What do you wish you knew?
We’re closing soon on a brownstone that hasn’t been updated in decades. We’ve only lived in apartments and I expect it’s going to be a huge adjustment for us being homeowners and having this huge space to care for. What do you wish you had known when you first bought your house?
ahnyst.smalls
in General Discussion 3 years ago
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30 replies
carmen.c.chan | 2 years and 11 months ago
I would have appreciated the opportunity to buy the house for less and do a lot of the work myself. I found that the economies of scale (i.e. being able to save labor costs by hiring contractors when needed) were much higher than an individual homeowner could realize.
BKALLDAY | 2 years and 11 months ago
These contracts are junk. The companies hold all the cards and will come up with any number of ways to not service the contracts. Even if you read the fine print, there is invisible ink you don’t see that still gives them the power to alter cancel or minimize their services. It is best to just set aside several thousand as well as (if purchasing) have the sewer lines checked thoroughly.
colonialrevival | 2 years and 11 months ago
I’m not kidding — the list of possible claim denial scenarios is an entire page in the contract! It’s probably great for business…! They cancelled me 4 months ago, called me a month later as a “courtesy”, and now I’m receiving direct mail marketing from them suggesting that I may be at risk because my sewer isn’t covered. Sigh…
cate | 2 years and 11 months ago
The fine print used to specify that if the roof gutter drainpipe is connected to the house sewer line, it is not covered. So maybe they’ve changed the policy. Re disconnecting the drainpipe, it’s not advisable. Everyone I know who’s done it has problems with water pooling in their backyard and seeping into the cellar, even if they have a drain in their backyard. (Connecting to their sewer line, of course.)
andriywww1990 | 2 years and 11 months ago
Colonial, are you serious, age? The reason we get this is because the pipes are old.
colonialrevival | 2 years and 11 months ago
AWR has an incredibly long list of pre-existing conditions that are reason for cancellation, including backpitch, age, jupiter and saturn not quite aligned, and “i don’t want to”. be careful with them — very slimy.
Lurker | 2 years and 11 months ago
I”m on the phone with AWR now confirming, but this is on the site: The Water Service Line Protection Program is available at $4.49 per month. The Sewer Service Line Protection Program is available at $8.47 per month.
Q. Are sewer lines that are connected to storm drains covered under the program?
A. The Sewer Service Line Protection Program covers repairs to sewer lines that are connected to storm drains. However, repairs to the rain water pipes, including storm drains, risers, leaders, gutters and catch basins, are not covered.
Granted as said above they may balk at paying as is their reputation, but at least formally homes that have rain water pipes connected and have the SSWLP are considered covered.
alexwithak | 2 years and 11 months ago
Well that’s certainly information we gave them and I’ve seen lots of posts from folks who successfully had claims paid on row houses, which as noted mostly have combined sewers. I suppose it’s worth triple checking. Skepticism of insurance companies is warranted.
JohnHancock | 2 years and 11 months ago
Cate, I’d love to learn more about that, I wonder about the reasoning, how about if you disconnect the downspout?
greenworks | 2 years and 11 months ago
“Covered” and “claim paid out when needed” are two different things. Just because they take your money doesn’t mean they’ll pay your claim when you actually need them. Take a look at years of discussion on this forum on this topic and on other review sites. You’ll find a person here or there who actually got a claim paid out, but most say they were denied on various fine print provisions.
alexwithak | 3 years ago
We’re now covered as is our neighbor with the same setup as ours, so that does not sound accurate.
cate | 3 years ago
Sewer line insurance does not cover any townhouses in Brooklyn whose roof drainpipe connects to the sewer line in the cellar — that is, 99 percent of them.
colonialrevival | 3 years ago
I had the sewer line insurance and the company took the liberty to cancel me instead. Shrug.
alexwithak | 3 years ago
Sewer line insurance. Get it. We didn’t even know it existed and had our sewer line collapse and had to pay a hefty chunk of change that would have been covered by the insurance had we known about it.
Also, this one is basic but it’s worth reiterating, always get multiple quotes. I paid too much money for a basic repair through a personal referral because I thought he knew what it would entail and cost. I was wrong and may have realized as much had I gotten another quote or two. Even if you have a trusted referral, you should compare.
andriywww1990 | 3 years ago
Whenever you do something with tile, buy an extra box or two of tile and stash it away someplace. This is especially true of low run and unique tile. You might need that box some day.
BKALLDAY | 3 years ago
Buy and have enough cash to not deal with lenders AND have enough cash to do a good overhaul even if the overhaul is not leaping out at you like layout from Architectural Digest. Make sure the C of O is well defined as is the true status of the property. Buy it empty with no tenants. Also It costs twice as much as you think to run and maintain it so try to think of modern ways to heat and cool the place and your spouse or partner had best be along for the full ride. If not they make sure the house is solely in your name.
andriywww1990 | 3 years ago
Op, what I am about to say is long but I am about to offer perspective that few people on this board have and some people will wish they had never heard. Those who understand it and those who have been burned by it, do not want to talk about it because what I am about to say makes the ultimate selection of contractors the responsibility of the homeowner, even when the contractor “screws up”. Understand, when selecting contractors, red flags often appear, but people fail to, or do not want to, recognize them. I am talking about how to select contractors during a “bidding” process (I hate the word “bid” because to me it implies the cheapest). What I am saying is long winded but that is because, having worked in this field, i can cite true examples, one reaching back to the 1970’s; that is how long I have been in this game.
It took me something like forty years of working in this industry and ten years of watching this unfold on this board to understand what was going wrong when major jobs fell apart for homeowners. When it happens once, most homeowners assume that a contractor made a mistake or was a crook (it can happen because a contractor is less experienced, overlooked something, or is a crook; usually it is the contractor’s “fault” but unknowing homeowners “allow” it to happen). When it happens to the same person several times over decades and they fail to see a pattern, they simply say “all contractors are ‘crooks’” and think these contractors keep “screwing” them. what they do not understand is; even though they used a “bidding” process to select the contractors, the bidding process is not used to select the “lowest” bid but is used to select the “safest” bid. People who use bids to select the lowest price will make the same mistakes with contractors over and over again. Before I continue to support what I am saying with some real life examples, let me back up a little:
When we do anything in these houses. ANYTHING AT ALL, it always grows into something else. when we open a wall to fix one thing, it grows into a job requiring three trades. sometimes unexpected things come up but experienced contractors KNOW what those things are before they begin and it is our job as contractors to tell you “if we do that, we will have to do that as well and we or you will need … (pick your trade). If you bring someone in who had not been through a lot of whatever it is they do, they will not have the foresight to see the problems and either prepare contingencies (money built into the quote) or be in a position to advise the customer. Some less than honest contractors may actually know something and may NOT convey it at the onset because they want a job and figure the customer will have no choice but to cough up more money later, after the job has begun (you read it here, sometimes when this happens, it is not a mistake, is their modus operendi).
WE (contractors) are only people. Many of us have little in the way of formal education beyond high school and often work without industry related classroom training and no training in such things as finance. Keep something in mind, we hear about people with MBA’s from the best universities getting themselves in financial trouble all the time; contractors are just as capable of getting in trouble. WE can and do make mistakes (contractors will not admit this when selling jobs). We are not magicians; if the money is not there, the money is not there:
about 6 weeks ago someone was on here saying that their contractor had left a $20k line out of a quote and notified them of this after he had started the job; the homeowner was conflicted; they were decent enough to think of the contractor and felt he deserved the money but also felt that it was his mistake and therefore his responsibility. as it was, by some things the customer said, i suspected the customer had chosen what was the lowest “bid”. This is the thing about the lowest bid; IT IS ALREADY “SUSPECT” – in other words, the only reason the lowest bid was the lowest was because something was wrong with it (unless it is grouped with the other bids and is say less than 5% lower than the others). If a bid is say 25% or even 15% lower than the others, the contractor might not (probably would not) get through that job; assuming he can buy all the materials and pay the labor, he might not be able to feed his family or pay his rent for two months or the auto insurance and if that happens it is not simply his and his family’s problem – as he is fighting with his wife, it becomes everybody’s problem; he will not be able to complete the job (suing people is not the answer; when people sue, the lawyers win and the contractors who make mistakes like this do NOT have a lot in the way of assets).
Keep something in mind; some contractors are dishonest from the start: some of them purposely bid low to scare the competition off (I had a boss do it once when we were working in an area with no competition; some new contractor came into the suburban neighborhood and my boss “low balled” (his term) a job to drive that person out of the area; it worked. Its nasty and someone knew what he did and called him a “cut throat”). When someone calls me and says they are getting “bids”, sometimes I will ask who I am competing against and if they are my direct, high-quality competitors, I might visit (sometimes the customer will say “you are all within $200 of each other”; this is a good thing for everyone – the customer will get a quality job even if one of us does not get the job). If I hear that someone is sourcing bids from bottom feeders or unknown contractors, I politely end the call by telling them I do not want to be part of a race to the bottom. If all of the other professional contractors decline to visit that customer because they do not want to waste their time trying to be the cheapest, lousiest contractor, the customer is left with a bunch of hacks. The cheapest hack will get the job and on bigger jobs, these hacks often turn around to the customer, after the job is underway, and they put their hand out asking for more money; this is not a “mistake”, it is their “modus operendi”; they know exactly what they are doing and know how to make you feel bad for their supposed “stupidity”. If you ever hear contractors complaining about other contractors, this is why, these people ruin it for everyone; the homeowner and the legitimate contractors – this is why in like 1980 someone called my boss a “cut-throat”.
someone else was on here a couple of months back trying to source skilled labor for 20 an hour (cash, no benefits nor things like worker’s comp insurance, disability insurance, sick days, something either put aside for a period of unemployment or even unemployment insurance; none of the things that most American human beings have taken for granted since early in the 20th century; yes, you heard it here from me, watch the news and read what I write on here: we are moving backwards in this country to the “good old days” that many of us, including me, would rather forget) to tile his bathroom; not only was this a slap in the face to every one of us who toils with our hands, but all that person’s exploitive behavior was going to gain him was a lot of headaches in addition to adding to the societal problems of having unrelated adult human beings sleep 4 to a room like men on a plantation in some neighborhood far from where he (the customer) lives. As painful as it is, all of us at some point end up having to pay the price for the poor decisions we make with our money and our houses; sometimes those mistakes appear soon (a contractor cannot complete a job) or later (things break and the human beings who were part of making the job happen suffer far and away and out of sight of the customer). As repulsive as what I just said might sound, it is what goes on as we play this game.
I used to do more varied work, often around the final details (wood trim, balustrades, cabinets; the final details that get done last; these are the things people see right away if mistakes are made and they take TIME to do correctly, no rushing). i would get calls from potential customers upset and crying (i mean crying and fighting with spouses, blaming each other and blaming the contractor) because their contractor was a “crook” and “screwed” them over and they had either fired the contractor or he abandoned the job BECAUSE THE MONEY WAS NOT THERE. sometimes they were correct, the contractor was a crook: one contractor went on a sun holiday every time the customer gave him a progress payment (she should have reported him; WE cannot use money that way). but most times the issue was the customer made money the overriding factor in the job and made the mistake of taking the lowest bid (and many of these people have the money; they drive nice cars). yes, sometimes with emergency repairs, we have to do what we have to do to save the house. but if it can wait (if you can live with that bathroom for another five years and keep driving the same three-year-old car), save your money and select contractors based on their experience and reputation and do not ever, ever select the lowest “bid” for anything (unless it is only a few percentage points lower in a group of bids and you like the contractor). when i worked for real estate professionals in buildings, selecting contractors for the same things I now do, we were NOT ALLOWED to select the lowest bid and we did not select them because if something went wrong it was OUR RESPONSIBILITY and we would have been putting our jobs on the line; don’t put your marriage and sanity on the line – even to save 20% on a 10k or 100k job. (there was a movie in the 80’s about a couple who bought an old house and by the time they were half way through the renovation, the marriage was done; if I can find the name of it, I will post it).
Everything I am telling you here is true including this: In this house, we had our bathroom done. I did not have the time nor the inclination to do it (I could have). we had waited and saved, so the money was there to hire someone and the plan was laid out: we would find a contractor and my wife and son would leave on vacation for two weeks and when they returned, the bathroom would be done. I got the name of a contractor from the local hardware store and called him for a quote. He gave me a price of like 7800. I asked him a few questions that I knew the answers to (and I do not do bathrooms) to see if he could answer them on the spot (I was checking how experienced he was); he could not answer simple questions about something he did every day. he was not “conversant”. It did not matter that he was not a native English speaker; if he had been walking into supply houses buying things for any length of time and knew his stuff and had been trained by experienced people, he would have been conversant – broken English is ok. I called another contractor who I actually knew because we cross paths in Brooklyn (yes, my park slope customers use him). I did not call him first because I knew his price would be more; it was like 8,000 more (it doubled the price). To be fair to the first contractor, I asked the second the very the same questions I had asked the cheaper contractor; the second person answered them on the spot. We hired the more expensive contractor. Why? Did I have an extra 8k lying around to spend on contractors? Hell no. it was because we only have a bath and a half in this house and if my wife had returned from being a way for two weeks and that bathroom was not done, there would have been a lot of stress here. My wife would not have allowed me defend myself by saying “the contractor screwed us. it’s his fault”; she would have thought I was incompetent and questioned if I had learned anything in the 35 years between 1980 and 2015.
In the very late 1970’s or 1980 (that is before some people reading this were born, never mind working), I took a job with a contractor who did home improvements. Windows, siding, doors, gutters, roofs. Just prior to my working for him, my employer had done a window trim project on Brookhaven National Lab. He was bidding in a large field of contractors. my boss had been selected. He was the 15th lowest bid. The federal government did not drop the 14 lowest bidders because they like spending our tax money. They dropped the 14 lowest bidders because they knew that the process of selecting bids is to select the “safest” bid, not the cheapest. The men and women selecting the bids knew their job was on the line if the contractor could not complete the job. For us, working in homes on anything costing more than say $5,000 and definitely on full scale renovations and when working with less known contractors, always get three bids and if two of those are a good bit higher than the lowest and you do not have the money to do with one of the higher ones, do not do the job. save your money and your marriage and wait and go with one of the better contractors.
Just now, as I edit this, there is a person on this site complaining about a pretty bad situation that I think he realizes his contractor is not going to get through. He has already stated that he has spoken to other contractors (since this job began) and he found that all the others want at least 50% more to finish his job. This implies one of two things to me: he either took this current contractor without sourcing any other quotes (unlikely) or he picked a “bid” much lower than the other bids (more likely). He is watching his house go down the toilet. People lose houses over stuff like this; marriages end over things like this. And there is no suing some dirt bag contractor because these contractors run their lives the same way they run their businesses; there are no assets. If a contractor has assets they will protect them by not allowing something like this to happen. So again, suing is not an option and the problem becomes the homeowners.
I will not get any likes on this board for writing this because when things go wrong with contractors and spouses are fighting, it is much easier for them to turn to each other and say the contractor “screwed us”. but who picked the contractor?
andriywww1990 | 3 years ago
Change the locks
stoopsitter | 3 years ago
As others have mentioned, the “envelope” of the house is of primary importance. You’ll never regret the money you spend on the roof, on insulation, on creating a dry — and structurally sound — cellar, and on installing draft free windows and weather-stripping all exterior doors. Some projects feel hard to consider after the “first wave” renovation has been completed — e.g. central air, which is messy and creates a lot of knock-on work (carpentry, plastering, painting). But few of us can afford to do everything at once so don’t beat yourself up if you can’t do everything right away. One decision I’m very happy we made was keeping our hot water cast iron radiators. Their reliable, steady warmth is wonderful. In addition to the sidewalk comments, be sure to put energy into getting to know your immediate neighbors. If you share your plans with them (at least the broad outlines) and give them notice about projects that create noise or mess, you can forestall a lot of anxiety and potential hostility. Transparency is everything! Best of luck.