes are well built and will be falling apart in 10 years or sooner.
Most older homes (that are still standing) are well built, having been built to last, and some have been well maintained and upgraded over the years. The best quality houses I've ever lived in were over a century old. The worst quality house I've ever lived in was 40 years old and was the only "modern" house I've ever lived in and every single corner was cut building the thing.
Older homes often have some great architectural features that you can't find today, you aren't going to find a 20 year old home with an ornate hand carved mahogany staircase, for example. A lot of it comes down to personal preference and what you are used to.
The water never tastes funny.
My friends moved into a (rented) older, turn of the century, home that was poorly maintained and it's a garbage place to live. But it isn't like that's not obvious when you tour the place. My other friends bought a house built in the 1700s and it's the most well-built house I've ever seen. It has its quirks but its well-maintained and has most of the modern features you'd expect. It's also very well isolated.
Problem with newer homes, especially McMansions, is many are poor construction that aren't meant to last. They went up fast and cheap. This doesn't apply to all new construction, of course, but there was rush to build during the housing bubble. Corners were cut. Some houses were meant to look just good enough to sell, not to last a century.
Neighborhood is more important and theres not always a choice of a new home in many neighborhoods. For example, when we bought our house we had no choice but to buy old construction unless we wanted to change our neighborhood preference. Then we'd have to buy a McMansion on the outskirts of town away from everything except other McMansions. We'd be unable to walk anywhere, much further drive from work, much further drive to pretty much anywhere, and we'd have to buy double the amount of home than we'd prefer to buy.
If it's an established neighborhood you're going to get established homes!
But saying "avoid old homes" as generic advice to everyone is terrible advice. It's all tradeoffs and personal preference and also quality of the specific home. A well-built, well-maintained home is still a well-built, well-maintained home.
Most real estate agents also have zero knowledge about the mechanical/engineering aspects of a property. Whenever I ask them about the insulation, electrical wiring, HVAC, or plumbing they just give me a blank face and try to redirect me to how good the kitchen appliances and cabinets look. :(
When touring a house once I asked the seller's agent if the fireplace was functional and operational. She said "I don't live here, so I don't know." I mean, a fireplace is a main feature and some are just ornamental so you'd think she'd think to ask the sellers about it. And if she really didn't know why not answer "I'll ask the sellers and get back to you on that one." Nope, just left it at shrug. Half the times when I've toured properties I got the impression it was the first time the seller's agent had even been in the house.
Many only know how to parrot "factoids" they've heard somewhere. "Don't buy and living in 100 year old houses" is one such example. Maybe they just don't like that older homes are cheaper and they are trying to maximize their commission.
I'm in what I can best describe as a single story "National gable + front wing" tract house from the 40s, and feel that the design is very pragmatic and boring. These types of houses are very common in the Bay Area suburbs, particularly in the East Bay. Those were built en masse during during the war and have a surprising degree of craftsmanship and material quality.
I muse about one day owning one of those ordinate Victorian houses, but at the same time dread all work and red tape that can come with them (Which goes against my idea of homeownership). A buddy of mine has one and says it would cost ~35k to replace the drafty windows because the city requires an approved type/style/installer (it's a historic home).