We’re in the tail end of our inspection period to buy a 100+ year old house, which would also be our first home. How would you handle post inspection negotiations in our shoes?
For context, old houses are the norm in this area, and I realize all come with a different set of issues to address. We like this house a lot since it’s one of the smaller homes in the area (and priced accordingly), and overall the last owner (of 40+ years) seemed to take decent care of it. We also have no pressing need to move other than trying to capture low mortgage rates- current renters with plenty of time left on lease.
Given the age of the home, we had 2 general inspectors, a sewer scope, a chimney inspection, and an electrical inspection/estimate of recommended work. Based on the issues found, it looks like we’ll be requesting repair or a large credit for the major necessary items including:
- sewer line repair- crack found and were unable to scope last 25ft of line due to broken line in the way
- electrical work- new panel, replacement of some live legacy K&T, some misc smaller fixes
- repair of basement wall - not foundation thankfully- the wooden wall portion above which is currently more or less open to the outside in one portion
- some kind of credit for roof- we knew it was around 10 years old going in, but discovered there are multiple layers (3-4) of shingles and inspectors are saying it likely just has a year or two left at best due to this
There’s also a whole laundry list of deferred maintenance type items we’ll need to tackle (eg mortar repair in the basement, removing ivy and tackling whatever is beneath, redoing some plumbing to remove galvanized and hopefully fix water pressure issues, etc etc) but don’t view as critical enough to require credit.
Overall, I felt like the inspections went about how I expected, and both general inspectors felt the overall home condition was middle of the road for a home of this age.
What issues would be most concerning to you, and are there any we should push to have repaired before close (vs credit/price reduction and doing it ourselves after)?
We were thinking of requiring the sewer repair prior to close, since the last 25ft are unknown and could substantially increase the current cost estimate of $6k if damaged. Otherwise we‘d prefer to do most everything else ourselves, assuming appropriate credit. Are we thinking about this the right way?