Looking at Another Old House...

So after low balling and losing out on a fixer upper old farm house earlier this year (probably fortunately, in hindsight, as I think that one in particular was a much bigger project than I had any right getting myself into), as described in one of the several other real estate threads currently active in GRM-land, I had pretty much resolved myself to the idea of putting another year of savings away before getting serious about shopping for my first house again. Until last week anyways, when SWMBO goes "hey, look at this place on Zillow!" after dinner one evening.

It's an old brick farm house, circa ~1850, with a small addition on the back, IIRC around 2200 ft^2 total, detached 3 car garage that appears to be wired with 220V off a separate panel, decent location, nice lot IIRC 0.8 acres, very private with nearest neighbors a good distance away... In short, it really checks a lot of boxes for us. We like the charm and whatnot of these old houses. And the kicker? It's priced well below market (~$20k or so), easily affordable for us and with plenty of room to grow the value.

So Friday we made an appointment to go see it, with the obvious question in mind of why so cheap? Well, it's a bit of a fixer upper, although fortunately the work needed appears to be the result of a lack of upkeep, mostly cosmetic and it's perfectly livable as is. According to the agent, the house was previously listed within the last couple years at a higher price, and now the seller is relisting it priced where it is because he doesn't want to negotiate any repairs into the purchase. SWMBO, real estate super sleuth, has managed to dig up some pics from ~2005 when the house was last sold, as well as from ~2010, both of which times show the place in much better upkeep than it currently sits, which is encouraging. Based on what we know of the circumstances and clues from the pics, we're thinking hubby got the house in a divorce (probably immediately prior to it last being listed) and just let it go a bit.

As for what the house needs, the biggest concern of mine is some water damage on the front wall in the living room. There is a roof over the front porch and its gutter appears to be channeling water back towards the house, some of which then is permeating the brick and getting to the plaster interior wall. Paint is also chipping off the brick on the exterior below this location. Damage to the plaster isn't too bad and this issue is supposedly fairly recent. Am I potentially looking at major masonry work here?

Outside of that, the kitchen is dated and a renovation would be in the 5 year plan, needs paint and such throughout, flooring downstairs could stand to be refinished, carpet on the staircase is kind of nasty and the railing is broken, landscape is in need of some upkeep, and the concrete on the front steps needs to be repaired in spots.

We're going back for a 2nd look this Friday evening. I guess what I'm after here is some general old house buying advice and experiences, since I know more than a few of you own/have owned older homes - what sort of non-obvious things should I be looking for, what sort of projects have you gotten into on yours, what kind of "while I'm in there" stuff have you gotten into, horror stories, ect?

How are the plumbing, wiring, HVAC, roof? Those are some big repair cost items.

Brick exterior sounds great. Water damage you described is hard to visualize.. but draining something by gravity is not hard to restore (unless it's been wet so long that the wood rotted).

Sounds like a good opportunity if you're handy. Just quadruple the expected duration for projects (if you plan to do it yourself).

So it's a bit of a fixer upper? That's a minor thing.

Electrical gets exspensive so make sure its fairly up too date. Check the floors around the toilets pretty close expecially if theres any carpet. Make sure the foundation(basement or not) is in good shape. Its not cheap too have an old house lifted up.

In addition to what's been mentioned, insulation? windows? You don't really want an old house with old single pane windows, between the heating/AC costs and lead hazard.

Best advice I can give you about old houses is that they don't make them like they used to, thank God

Sure there is some great stuff about old houses but there is some seriously odd stuff about them as well. I once ripped apart an addition built in 1910 and it was supported by rock's.......and a blue slipper to shim it up.

If it's a old house and it hasnt had the best upkeep it can be a much bigger issue than you think. Quadruple everything you see and put more money aside for the stuff you don't see

The water issue you are talking about is hard to picture. Are you saying its driving water underneath the roofing? As always with leaks everything above and below it needs at least looked at and maybe repaired. Plaster coming off of brick isn't suprising with the leak, nothing masonry should need touched

Electrical. Go find the panel box and look at the wiring. Not just at the box, but what you can see running across the basement. Mine for example has post and tube, but it's joined to the box by Romex. Fuses or breakers? Modern romex, old cloth wrapped, post and tube? Post and tube will cause you insurance issues. Many won't touch it, those that do tend to charge a bit more for it. Do understand that your wiring was installed after the house was built, so it's going to be less than amazing by modern standards.

Plumbing. Turn the shower on, let it get hot. Flush the toilet. Did it get cold or die? Same washing dishes or running the washing machine (turn on the basement tub tap to simulate this). Run the water for a while in all the sinks and watch how they all drain. Watch especially in the lowest tub. Does it start backing up? Do understand that your plumbing was likely installed after the house was built. So it too will not be up to modern standards.

Windows. Old wood is neat to admire, but takes a lot of work to maintain. Single pane glass lets lot of heat through (both ways). Storm windows work, but are a pain.

Wood rot and termites. Expect some. As well termite or powder post beetle damage. It's a matter of how much and if it's still active. Jumping on the floors and rapping things with your knuckles tells you a lot. Look closely at wood things that touch the ground. Termites and rot don't start in the middle of the house, they start on the edges.

Heating and cooling. Likely some form of radiator heat with an oil fired boiler in the basement. They're ok. You're probably going to deal with window a/c units to cool the place.

Hot water. Old houses sometimes don't have a water heater like you're used to seeing. They can be part of the furnace or boiler. Not as efficient, but they do give unlimited hot water. A big plus with a certain gender that tends to spend long times in a shower.

Lead paint. It's there. Most likely on window sills, maybe the exterior paint as well. Get a cheapie lead test kit if you wish just to verify. But, it's an old house, there will be lead paint.

Asbestos. It may be there. Insulation on the hot water pipes, if present and old looking, is likely asbestos. Roof tiles that look sorta tile like, but not quite, those are often asbestos containing. Flooring tiles that are about 9"x9" and old looking, likely asbestos containing. None are the end of the world, and none need to be "fixed" if you leave them alone.

Resale. Do understand that selling an old house is harder than selling a new house or only slightly used. Sure there are people that love old houses. But there's a lot more that don't, or think they do until they really start looking at it. So expect selling it in the future to be a longer than normal process.

Wonder why it was flipped in 2005 and 2010.

914Driver wrote: Wonder why it was flipped in 2005 and 2010.

House was last sold in 05, no clue where SWMBO found the pics from 2010 but they were not from a listing. I think it was put on the market sometime around 2014 for a while and didn't sell.

I'll try to get some pics Friday to better illustrate the water issue. In the meantime, I'll try to give a bit of a better description, as I did a poor job above. Basically, there is a separate roof over the small front porch that adjoins the house above the first story. There are beams running perpendicular to the front wall of the house supporting this roof and gutters running parallel to the beams. The gutter on the right side, again as viewed from the front, is draining water back towards the house and seems to be getting in somewhere in the vicinity of where the beam meets the front wall of the house.

And thanks for all the info everyone, especially Foxtrapper!

Some more things I forgot to mention:

-Nearly all of the windows have been replaced, save for I think one that is kind of a big awkward size.

-No central cooling, window units for AC. Heat is indeed radiators and oil fired furnace.

-Foundation is limestone and appeared solid, although there was a little bit of moisture in the basement.

-Sheet metal roof, probably not the newest but looks very solid and they're long lasting roofs. No signs of rot or water intrusion in the attic.

-Didn't remember to test the plumbing first time through, though I'll be sure to do so Friday. I did notice the water softener appears to be very new. The disclosure mentions something about a septic line being plugged and requiring service last year.

-I'm admittedly not very knowledgeable when it comes to household electrical work and had to Google what post and tube is . I don't recall seeing anything like that from what I could see of the wiring in the basement, but I'll be sure to take a closer look. I did, however, notice the circuit breaker is a Federal Pacific unit. The last rental I lived at had one of these, which an electrician once warned me are not the safest. Said electrician quoted something like $12-1500 to replace it. As these were apparently manufactured from the 1950s through the 80s, wonder if that dates the rest of the electrical to that time as well? Or perhaps that was a 2nd retrofit?

Having seen what my daughter has gone though with her 1910 house, I'm pretty much out of the old house market. Even if it has been totally re-done, was it done correctly, or covered over with drywall and new paint. Having dealt with many asbestos contractors (who usually started out as general contractors) I have developed a strong distrust for contractors. I know of a couple of contractors who frequent this site I would trust.

Furious_E wrote: Heat is indeed radiators and oil fired furnace.

In that case check the insulation on the piping. It may be asbestos. Just had to deal with that in wife's aunt's house.

Furious_E wrote: I did, however, notice the circuit breaker is a Federal Pacific unit. As these were apparently manufactured from the 1950s through the 80s, wonder if that dates the rest of the electrical to that time as well? Or perhaps that was a 2nd retrofit?

If the rest of the wiring was updated when the FP box(which should be replaced eventually) was installed it would likely be the old cloth wrapped wiring. That is fine as long as they used the 2-wire with ground stuff. Check to see if the outlets are the grounded type. If they are, pull one of the covers and look to see if there actually is a ground wire in there.

I'd just use one of these, instead of bothering to pull outlet covers.

In reply to foxtrapper:

Those will not detect a bootleg ground, or the dreaded super dangerous reversed polarity bootleg ground.

Well we went back for our 2nd look tonight. Brought my parents along this time for a 3rd and 4th set of eyes and an outside perspective.

Plumbing is all copper, as far as I can tell. Wiring is actually mostly updated to Romex, running to a 2nd breaker (Square D), rather than everything running to the FP box as I had seemed to be thinking before. The aforementioned water issue actually appears to be the gutters simply not draining correctly. Had a good rain storm blow through a few hours beforehand, which was actually fortunate. Definitely some masonry repair needed to fix the damage, but it's not anything killer I don't think. Will post pics once Furious She forwards them to me. Basement didn't show any more moisture than it did previously and the roof shows no sign of leakage. Still couldn't find any evidence of obvious termite damage.

Overall, we're feeling pretty high on the place and seem to be moving towards an offer. Hell of a house for the money and it fits what we both want pretty much to a t. Thanks for all the info and advice everyone and I'll be sure to post an update if everything moves ahead.

Garage sounds great. Make offer with Inspection Contingency.

Pay an electrician to look it over. Same for a plumber and HVAC mechanic. Open every drawer and close every door.

+1 to go over everything soup to nuts. Mrs. DX and I live in a house that is 116 years old and we had our share of issues when we moved in. The amount of knob and tube wiring in the house was more present than the previous owners disclosed.

Offer was accepted last night. Looks like I'm buying a house!

Congrats!

Nice work! I've been looking in the Harrisburg area with a $50k total budget (which means $30k house, $20k fixup). I'm finding a TON of almost-right buys but waiting for the really right one. I'd kinda like to be something like 10 miles east or north of Harrisburg and that seriously limits the options.

Just passed on a sweet property in Lewisberry. It was 1.6 acres and had about 300 feet of Yellow Breeches waterfront. House was a tear-down though, and I passed mostly because there wasn't enough front/back distance to build a decent garage.

Where did you find this house? Futher out toward Ship/Newville, or still in town?

In reply to curtis73:

Thanks Curtis, we're super excited about it!

We weren't even aggressively looking for a place, just kind of casually watching Zillow and the like when this place popped up. It just fit all of our major wants for much less money than we anticipated having to spend. As said above, it needs work and certainly isn't perfect, but too good to pass up. I'm excited to have a project anyways and pick up some new skills in the process.

It's a little bit west of town, just barely into West Pennsboro township, and actually really close (maybe a half mile crow distance) to my last rental, if you recall where I described that being located.

300 feet of Yellow Breeches waterfront would be really hard to pass up, although I don't think I would give up a garage for it either. Are you looking primarily on the east shore then? I'm much less familiar with the market over that way, we had been looking pretty much exclusively in the greater Carlisle area. Good luck in your search, I'm sure the right place will find its way to you at some point.

Do you have any recommendations on where to source cheap/salvage building supplies in the area? Not necessarily looking for anything in particular at the moment, but I'm going to do my best to do everything well yet within a budget on this place. The GRM way!

In near the corner of East High st. and Spring Garden st. is McCarren Supply. They're a surplus place with a few reclaimed items. I wouldn't say cheap, but they have some neat stuff.

Near the corner of Cameron and Paxton sts in Harrisburg is a ReStore with a lot of neat stuff.

Hit up Ollie's on the Pike in Mechanicsburg. They have tons of cheap flooring - rugs, laminate, tile. They also have cheap curtains, bed clothes, mattresses, etc.

HD in Carlisle can always help you out. Go to the Pro Desk and find AJ, Mark McIntyre, or Nick for building materials and tell them you know me. The paint folks are really good there. Cathleen and Michael can mix anything. I forget who is in charge of appliances, but it might be Mike Werner. They like to swap department heads around to broaden experience with the store as a kind of training for store management and I know there was just a recent switch. Mike Werner used to be in charge of Paint but I think he's appliances now.

Above all (at HD), use the Pro Desk for everything. They can pull and deliver orders for you and make sure you have the right stuff. They really have the broad experience with all the departments. They are really strong with paint, lumber, roofing, and other building materials. Any Pro Desk order over $1000 goes through volume purchase thing that hacks off money, so try to make bigger orders together. Think of the Pro Desk as a Home Depot concierge service.

Thanks again Curtis, appreciate the advice.

So we had the home inspection and septic inspection today and unsurprisingly for a house of this age a number of things came up. It was honestly about as bad as I thought it would be, but SWMBO seems a little freaked out at the number of things the inspector called attention to. Don't have his report in hand yet, so I'm doing my best to recall off the top of my head, but some of the concerns are as follows:

-Carpenter bees in one or two portions of the exterior trim. Damage looks to be fairly limited.

-Some pretty janky wiring things we found. There were a few spots with wiring just randomly terminated that was left hot (yikes!). A lot (maybe all?) of the wiring in the upstairs appears to lack grounds. While I have yet to find any concrete evidence of post and tube currently in use, the inspector believes there is probably at least some upstairs. We didn't pull any outlet covers.

-Insulation in the attic and under some of the first floor installed upside down (i.e. paper side out.)

-Some deflection in the floors in various places throughout, upstairs, downstairs and in the addition (more on that later.) Nothing that feels like it's immediately going to fall through by any means, just that you can step and flex it a bit in places. Joists under the first floor looks mostly solid, though there is some visible gap to the sub floor in places (like maybe 1/8") that is obviously allowing the deflection. Can't see the joists under the second story floor to be able to comment there.

-The addition off the back seems to have some kind of odd construction going on. If you look at the pic below, you can see the lower roof between the addition and the house that goes over the mud room/foyer or whatever you would call that. Floor in the mud room is brick/slab, as is the back side of the addition. The front of the addition, between the other slabbed portions, roughly where the window is in the pic, has a carpet floor which clearly has some framing underneath. There appears to be a stone foundation under this portion, which seems to predate the addition (we're guessing the addition was done sometime around the 70s or so). Perhaps this was a spring house or shed or something before?

In any case, the floors under the carpeted portion are the most in need of attention, as they are rather soft. Given the curious nature of the construction and lack of access to the space under this floor, the inspector seems a bit wary of what we may find (I think he's just concerned about the potential of replacing the joists.) I'd already been anticipating doing floor joists here when the time comes, but SWMBO seems freaked at what else we might find based on a perceived concern from the inspector. Clearly something is causing the softness, but how bad could it be? No visible evidence of pests here, so I'm thinking moisture related.

More to come...

Pic of the inside of the addition, facing the back of the house with the carpeted area in question visible in front:

Additionally, there is some evidence of moisture stains on the ceiling of the mud room area. The tin roof over this area and the addition is clearly much newer than the main part of the house and shows no signs of rust or anything in the central portion of the roof where water could get in. Nonetheless, there is some moisture staining towards the center of this portion and any potential leakage seems to have been repaired with silicone caulk applied on the interior ceiling. Clearly that's not a proper fix.

The really big concern in my mind at this point is the aforementioned issue of water intrusion in the front brick wall. We know this is something that is going to have to be dealt with professionally and in short order, the question is how much is it going to cost. A few thousand we can swallow, but if we're talking close to $10k or more that could be an issue. I think we're going to try to have a contractor come out and take a look within the next week or so.

Here you can see from the outside where the water is getting in. Gutter is obviously backing up and draining water against the house. The wood on top of the window frame is pretty rotten and obviously needs to be replaced. Hard to see in the pic, but the brick is sort of bulged out in this area as well (presumably lack of support from the rotten window frame?) Out of the shot down and to the left, there is a good bit of paint peeling off too.

You can see the damage done on the inside as well. The window sill and frame appears pretty solid, fortunately, but the plaster obviously has issues. Anyone care to throw a ballpark figure at what we could be getting into for this?