Setting Expectations When Buying An Early 1900's Home

This episode is about setting expectations for home buyers and their realtors when buying a home built in the early 1900's. I have inspected hundreds of early 1900's homes over the years, the reactions from buyers and their realtors can be a bit numbing at times when i am giving my overview of what conditions i found during the home inspection. I believe the reason for this is because the buyers only see the new paint, drywall, kitchen cabinets and new stainless appliances etc. No one is thinking hey whats holding up the house?

The reality is the home may be a flip and the original systems may be still in place such as the foundation, wood framing, electrical, plumbing and heating. Determining the condition of these systems is the purpose of the general home inspection.

Congratulations on your home! Buying a home is a great investment, just make sure you get as much information as you can about the home you want to buy before you commit. Get all the inspections the home requires and get the specialists that are recommended to get you price quotes before the end of your inspection contingency period and the close of escrow.

Here are some of the different conditions i may find during a home inspection when inspecting an early 1900's homes.

Transcript

John Laforme: 0:00

Buying a home? Don't panic. Just listen to the rest of this podcast. welcome to Home Inspection authority podcast with me, John laforme. Are you a homebuyer, a realtor, or maybe a home inspector? If you are, then this podcast is definitely for you. So let's get right into some straight talk about home inspections. Check check, check this this thing on. Okay, everybody, John here from home inspection authority. Welcome t my very first podcast. In his episode one I want to c ver setting expectations for homebuyers and their real ors who are looking at purchasi g a early 1900s home. First thi g I want to say is these homes are not new, even though the've been remodeled. So they ome with a lot of unexpe ted surprises. So let's tr to clarify that now. When am going through my overview o my findings, the experience I ave is can be quite numbing. t's like, wow, everyone's jaw ust drops. The amount of disbe ief in their eyes is like oh my od, you serious. And thi is typically because, you k ow, they walked into a house hat was flipped or remodeled So when they walked in the f ont door, all they saw was new drywall, new appliances, new electrical receptacles, new lights, new faucets and fixt res in the bathrooms. And no o e's given any thought to Hey, wh t's holding up the house? Or, you know, what's in the attic? Or, you know, is my wiring th t's hidden behind the walls? I it actually? Is it new? Is it the original wiring? And that's the cause of all the shock and awe that I get when I'm delive ing my overview. It's like, wow. But anyway. So I don't expect the buyer to understand all t is. They're just buying a house it doesn't mean they're ome experts by any means. So d n't feel bad about not kno ing anything about the house yo're buying. But it does does hel to do a little bit of researc on it. Maybe if you have a ch nce to look it up online, just ind of read through what it m ght have. Are there any upgrade to the property? Has it een disclosed that maybe the plumbing has been upgraded, the electrical has been upgra ed? These are the things you re lly want to pay attention to So there's no, you know, big surprise, when your ome inspector tells you that. Y ah, you know, this house looks g eat inside. But all your m jor systems are still origi al. Let's talk a little more a out disclosures from the sell rs. Oftentimes, in the recent ear or so. I show up and I'm l ke, oh, that anybody let you now that, you know, the foundati n's been retrofitted? And the f rst thing they say is, well, no we haven't gotten disclosures et. And like, really, I'm her to inspect the house, and you d n't even know what's been don to the house. So that to me s a little little, you k ow, backwards. That's like put ing the cart in front of the ho se. So I just don't agree with t at. And I think that's, I t ink that's just bad business f r a listing agent, not to give the buyer's agent, all the information they need before the home inspections even start So I think that should be addre sed between sellers and buyers. And it should be a lot of clarit on that before the home inspe tor shows up. Because if you d n't have any disclosures, and I how up at the house, and it's b ilt in 1901, or, or maybe a li tle later, expect to have ome surprises and some shock and awe and some disbelief in your yes when I started telling you what's, what the problems are with the home. Seeing how h mes are built from the ground up. Let's just start there with the foundation. So the first thi g I want to do is identify what ype of foundation is under the house. Is it made a brick? I it poured concrete? Is it bould rs? Is it twigs from a tree? Who knows? But that's one of the things I want to point out for you right away is let you now what kind of foundation you have. So as I'm inspecting i, I want to then determine the condition of the foundation So there's a lot of diffe ent conditions that can exist n a house this sold and one of the conditions coul be efflorescence. So effloresc nce on the foundation i an indication that water is get ing in from around the build ng, which is pretty likely T be present on any house this And that's, that's a normal thing to find. Honestly, I would expect to see that, however, has it been addressed in the recent years have there been drainage installed around the house has there been any rain gutters installed on the roof, so forth to keep the water from getting under the house, the last thing you want is moisture in your crawlspace. Another condition that we can find on a foundation this old would be spalling. Now spalling is a much worse condition than efflorescence. spalling is an indication that water has been getting in for a long time. And when spalling occurs, it means that the the side of the foundation that's visible inside the crawlspace, and sometimes you can see it on the outside of the foundation when you're walking around the house is because the the foundation is starting to deteriorate. And when that happens, you can see the rocks the aggregate that's inside the concrete, it's exposed because all of the smooth finish of the poor has now just crumbled off, and you can literally see it building up a little pile all the way along the foundation when you're underneath the house. Now that that there may require a foundation guy to do a drill test on it to see if see if he was able to drill it and actually try to screw an anchor into it would it hold that determines whether or not your foundation may need some rehabilitation, or reinforcement, or maybe a report right beside it a sister Foundation, which can be expensive. So these are conditions that you want to know about before you make your final decision on the house, your home inspector will not be able to give you a price quote on these repairs or replacements. further evaluation by qualified foundation specialists would then be recommended so they can come out, give it a further evaluation and determine what the cost of repairs or replacement would be. Let's talk about foundation cracks. foundation cracks are pretty common defined on a home this age. Cracks are not all scary. Most of the time, you just see fine hairline cracks in one or two areas under house or you know sometimes maybe three or four areas. But this is pretty common, I would expect to find that and most home inspectors will probably agree with that. However, if you start seeing cracks that are, you know more than an eighth inch wide, reaching into quarter inch half inch or inch wide. That's a bigger problem. You could definitely have some issues with that. So you might be wondering what causes cracks in the foundation. Well, that goes back to what I mentioned earlier about drainage around the building rain gutters around the building, the age of the building has to have negative grade, which means when you're walking around the house, the dirt is sloping towards the foundation, which means when it gets wet all the water sits right up against the foundation. That's the main reason why cracks happen. There's also a condition called expansive soil. This means the soil on your property has a lot more clay than usual. And when it gets wet, it expands. And when it dries, it shrinks. And it leaves behind shrinkage cracks that you can visibly see in the soil. This condition is not specific to early 1900 homes, it can happen to any type of home on any type of property. So just wanted to throw that in there. Because it is a possibility it may be found this condition can cause cracks in the foundation as well as lift and lower the posts and piers that run between your foundation exterior walls. And what that means is if you're walking inside the house and you notice you're going uphill in one area and going downhill in another area. Those are some of the causes from expansive soil. I've literally seen column wood columns and Piers posts appears where there's a gap like a quarter inch gap in between the posts and the pier or they are the posts and the beam above it because it wasn't nailed together properly. So this can happen and these are things that you can expect to find if you have expansive soil. This is not under every house but it can happen. And here's the number one question I get asked on every home is house anchored. Is there bolts holding the wood sill plates to the Foundation Well If you're buying a 1901 house or maybe a 1908 house, chances are you may have a brick Foundation. And if it's a brick Foundation, there is no way to anchor it. Because the brick and mortar will not hold any type of bolts. As soon as you drill into them, they'll just break and they will not do any good at all. So, brick foundations are not ideal. Unless you have a lot of money to spend after you buy your house, because it can be very expensive to add a new foundation to the property. This can all be done, it just takes time and money like everything else. So if you're looking for something with a solid foundation, you may want to pass on the Brickhouse foundation and find another one but the poured concrete foundation. I also want to mention, I have been to homes with brick foundations that were skim coated with a concrete motor or a almost like a stucco finish to try to conceal the brick. So this is the importance of your home inspection and foundation inspection. Some people will try to conceal the brick. And sometimes they do a pretty good job about it. But there's ways of finding it, you got to just take a really good look between the sill plate and top of the foundation. And you will see that there's brick. And sometimes you can see the outline of the brick and the skim coat because it's just too thin. So, buyer beware, if there's a brick Foundation, someone may try to conceal it. Very recently, I was at a house that was built in 1906. And when I first arrived, the realtor was very concerned about the foundation because the sellers would not answer her question about what the foundation was and what kind of material it was. And we actually found a brick foundation. So that explained why they weren't telling her what it was. And this happened to be a foundation that was skim coated. But they didn't do a very good job of skim coating X, I noticed a brick foundation right away. If you do have a poured concrete foundation under the home you're looking at and there's no anchoring. That's not too hard to fix. That's called foundation retrofitting, where the foundation professional will come in and install universal anchor plates, which is like a clamp that they they bolt to the wood seal plate. And then they also bolt it to the concrete foundation which keeps us secure. So in the event of a big seismic seismic shake, the property will not be able to slide back and forth on the foundation. So that's a good upgrade to have. However, it's not a requirement in California yet. It's just a recommended upgrade to add that to your house. So if you're buying it and it's not been retrofitted, that's one of the first things I would do after you bought it. The wood framing in your attic also needs to be looked at the rafters supporting the roof and then all that weight transferring down from the roof onto the walls below. All that needs to be looked at as well. Oftentimes, on a home this age, you'll find split rafters that might have been poorly repaired or this inadequate framing supports between the rafters and the walls below the ceiling joist because understand the home was built a long time ago to a much more lenient building standard. As compared to today. Multiple layers of roof materials may be the culprit for causing split rafters or damaged framing in an attic. It's not uncommon to find multiple roof layers on these flipped homes. I do find it quite often actually. From the street, you might see Composition Shingles on the roof but when I get in the attic, first thing I see is wood shingles with maybe one or two layers of composition shingles on top and that is just too much weight for the structure especially if it's built in the early 1900s. So this is not a good condition to have. There is absolutely no benefit to having multiple roof layers. It does not make your roof any more watertight and one layer would if this condition exists on the home you're looking to buy it's gonna require stripping the roof of all layers and then reroofing the roof correctly with one layer. Another condition you may find in this older home is knob and tube electrical wiring, otherwise known as k and t so knob and tube wiring is not ideal to have it stuck to something you want to upgrade and replace. And the reason for that is it's basically a first generation type wiring That was original to the building's construction. It's not grounded, which that alone is a good enough reason to replace it. Typical condition of the wiring is the insulation around the wires deteriorated, exposing the wire. So if you were in your attic or under your house and you happen to touch this exposed wire, that's, that's going to give you one hell of a shock. So that there is a couple reasons to replace it. And when I do see it on a remodeled house, that house may have a brand new electrical panel. And if you look inside the panel all you see his new today's type, you know, copper, non metallic sheath wiring. And wow, think hey, you know what they maybe they rewired the house. But then after further investigation of the house, I look underneath the house in the crawlspace I look in the attic, and I'm finding knob and tube splice together with the Romex that was added at the panel. So not a good install. In most cases I have yet to find partial knob and tube connected to up dated Romex. That was done correctly. It's always sloppy. It's always a fire hazard. It's a safety hazard. So that's something you could definitely expect to find. In a home the sage that's been remodeled and in some cases, I inspect houses like this that were not remodeled, which may mean everything is original. Oftentimes when I find knob a tube in an attic, there happens to be blown in insulation present which in some areas, it's concealing the knob and tube wiring knob and tube wiring should not be in an attic that is insulated. Because the wire can produce heat from being live and that they're being surrounded by insulation will not allow the heat to dissipate from the wire which could lead to ignition of the insulation or wood members or anything it's in contact with. So a lot of times it is concealed, which means there may be more than your home inspector can see. So the whole house should be further evaluated for proper inspection of knob and tube wiring. What I noticed during my inspections with my clients, the home buyer is that every time they see an electrical panel upgrade, they automatically think that the whole house is rewired. Just want to clear the air on that that's usually not the case. So just because you have a new panel upgrade does not mean the whole house was rewired. Okay, so what kind of plumbing can you expect to find under an early 1900s building? Well, most likely, we're going to find cast iron pipe. And that pipe was likely original to the construction of the building. So he definitely going to want to expect to upgrade that after you buy the house if that is present. Hopefully it's been upgraded to an ABS plastic which is today's typical drain pipe application for a residential home. Sometimes you may find sections of cast iron connected to ABS plastic, which means only spot repairs were done. Not the whole system was replaced. Some homeowner take the just fix what needs to be fixed for now other homeowners take the proactive approach and replace everything it just be all done with it. So that might be found and that's something you may have to deal with. Now moving on to the water supply pipe which could be galvanized pipe, it could be copper, it could be pecks. Typically, what I find in a early 1900s home that has been flipped is still traces of galvanized pipe still in service connected to copper or connected to pecs. I've seen all different kinds of scenarios. The ideal condition is to have all the galvanized removed. galvanized pipe does one thing it rust from the inside. So if the inside diameter of the pipe is half an inch, by the time it's all rusted in is barely a pinhole there. So that restricts your water flow. And it may cause rusty water at faucets from all the rust buildup in the pipe. So there's nothing good about keeping galvanized pipe it's definitely something you want to get rid of. So if the house has a partial copper upgrade, the first thing you want to do when you move in is just remove all the rest of that galvanized and continue with copper or pecs. Whatever you choose. Here's another popular unrealistic expectation During a home inspection, a lot of customers think you're going to inspect the plumbing underground between the home and the street. That is your sewer lateral. And that requires a separate inspection by somebody that has sewer inspection equipment, such as a camera, that pipe should be inspected, it's my belief should be inspected on every house. Doesn't matter how old or how new the house is, I've found problems in the past with brand new construction. And of course, everything in between from 1900 to brand new. So I just want to clear that air on that one. That is not part of the home inspection, and definitely is highly recommended on any house, I hope I was able to set some realistic expectations for you in this episode, going into purchasing a really 1900s home. And the key takeaway from this I want you to have is get a foundation inspector lined up the same time you line up your home inspector, it would be very much worthwhile for you, it'll save you time going through your inspection contingency period before the close of escrow. Another takeaway from this should be getting a termite inspection done for all the wood framing on the property as well. And, you know, your home inspector will cover most other stuff, I wouldn't worry about getting electrician out there right away, unless you already know there's knob and tube wiring. So let your home inspector determine that if you need a electrician to come out for that. But otherwise, I do have a YouTube channel that you can actually watch videos of some of these topics I cover today, breaking them down and explaining them better. And that's a home inspection authority on YouTube. If you do check out the channel, please subscribe to the channel and you'll get notifications on new videos as soon as I release them as well. Okay, so I want to give a special shout out to the person who inspired me to start a podcast, Matt Neal. Matt is actually one of my customers who hired me a couple times to inspect two houses for him. And he really liked my service and then he had a conversation with me and inspired me to start a podcast and share my knowledge and thoughts with everybody out there. So here we go. This is the end of episode one. I hope everybody found this helpful and interesting and informative. And that's the goal here is to inform everybody and make your home buying purchase process simpler and less stressful. Buying a home should be fun. So if you are buying a home in the Los Angeles area, and you are looking for a home inspection company like mine, you can look online at home inspection of thority calm and you can schedule online or you can give us a call at 800-950-8184 and we can do general Home Inspections sewer camera inspections, swimming pool inspections, indoor air quality testing, and mold inspections.