We are old home lovers. Under contract on one in built in the 1880s! Oh, the issues I'm sure we will encounter.... But, having lived in a 90 year old home for the past decade hasn't stopped us from buying even older on our new home. We love the character, the history, the charm (crown moldings, banisters, etc.), and the incredible sturdiness and solidity (our new house has single, petrified wood i-beams beams--they are like stone now, really--spanning the entire length!). Unlikes: incessantly creaking floors when baby is sleeping, lack of closet space, and lack of adequate insulation in old plaster walls which, often, leads to uneven temperatures in different rooms. Still, I wouldn't buy new, now. Maybe that perspective will changes as we're old and grey and no longer have the patience to deal w/ the "charms" inherent in an old home. My parents owned and refurbished historic homes their whole lives, for 50 years, nearly ... until they retired. At which point they had a brand new home built from ground up on the perfect piece of land, to their exact specifications.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is this really an option for you, OP? There just aren't a lot of new homes here and usually it's priced far above the existing homes.

Not OP, but I'm curious about this because we're considering a renovation to our 1948 home and wondering if we should do a tear-down instead.

The problem is that if you renovate your home will still have the old year built date on it and that will cut into your value. For ROI and better options it is often better to rebuild from ground up with a new home. Think of it as patching a leak with duct tape vs removing the old pipe and installing a new one.

There are always issues w/ old homes because they were never designed to be permanent or were for the lower class people that could only buy low.

Love our house built in 1924. High ceilings, open floor plan. Negatives are small kitchen, small closets and only one bathroom on main floor. Fortunately we have a second full bath in finished basement and extra closets down there which we use. Our house has a lot of warmth and charcter but we miss having a fireplace. The house had one but the chimney was used for furnance and ac system. You can still see the chimney on top though

Anonymous wrote:Is this really an option for you, OP? There just aren't a lot of new homes here and usually it's priced far above the existing homes.

Not OP, but I'm curious about this because we're considering a renovation to our 1948 home and wondering if we should do a tear-down instead.

Anonymous wrote:Old house owner here. Electrical outlets! All hail the code changes, because even Luddite us needed more outlets than the house originally had.

Ditto. Old wiring and need upgrade for electrical box, and old plumbing. Makes me insane. We are planning on gutting the inside and put in all new including walls, ceilings and ducts for central air conditioning. Change to below floor radiant heat for entire house.

Love the high ceilings and location and we never hear the neighbors in our rowhouse.

Anonymous wrote:Is this really an option for you, OP? There just aren't a lot of new homes here and usually it's priced far above the existing homes.

It depends on where you're looking. The large old homes in Chevy Chase, for example, are often priced higher than the new homes.

First home was a 37-year old home that was in fairly good condition. However, didn't like the small rooms, small closets, small bathrooms, narrow staircase (difficult to get some furniture upstairs). The flow of the home was very closed off and when entertaining groups, you had 5-8 people in this room, 5-8 in that room, 10-12 in that room. Much harder for mingling. In our group of friends from 2-3 different activities, the groups tended to segregate into different rooms and there was less mingling. There were more "old home issues" which included plumbing issues behind the walls, limited electrical (and older, smaller circuit panel, so hard to upgrade electrical without a big cost). And outdoor maintenance issues. For example, we had wonderful old-growth trees, that dropped tons and tons of branches and caused damage to the roof. We ended up having to cut down one tree (and it was very expensive--only thing that saved us was that the next door neighbor who also had branches on his roof agreed to split the cost) to save the roof from annual damage. Older windows that were leaky ended up needing repair. While some of these are specific to our house, there are a whole class of general issues that come with age and 80+% of the older homes have 2 or more of these (plumbing, electrical, windows, appliances, foundation, exterior walls, roof, etc).

Second home we built in 2006, had it inspected several times during the construction and is a good solid build. After 5 years, we're far happier with "new construction" issues than with old. We love the open floor plan, larger rooms, larger closets, wider staircase. New homes issues include "nail pops" and settlement cracks. In older homes, the settlement cracks are there, and more stable and when patched, stay patches. In newer homes, the settlement cracks appear and grow as the house settles/shifts. If you patch, then in another year or two, it could settle and crack again. All typical, but annoying. Also, in new homes, the lack of old growth outdoors is unattractive. There are no old growth trees anywhere in our neighborhood which makes the neighborhood look more institutional and two-dimensional. The fact that most homes look very similar from outside. Indoors, they are all quite different, even the same models have much more variety indoors, but outdoors, it's very cookie cutter. Some features in newer homes look good but are a pain to maintain such as the chandelier in the 2-story front hall. I had to get a new taller ladder just to change the light bulbs. But I love the new safety features such as a gas shutoff valve that is away from the furnace on a nice accessible wall instead of behind the furnace and hard to reach in the old house. The water has two cutoffs, one cuts off all water to the house and one that cuts off all water except the sprinkler system. And both cutoffs are next to the water boiler and easily accessible. Old water cutoff was behind the water boiler in a small space and hard to get to.

We are definitely fans of newer construction. But we have plenty of friends who love their old homes with character and have renovated them to eliminate many of the "old home" problems. They've done newer renovations but kept the style of the older home. Great for them, but you still can't get around the smaller size and accessibility issues. And their renovations were much more expensive to keep the style.

Old house owner here. Electrical outlets! All hail the code changes, because even Luddite us needed more outlets than the house originally had.

Is this really an option for you, OP? There just aren't a lot of new homes here and usually it's priced far above the existing homes.

I think it depends on the type of housing.

Used to live in a 1980s townhouse - large rooms, large closets but flimsy construction and low ceilings.

Now live in a 1915 rowhouse that is only 1000 sf but has lovely high ceilings and brick walls. I don't feel the neighbors banging around. The first floor is entirely open - no small rooms. But, yeah, the closets are small and oddly shaped.

Anonymous wrote:We hear people bash new construction and claim that its not as solidly built as old homes.

new home owners:
What are some problems have you encountered, if you lived in an old home before how does it compare, would you pick an old home with the same size if you could do it again.

Old home owners:
Same for older home owner who, moved from new to old

Moved from brand new to old. I can say I really feel like they didn't built big enough closets in each bedroom. Also the master bedroom size and bath are a joke. Also each room is boxed and closed off rather than open and flowing.

We hear people bash new construction and claim that its not as solidly built as old homes.

new home owners:
What are some problems have you encountered, if you lived in an old home before how does it compare, would you pick an old home with the same size if you could do it again.

Old home owners:
Same for older home owner who, moved from new to old