Real estate General topic

[paulsharvey]

On water heaters, I did some googling, and apparently, the "internet" thinks water heaters last 8-12 years. What a crock of bull. It's not unusual at all to see 30-40 year old water heaters in fine condition (working and not leaking). Yeah, unless your replacing elements, they do scale up, and loose efficiency, but makes me scratch my head when "internet" comes up with a life span like that.

Maybe I'm the odd ball, but replacing water heaters has never been what I would call a routine, or preventative service. You replace them when you do a major remodel, a total repipe, or when they stop working or leak (not something I see very often)

 

[paulsharvey]

I'm also really not a fan on how they are dealing with roofs here in FLa. No matter the shingle type, they are saying 15 year life span, and then you have the option to pay for an inspection to prove they still have a min of 5 years life. Wish it would go to a prorated replacement. IE, you roof is at 25% life left, and you make a claim, they pay max of 25% the cost of the roof replacement. Would cut down on the fraud.

 

[ultrarunner]

My bargain 40 gallon gas water heaters last about 20 to 25 years…

Every install has a dedicated catch pan piped to daylight if leaks could damage interior space…

I have noticed heaters set to very hot have shorter lifespan.

I’m at the point where work I did years ago needs doing again… like replacing a water heater after 25 years or fence posts after 40 years or or 20 year comp shingles after 40 years.

 

[WinterDeere]

Yeah, because you can't close without insurance, and their insurance company is refusing to insure. No insurance, no loan, no loan, no sale

Unless things are different in Fla, I'm guessing this must just be one rogue agent, or one insurer's policy?

I've never come across this, in fact one of the two water heaters in my current home was 25 years old when I bought it, and insurance co. didn't even mention it. It will be 40 years old next year.

We're actually under agreement now to sell my mother's house, settlement is in less than two weeks, and the water heater in that house is the original builder's-grade natural gas unit installed when the house was built in 1999. Buyer had home inspection, and their insurance co hasn't said squat about the water heater.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

What's funny to me is how every area of the country has similar construction. We visited friends in Palm Springs California and every roof is tile. Why not white metal? When we were there it was 120°F. Nice home, but where's the basement. No one has a basement we were told. With just a few inches rain a year ago basement would be ideal...never moldy and cool.

 

[WinterDeere]

What's funny to me is how every area of the country has similar construction. We visited friends in Palm Springs California and every roof is tile. Why not white metal? When we were there it was 120°F. Nice home, but where's the basement. No one has a basement we were told. With just a few inches rain a year ago basement would be ideal...never moldy and cool.

Basements add a lot of cost. They make sense in parts of the country where you need to dig down 60% - 80% of typical basement depth to get below the frost line anyway, might as well just go the additonal 20% - 40% of the way and have all that storage space. It also gives you a frost-free place to run your plumbing, and install your boiler and water heater.

But in parts of the country with zero frost line, particularly earthquake-prone areas where unreinforced concrete is a no-go scenario, I can understand why they skip them. Even here, where the frost line is only 3 feet down, we started seeing cheaper homes built with only concrete block crawl spaces just 4 feet deep. It's still a frost-free place to run plumbing, but sucks for storage and doing plumbing repairs, and forces you to find a different place on first floor for your HVAC and water heating equipment.

Having never lived in a house without a basement, I always do a double take when I see someone post about something "under my house", on a forum from any southern states. If there's a skunk living under our house, it's in the house!

Oddly enough, we have one area of basement or crawl space in this house, which is completely inaccessible. There was a summer kitchen, probably added to the house with a big addition in 1775, which was partially torn down and built over with a newer addition by prior owners in the 1990's. They did a concrete block with concrete floor crawl space under most of that space, but about 300 square feet of it is on the other side of the concrete block wall that defines this new basement crawl space. I have no idea what's under there, and no way to access it, short of pulling up flooring in what's now our great room.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

Basements add a lot of cost. They make sense in parts of the country where you need to dig down 60% - 80% of typical basement depth to get below the frost line anyway, might as well just go the additonal 20% - 40% of the way and have all that storage space. It also gives you a frost-free place to run your plumbing, and install your boiler and water heater.

But in parts of the country with zero frost line, particularly earthquake-prone areas where unreinforced concrete is a no-go scenario, I can understand why they skip them. Even here, where the frost line is only 3 feet down, we started seeing cheaper homes built with only concrete block crawl spaces just 4 feet deep. It's still a frost-free place to run plumbing, but sucks for storage and doing plumbing repairs, and forces you to find a different place on first floor for your HVAC and water heating equipment.

Having never lived in a house without a basement, I always do a double take when I see someone post about something "under my house", on a forum from any southern states. If there's a skunk living under our house, it's in the house!

Oddly enough, we have one area of basement or crawl space in this house, which is completely inaccessible. There was a summer kitchen, probably added to the house with a big addition in 1775, which was partially torn down and built over with a newer addition by prior owners in the 1990's. They did a concrete block with concrete floor crawl space under most of that space, but about 300 square feet of it is on the other side of the concrete block wall that defines this new basement crawl space. I have no idea what's under there, and no way to access it, short of pulling up flooring in what's now our great room.

Man with your house and almost 300 years old I'd find a way to explore even if I had to cut in a trap door, throwing a rug over it later!
Probably 100 pounds of gold!

 

[WinterDeere]

lol... you don't know the Mennonites! They may be pious, but they've also never stepped over a nickel without picking it up. Frugal to a fault, there's no way there is anything of any value hiding under this house.

Locals joke that the "M" in Mennonite is for "Money".

 

[ericm979]

I've seen basements in a few old (early 1900s or earlier) California houses. But once they started building subdivisions after WWII they stopped digging basements. I've always thought it was purely for cost reasons.

Now I'm seeing them come back in some situations. In town there's a lot of $3 million+ recently renovated older homes where they lift the home a few feet and add a basement under it to get to a more modern house size without using any more very expensive land.

The house that we bought in Oregon had a basement. We demo'd the house and kept the basement. Once the house was off we discovered that the basement walls made from CMU blocks were wobbly- a construction guy could grab the top of a wall and move it back and forth. We didn't understand why since it looked like they'd filled the holes in the blocks with concrete. We had a crew saw off the top runs of blocks and found out that the builder had stuffed mortar bags in the holes and filled in just the top row. Some guys have told me that was common years ago. It might not have survived an earthquake.

 

[grsthegreat]

Growing up in calif, i never saw a basement…only multi story houses. When i built my idaho home, i had to dig down to 5’ to get below frost line….so i built a half buried basement. The basement is always cooler in summer, and not too bad in winter… with heat ducts turned near off.

As i get older, i dont much like the steps down there, but i still like the fact that i built the basement.

 

[grsthegreat]

When i sold my rental house in california (parents old home) it was sold as is. Got good money for it also.

When i sold the rental house in idaho i was asking more than comps in the area, but house had new roof and i replaced all the carpet and hard surface flooring, plus added ac and new water heater. It sold in 5 days to a California buyer, and i was asking 50k more than comps. I had no problem with that sale, was glad to get rid of the headache renters provide. When i figure in the rent collected over 5 years and the profit from the sale less repairs…. I more than doubled my investment in 5 years.

But done better with the 10 acres i bought across from my place. Bought it for $60K 6 years ago or so (as i recall) for horse pasture. Area comps for similar land now is 400-500k.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

lol... you don't know the Mennonites! They may be pious, but they've also never stepped over a nickel without picking it up. Frugal to a fault, there's no way there is anything of any value hiding under this house.

Locals joke that the "M" in Mennonite is for "Money".

I have Mennonite friends here in Virginia. Yoder & Glick. I know what you mean.
I assume (hope) you have a good metal detector?

 

[WinterDeere]

I assume (hope) you have a good metal detector?

I do, but after 300 years of constant inhabitation in which there was no trash service for probably the first 250+ years, it's basically impossible to use one around here! It beeps constantly, over almost every square foot of ground, given the amount of metallic trash that's been discarded and subsumed into the earth over that time. Nails, shutter hinges, old gutter hangers, bottle caps, plumbing parts...

Most are so disolved into the earth that they're completely unidentifiable, but they still trigger the detector, unless you really start gaming with the discriminator functions to hunt a specific metal or depth.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

My Whites detector is about 30 years old and it will discriminate between metal, the depth, etc. The new ones are way more advanced.
I found my Dad's wedding band he lost cleaning gutters, the gold I could tell by the audio tone. He was buried with it 10 years ago.
Your area & age of place I bet there are treasures to be found. During the Civil War people hid gold in wells and lots of coins found at outhouses out of pants pockets!

 

[WinterDeere]

Yep, I had an old Whites from the 1970's or 80's, now I have a more modern unit bought about 5-10 years ago. They're great when you know what you're looking for, but when just doing an indescriminate sweep to see what may be down there, this area is just constant hits on mostly trash metal.

Not much war history here, because Civil war never really came this way, the the Mennonites made such a public point of staying out of the Rev. war. I grew up surrounded by Rev. war history, George Washington actually used my grandmother's house as his headquarters for 10 days leading up to the Christmas day march on Trenton, and another Uncle's house was the headquarters of General Lord Sterling at the same time. Another uncle's house near @kenmbz's place was used as a hospital during the Rev. war, and soldiers were (at least temporarily) interred in the basement of that house. But none of that made it as far west as my current location.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

What I did was sweep an area without metal, then place a silver coin, my gold wedding band, aluminum foil in different areas. Mine has a distinct sound for gold and silver. Trash metal has a raspy sound.
If you can metal detect at your relatives place.
I carry a pin-point detector also to make locating faster.
I need to detect at the home place. Lots of interesting stuff I've found there.

 

[WinterDeere]

That's a good way to train it, and something I'll have to remember to try.

As to the relative's houses, my grandparents generation of my family owned most of the historic landmarks associated with the late 1776 into early 1777 part of the rev war, which was centered in east central Bucks County. But over the last few dozen years, each has been sold off as that generation passed. I had actually planned to buy the one next to @kenmbz at one time, but that aunt and uncle took so long to get around to selling that I had already bought our current place and settled our family here. Others sold when I was still too young and poor to afford them, which was a shame, but happens all the time.

One became a museum along River Road, just south of New Hope PA, which I get to take my kids to visit. The rest of those old family houses are all private residences under new owners now.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

My Grandparents were from Carbondale, Grandfather graduated from Carnegie Tech (later Mellon) in Pittsburgh and moved to Philadelphia when he became an Osteopathic Physician. My Mother talks about seeing Autogyros & Mummers parade there in the 1930s and Grandfather built a Sears Roebuck house there.
A favorite aunt & uncle lived in Mills...few people ever heard of it was so small.

 

[paulsharvey]

Emailed our real estate folks this morning, and basically told them, if the only repairs are the water heater and the tie downs, and once we have the appraisal, we will move forward, but asked if it is reasonable for us to ask the buyer to pay for the water heater replacement/betterment.

No sense doing these if the appraisal comes up short...

 

[paulsharvey]

Got 1 quote back on the tie downs, just over $2500. Sent the engineering info to another, who also wanted exterior pictures (guess they are concerned about access), but waiting on that quote. Called a local plumber about water heater. Got to get size, breaker, and space info for them.
Man, it pains me to hire that out, as it's super easy install, but I don't think I can sign the owner builder affidavit, with the home actively under contract... Yes, I know my county won't check, but....