Looking at those older houses, I would rather have on of those than a soleless suburban cardboard home. But then I never buy stuff with an eye on resell value, I am not a broker or trader after all.
There are a few larger houses left with character in my town. Left, because starting in the 60's people left the city for the suburbs, and the houses fell into disrepair, burned down, etc.
I thought about buying one. Twice as big of a house that I have now, for half the price. However, you have a boiler system, no central AC, basically non-existant insulation, more wallpaper than you would ever want to remove, ancient electrical systems, and 125 years of shadetree repairs to every part of the house.
You'd spend a quarter million dollars upgrading the house to today's standards, like you see on an episode of This Old House. And then what? You have to deal with the crime and nuisances of the city, alley or a horse stall to park in, you get to pay city income tax, city water and trash which are 3X what I pay in my township, and then you have to figure out where you're going to send your kids to school. The city public schools are bottom 5% in the state so you have to go private or drive them to another district.
It's almost funny how, besides parking and renovation costs, I never heard of any of the other issues over here. Schools are all public (except for rich parents kids unable to make in a school daddy isn't paying for), crime is hardly a real problem (at least where the nice houses are), taxes are everywhere the same (for employees, if you have a company communities can set their own percentage). Waste removal differs, but not by much.
Maybe part of the reason why this kind of houses tend to be twice as expensive as a similar sized one in suburbia.
In 2019, we began a home addition. Every contractor who looked at our plan told us to make a tradeoff to allow for a fourth bedroom. We persisted, as we were doing this for ourselves rather than future buyers.
In 2020 and 2021, we're absolutely loving that we went for our home office plan instead of that bedroom. We knew we wanted it but had no idea how much we would need it!
Sometimes the trade off is as simple as making sure an office could “legally” be considered a bedroom - usually an egress window and/or something that’s arguably a closet (in some areas).
It can be worth doing those (or leaving them able to be done) for sale and valuation purposes.
Alternatively, when buying, look for those things that can’t be counted as a bedroom for bonus value (basement office, etc).
In our case, it was hallway access and layout but you're missing the larger point: there is no resale in our future here. If this house is being sold, it's because we're both dead and at that point, I don't care. Inflating value could only increase our prop taxes, why do that?
And just for a funny addendum, right now, Boston home buyers have only one requirement: a home to buy. The market is insane on a level never heard of before. All contingencies are waived. No home inspection is allowed. During Covid, you had 15 minutes to look over a house and you needed to make an offer that day or tomorrow at the latest. Your offer also needs to be $50-100k over asking to be taken seriously.
> Boston home buyers have only one requirement: a home to buy.
Not in my experience. In my building 4 of 6 units have been sold in the past year. All of them sold below or at original purchase price 2 years ago when it was new construction.
From what I hear things are different outside Boston, but in Boston it seems like a lot of new construction is going unsold and units are staying on the market for months.
I've bought two houses in my life. My second one is the youngster at around 100 years old now. The first one is of unknown age, but based on old town maps was between 186 and 199 years old when I bought it (it was on the later map and not the previous).
Both were great experiences, indeed with some maintenance needed (just like any structure). Both appreciated significantly during my ownership, in addition to providing shelter.
I'm glad that people generally don't want older houses. It means I can get a lot more of what I want for less money; I'm perfectly happy to have 1.5% annual maintenance (and worse insulation) instead of 1.0% when the place sells for 25% less than a comparable structure (and often has more land around it and land that's quality soil often with established/re-established trees).
As long as you don’t end up on the register of historic places - then you have costs and restrictions applied to “keep it as it was” and the hassle of proving that your fixes/changes don’t damage the historicity.
Where I live, Bavaria, you cna get all kinds of subsidies to refurbish and maintain historic places. You also need them due all the restrictions and general age. Also, work tends be quite expensive. Overall so, it is affordable. As long as you don't go into castles, bit then, if you can afford to buy, money probably isn't your problem anyway.
That being said, these places have. alot of charm and character. I am kind of sad to not have taken that one apartment with a Renessaince wall painting back the day.
Yeah, in the US you often get declared historic but there’s a fund to help pay for things but it’s entirely underfunded and so you’re stuck with the costs or ignoring the problem or just jury-rigging something unofficial.
Lead-based paint is a legitimate concern for older houses (built before 1979/1980), especially if you have children staying in the home, or if you want to do any remodeling/repainting
