Looking for our first home: Questions to ask
My husband and I are starting to look for our first home. From my internet browsing, it seems that we’ll end up in a brownstone floor-through apartment. Any suggestions on red flags to look for or standard questions to ask when we go to open houses? Searching the forum I’ve come up with: When was…
My husband and I are starting to look for our first home. From my internet browsing, it seems that we’ll end up in a brownstone floor-through apartment. Any suggestions on red flags to look for or standard questions to ask when we go to open houses? Searching the forum I’ve come up with:
When was the roof last redone?
Are the electrical and plumming redone?
What type of boiler/heat?
Many thanks in advance.
Hi Fawn, slightly off-topic here, but if you’re still looking for a co-op and are considering 1 BRs in Brooklyn Heights, I just put mine up for sale. My self-managed co-op building is 2 townhouses combined, in which there are 21 units (mostly 1 beds with some 2 BRs as well). Since it’s a larger building, there are amenities like an elevator and trash chute, with the charm of a brownstone exterior. And we have a good mix of young people like ourselves and old-timers who’ve lived in our self-managed building for years. If you’re interested, email me at jennrealestate-at-gmail-dot-com and I’d be happy to put you in touch with our broker. Either way, I hope your search goes well!
“are offsetting positives”
Ok, take much of the long post by 2:40 with a large sack of salt. But there’s a point to be made…think if you would you want to have this person as your co-owner?
In general, you shouldn’t sweat the small stuff, but you should exert due diligence and have a good attorney. Common sense will get you through most things. And expect to have a few problems in a 100+ yr old building.
Asbestos: if you’re not planning on having parties in the basement, makes no difference. Dangers are way overblown anyway, like lead paint, unless you disturb it (or eat it.)
200A electricity is for suburban houses with 10ton a/cs, not for a floor thru. 70A is sufficient, 100A way sufficient. Unless you’re planning to do industrial welding or something.
Ditto with hot water. It’s not a motel. Exercise due restraint.
No, buying a small house is quite different than a floor-thru. Much more hassles if anything goes wrong (nobody to call on), your reserves are probably less than the co-op’s, etc etc. And no way could you find a house at close to the price of a single floor, unless it’s in a totally different area. Of course there are not offsetting positives.
Also avoid buildings with seriously bitter shareholders like 2:40/2:47.
And ignore the person above who says go for a building without newbies. What you should go for is a building WITH newer owners, as they will have paid a lot for their apartments, and will probably be more interested in maintaining the building. They may be obnoxious (see my ealier post about small building personalities), but at least they will have common interests with you.
It is a little known fact that the issues in many coops often divide along the lines of those who want to maintain the building clashing with owners who have been there for a decade or two who don’t want to spend any money to fix it up. They may call the new owners yuppies who have and want to spend money. But is likely the old owners who have no or small mortgages, and much larger savings accounts, due to purchasing much earlier at much cheaper prices. It is not so much an issue of having money, often, as it is about how to spend it, whether investing in building maintenance is a good idea. (Yes, you will know all the details of your neighbors finances in a small building.)
Lessons learned the hard way:
1) If there is asbestos, some loose, all over the basement, don’t assume that well, it is a small, self-managed coop, they just need someone to get estimates and manage the process of getting the removal job done. (You can also apply this logic to leaky roofs, cracked sidewalks, facades that need work, etc.) NO, they have asbestos all over the basement (or whatever else that needs serious attention) because they want it that way. Seriously. Even when they have plenty of money in reserve to take care of it. They don’t want to remove it/fix it, or they can’t all agree to. Some refuse to believe it is not good for them to breathe it/not good for the building to decay. (This is not just one person’s experience – I have known others who went through the exact same thing, with asbestos and with other serious building issues, including other ones involving health and safety issues.)
2) All the stuff mentioned above is smart to find out about, but what you really want to find out is whether the people living there get along and are reasonable. (Buildings can be fixed, and most of this stuff is not ALL that expensive in a small brownstone. Psycho personalities, however, cannot be fixed. Even if you think you are good at working with or around them, you will find that owning a building with them is a new circle of hell.) I ignored all the warning signs that I saw and heard about. Ignore these at your peril. I bought into a contentious place, which had been so for years, and remained that way. (Not all small coops are like that – I have met some people who had positive experiences – but I would NEVER, EVER buy into a small, self-managed coop again. Or a brownstone condo, as the issues with having to maintain the building together make it very coop like.)
3) Keep your eyes and ears wide open. Ignore warning signs about the personalities and maintenance left undone, and you will regret it. No matter how nice the apartment is, and how much you love it, run at the first sign of deferred maintenance or un-cooperative neighbors and board members. Good luck.
4) Oh, and unless it was gut-rehabbed by the sponsor (you can tell these – they have smoother sheetrock walls, and less detail) – then don’t expect that the electricity or plumbing was touched at all during the conversion. It will then only have been upgraded, to the extent it was upgraded at all, by individual unit owners rehabbing their own units. It will likely be ancient – not unlivable, but expensive to upgrade for yourself.
5) And the electricity coming into the building (even on some that were gut rehabbed) will likely be about 1/2 what any inspector or architect says it should be (total of 100 or 125, not the recommended 200 or 250.) If your unit’s electrical box can access all of that total, rather than just part of it, that’s a slightly better situation. But if you want all your air conditioners to work well, you need more. But don’t expect the coop to want to pay for the expensive job of bringing more electricity into the building from the street. See above on deferred maintenance/upgrading.
6) Ditto with the hot water. If you don’t have your own hot water heater as the result of a gut rehab (most don’t), then the building hot water heaters in the basement will likely not be the sufficient recommended amount for the number of apartments in the building. (Ignore this if the hot water is supplied by a continuously heating system, which is not the norm in these buildings, rather than the typical round gas hot water heater that holds water heated.) As with the electric supply, this isn’t necessarily unlivable. You are going to get an inspection, aren’t you, and not by an inspector recommended by your realtor?
7) Are you thinking about buying in a larger building now? You should be. Less charm, maintenance is higher, but some things are better cared for. I say some, as there are many horror stories in larger buildings as well. You don’t have to work on the crazy board in a larger building, but you do have less input on actually getting the board to fix a leaky roof that rains into your apartment, including into your bed, in every single room for over a year (happened to friends on mine in a very nice large building on a prime P.S. block.)
If I had to do it again, I’d say if you have the funds to purchase a floor-thru in a brownstone coop, you’d be better off buying a small house. I didn’t want to take on the renovation and maintenance costs myself at the time, but that was, in hindsight, a dumb, dumb, dumb decision. If you can live in and maintain a brownstone coop building (and you will have to maintain it – there is no management company), you can certainly take on a house. I didn’t know that about myself when I bought my coop, but I know it now.
Sorry, last line should re ‘as in a co-op’– no board approval in a condo.
How does it change things if the brownstone is a condo vs a co-op? There are a handful of condos on the market.
I know there is not the same board approval process in a co-op, but imagine most of building maintenance questions should be the same.
It doesn’t just matter when these things that are specific to the building rather than the apt were redone. It matters more whether or not the coop has cash reserves to handle it when something does need to be done. It’s ok to have a 10 year old roof or boiler as long as they work and the coop is building the reserve.
You also probably want to know if there are existing shareholders who know more than you. You are clearly inexperienced (not a dig, just a fact). So you want to find a coop that has some long standing people who know how to manage rather than all newbies.