Age of Home when buying

Did you consider the age of a house when buying? I never thought of it when we bought our current home but my FIL keeps asking us everytime we tell him we saw an open house.

Age of Home when buying

We looked at mostly new construction, and ultimately bought a new build. The few houses we looked at that were older didn’t have enough of a price difference for us to be able to make the changes we would have wanted to when we first moved in. We also worried that if we needed to spend time saving money to let’s say redo the kitchen and then all of the sudden something major in the house breaks that we’d have to spend the money on that instead of doing the renovations

Age of Home when buying

We looked at homes they were mostly mid century but really wanted one we saw that was from late 1800s. Loved it.

Re: Age of Home when buying

Most of the homes in the areas where we were looking (southeast Nassau) were built in the 1950s or maybe early 1960s.

If you look in Suffolk, more of the homes there are built in the 1970s.

We didn't want brand new construction, or a very old house (some of the houses in our area were built in the 1920s/1930s).

Age of the home wasn't a primary focus for us because again, most of the homes were built around the same time period.

A lot of people rule out brand new homes because of cost and high taxes. And some people don't want super old homes (pre WW II) because they tend to have smaller rooms and closets, very low ceilinged basements (more like storage cellars than able to be converted to living space), plaster walls, and make renovations more complicated.

But on LI, an older home (1950s-1970s) is really the norm for most areas. It's harder to find something "newer." Most home inspectors say the homes built in the 1950s were constructed more rock solid than newer homes (in terms of the actual materials used -- thicker wood beams, steel i-beams, etc.).

Re: Age of Home when buying

We looked at the age of the house, but it wasn't a deciding factor. Mainly, it's important to know building trends/code of that time.

Lead based house paint was banned in 1978, so any house built/renovated at that year or older may have lead paint. Newer houses won't have that issue.

Between 1965 and 1973, aluminum house wiring was trendy, so it's something to look at for that age house.

Older houses may have asbestos (pipe insulation, shingles, paint, wall patches, floor tiles, etc)

Our house had many major renovations/expansions over the years. It was originally a 1950s beach house, and the newest renovation was in 2008.

The 1950s section of the house had a lot of sketchy building materials/design/structure. Definitely no where near as good of construction as the newer sections. The newest part (that I was directly involved in designing and watching) is engineered to the hilt. So much better built, and much stronger than the older half. Building codes are much stricter now, so that is always a factor in how well a house might be built.

Message edited 6/22/2018 8:51:23 AM.

Re: Age of Home when buying

Re: Age of Home when buying

Yes, somewhat. I wanted an older house-I just prefer those styles. Our search areas were very narrow and most of the houses in those places are old anyway. Our house is built in 1920.

Age of Home when buying

We didn’t we have a house from 1959 in Suffolk and love it it still has the original kitchen with the original stove and going to be honest I don’t mind it and we plan to have the stove restored when we redo the kitchen

Re: Age of Home when buying

My home was built in 1896 but you’d never know it

Age of Home when buying

We have an older home built in 1932. I love the details of many older homes. I really wanted an older home. I am not a fan of 1950’s and 1960’s styles but we did look at a couple of homes built in that time frame.