Buying an Older Home
By Sherril Steele-Carlin
We recently bought a 27-year-old home, and have found that everything is not always how it looks on the outside. Age is not everything in a home as we've discovered. How the home was maintained has a lot to do with the real age of a home.
We knew there were things in our "new" old home that needed work, and had budgeted for those, plus some decorating and upgrading that we wanted to do. However, almost from the moment we moved in, we discovered there were some big problems with our new home. The toilets backed up nearly every time we used them. The main line to the septic tank backs up every week or so. The heater wouldn't shut off, and the heater flue was disconnected from the roof vent. The garage door opener burned out, and the garbage disposal sounded like a jet engine. The water has so much calcium in it; "clean" dishes have a deep film that only vinegar will remove.
Some of these things should have been caught by our home inspector, but were not. Others were simply things that didn't show up in any inspection. As we found more problems, we began to talk to the neighbors, and discovered the house, which looked so good on the outside with fresh paint and a new roof, had been pretty much neglected by the previous residents, who didn't even water the landscaping and allowed it to die.
The lesson here is two-fold. Make sure that you hire an INDEPENDENT home inspector to look at the home you're hoping to buy. A home inspector picked by your realtor may not really give a balanced view of the home, since they are really working for the realtor, and not you. They may not want to jeopardize their working relationship with the realtor, which will go on far longer than their home inspection for you, and so, they may "overlook" certain things to make sure the sale goes through.
Second, learn about construction, and what to look for in older homes. While no one can be an expert in everything, if you know some of the recurring problems that occurred 20 or 30 years ago, you may stand a better chance of spotting problems and weeding out problematic homes before you fall in love with them.
Before you buy a house, make sure you dig a little deeper than the surface, and look further into the background of the home to be safe and sure.
