Reply to Tell me about living in a historic (old) home

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is OP, and I guess we still have to gauge what “updated” means - yes, new kitchen and bathrooms, but it looks like previous owners (flippers) put a lot of money into updating the property.  If it’s more fully updated - and gosh I hope it is - should we still anticipate headaches/needing to provide costly updates ourselves? (I’m talking structural/foundational things like the foundation, electrical, plumbing etc - if these are all relatively new, can we trust that we’re generally in the clear? FWIW I never intended to own an old home but in our very limited inventory town, it’s either 100+ year old homes or new, ticky-tacky new builds.  I would very much like to avoid the latter.)[/quote]

I was the PP who mentioned buying the 1920s bungalow with structural issues. It was flipped by a flipper who told us at the time of purchase all electrical and plumbing was new. Didn’t end up being the case once we had a big leak and had to rip open walls. Saw quickly the only “new” electrical and plumbing was what was in our faces - eg anything behind walls hadn’t been touched. The electrician we hired to fix some of it said the flipper must have hired random guys from the 7-Eleven because none of the new stuff was to code either.

So all that said - look at permits for the property - that will tell you what has and hasn’t been updated properly. If you don’t see permits for the big stuff and it’s been updated recently, run. We did check permits, didn’t see any, said “Hey that’s BAU in Arlington” and have paid the price for that decision (literally). All said and done we’ll need to put another $150-250K in.

Also make sure to hire an actual structural engineer (PE) if there’s a hint of structural concerns. Make sure they are an actual PE licensed with the state.[/quote]

I am sorry but this was on you.  Did you have a realtor?  Pull permits. Our realtor looked over the permits with us and we saw they didn’t get any for some work.

Any plumbing and electrical needs permits.  We redid ours for my 1950s home and did all permits.  Friends who bought from flippers had issues.

We had to put in about $65k in new plumbing/ sewer line and all new electrical.  Our quote was $25k when we bought the house but of course when you open walls other things pop up so if you get a quote for work double that quote!  It stinks but it’s done now and we have all permits so when we sell the house it will be fine.  [/quote]

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