"fair" condition from house inspection
We are considering buying a small brownstone in prime Blyn brownstone but are a bit scared by the inspection report, which listed the house as being only in “fair” condition with lots of potential problems i.e. some asbestos on basement pipes, badly done roor, loose cornice, some foundation erosion, etc. Do these problems sound typical?…
We are considering buying a small brownstone in prime Blyn brownstone but are a bit scared by the inspection report, which listed the house as being only in “fair” condition with lots of potential problems i.e. some asbestos on basement pipes, badly done roor, loose cornice, some foundation erosion, etc. Do these problems sound typical? Or is a “fair” condition house (as opposed to “fairly good” or “good”) more the norm? The house is priced OK for this market, but of course is still a ton of money so we want to be sure it’s a good investment…
That all sounds typical of a “project.” If you’re prepared to roll with the punches and put on a dust mask yourself from time to time, don’t sweat it.
The whole fair/good/excellent rating isn’t nearly as useful as the fine print. Are there problems that could turn out to be major? A cornice you can fix. Wiring, you have to tear up walls to get to. Tearing up walls is like pulling at a piece of loose thread.
The foundation is potentially more an issue than the roof or asbestos. I’ve replaced a roof before, I’ve had to remove asbestos before, so has everybody who buys an old house. Foundations can be fixed too, but it’s more likely to have *surprises* waiting once you start digging around in there.
You need to ask your inspector what ‘fair’ actually means. Is it similar to most houses he/she sees? Is it fair worse? Slightly better?
Good luck!
Asbestos is not an ongoing problem – just a job that needs to be done. You have it removed as soon as you close (before you move in) and that’s done.
A new roof on a brownstone is fairly cheap, and needs to be done periodically anyway. Do find out if the instpector has an opinion on whether it is just the rubber (or other material) top that needs replacing, or if he thinks there are structural problems below that would require a tear-off of exising roof materials to fix – now THAT would be expensive – a new roof layer put on top (or even just patching the roof job that is currently there) would not be (as house expenses go.)
The cornice you could have fixed when you do the roof.
I would find out whether the foundation erosion is minimal or likely to be an ongoing and expensive problem. It may be that you can have it easily reinforced a bit – but it could be an expensive headache. This one I would definitely seriously asses better before moving forward.
You need to focus on each specific problem raised – not on the overall rating of “fair.”
my inspection was similar and it depressed me to no end. it sounded like a ticking time bomb. then i realized i’d never be able to afford better and that all old house are in effect ticking time bombs. it’s your job to defuse them! but i would get on that ‘loose cornice,’ that sounds like it could smoosh somebody!
Had the same fair to poor condition rating on my house when I bought.
A good inspection report will breakdown and should indicate some criticality of the findings. The report on my house came out fair to poor due to a lot of little things that were not critical or could wait to fix over time.
As the previous posts indicate, we don’t see all the details on your report, so it’s hard to say. I would suggest consulting with the inspector.
My inspector offered to answer followup questions I had. This helped me to pick out the “has to get done”, “good to get done”, and “nice to get done” items to figure out budgeting for improvements over a longer period since I also didn’t have the budget for a big renovation at once.
Get am engineer and contractor in to help price out correcting what cannot wait. Adding in those expenses, is the house still priced OK for the market? If not, offer less.
Hard to say without a lot more information but as a rule, a good house inspector would never deem an older house that needed renovation as “good”. Their job is to warn you of everything even if its not that critical. So you have to take what they say seriously but also with a grain of salt.
Did the inspection raise any issues you were not aware of? If so, you may want to get specific estimates of how much it costs to repair and renegotiate the price on some portion of that.
But if the inspector raised issues that you knew about and are already factored into the price, then you have to decide if it this house is something you want to deal with. Old homes all have issues – you have to find the one that has the issues you are willing to take on.
If you have fears and are on a tight budget, buy a condo instead. If you have fears, but have a big budget, go for it. You never know what “fair” could turn out to be and you want to have sufficient cushion to do the renovations/repairs well and not “on the cheap.”
Myself, I wouldn’t be scared even though I don’t have a big budget. But I can live through construction nightmares, but that’s just me. I hate to see what is probably a beautiful home get renovated sloppily because you didn’t set aside enough of a cushion fund to do things properly. There’s enough of that in the city already.