North Carolina - Historic Home Renovation Investment Stratagies

-How To Get The Most Out Of A Historic Home Renovation Investment in Rowan County, NC

Tips, Strategies, and How to Plan for a Historic Home Renovation

Historic home in Salisbury, NC and the surrounding Carolina areas are often beautiful homes, with spacious living areas and other amentities that new homes don't offer. Historic homes are also great home improvement projects for homeowners, who are interested in either revitilizing a neighborhood, looking for project that "fixer up project", or looking for a lower priced home to flip for a profit.  What we intend to explain in this blog post is how to asses your goals, and creating a plan to make achieve those goals.  We also want to explain some of the advantages a historic home can offer versus a new home as well.

Lets first start with the goals your are trying to achieve when shopping for a historic home.  Many homeowners simply like the larger floor plans historic homes offer, however in the current market we have found that their are many investors looking to either flip the historic home for a profir, or turning them into rental units to help maximize return on investment.  Obviously if your looking for a historic home as a primary home, its going to make the goal setting a little differnet, versus purchasing a historic home as a rental property.  Depending on the structure of the historic home, seperating a historic home into a rental property can be a lot more expensive, then rehabibing a historic home into a livivable unit for a single family.  We will go into more detail later in this blog post on what is going to be more cost effective, however when inspecting a historic home for either reason, there are a few thing you want to look for so that you can get the best historic home property suitable for you needs.

Here is a short list of some of the things that potential homeowners can look for in order to get the best historic home property on the market. We will try to list the most costly repairs first and go to the least costly repairs last. 

1. Structural Repairs - When examinging structural repairs, it may be a good idea to schedule an engineer that specializes in historic repairs.  Even with a good contractor, any structural repairs in North Carolina are going to require a licensed engineer to sign off or make drawing to specifications to make any structural repairs that will pass local buidling codes.  The positive side to this however, is you know the home will be structurally sound and pass local building requirements. Also, a lot of exterior structural issues can be seen with the naked eye.
2. Interior Repairs - One advantage to older homes is they have beautiful hardwood floors, trim, and other woodwork that isn't produced in today times.  However, the floors and wood my be beyond affordable repair, and may not fit inside a lot of homeowners and investors budgets.  Sagging floors, bad paint jobs, and poor electrical, plumbing and heating systems may cost more to bring up to date then the house is worth.  A good way to find out if these items are outdated is doing a through exploratory report, drilling small holes and testing electrical current.  You may also need skilled tradesmen to make this assessment as well. Aslo levelling floors can be costly as well.
3. Exterior Inspections - Trees and landscaping my also have grown over the years making it costrly to have these things removed as well.  Aslo a good roof inspection is a good idea as well as roofing is not cheap, and there may be plywood repair under neat the roofing materials. Siding and soffit repairs can get expensive as well.
4. Plumbing Inspections - Often times older homes use cast iron piping for waste and steel pipes for water supply.  Although cast iron is a good product for fire rating, however it is very expensive, to install, and from our experience it is also costly to repair if needed.  Steel water pipes hafe gone out of date, one for price, and the other reason is it doen't provide as clean of a water supple versus more motern products.  We have also found that it har find an affordable plumber to install and repair these products.  Even with the best plumber, cast iron and steel take a tremendously longer time to install, versus newer plumbing products.  Aslo, in older historic homes, a lot of the plumbing fixtures can be outdated as well, addiding more cost to the rehabilition.
5. Energy Efficient Windows and Doors - Most older homes have older style windows with a sash and little insulation around the windows, leading to energy loss when heating and cooling a historic home. They generally have odd sizes, compared to current windows, leading to extra cost to have them custom made.  Same way with doors, in addition to doors that don't meet current ADA standards, which can also add cost to the rehabilitation.
6. Sagging Ceilings and Floors - While floors can be a little more easier to level, ceilings can take a lot of time and labor to them flat enough to give an acceptale look.
7. Fireplaces - Many older homes used fire places as their heating sours, which can cause heat and air loss, and lead to higher carbon monoxide levels.  Usually these are easy fixes, however these are some things that need to be taken care of now with more modern, and energy efficient heating and air systems.
8. Out of Date Electrical Systems - Some historic homes have been rewired, however there are still a lot of historic homes with knob and tube electrical systems, which can be a very costly repair to bring up to current building code standards.
9. Retrofittig For New Light Fixtures, Plumbing, Hvac, and Electrical - As state earlier, these can be costly repairs, that will be required to bring the historic home up to code.  This is not to add cost to the potential buyers, but to make the home more safe versus fire and other hazards.
10. Replacing and Patching Drywall - Most older homes used plaser with battons, which not only create more timely demolition and patching.  This will also cost to the rehabilitation cost.

Now that we have listed some of the problems you my encounter when rehabing a historic home in th Salisbury, NC and Charlotte NC areas, lest list some of the advantages of why homeowners choose historic homes over newer homes.

1. Huge Floor Plans - Many historic homes have larger living spaces such as living rooms, kitchesn, bedrooms, libraries, and bathrooms which is not common in newer homes unless you plan on spending a small forturtune on designing your you home or purchasing a million dollar home.  Even with all the disadvatges listed above, it's usually cheaper to rehab an older home, as you eliminate cost on footings, foundations, and high ceilings.
2. Coverd Porches - Something that is making a comeback, but with the cost of new building materieals, its unlikely your going to find a cost effective way to get a porch that is as large and covered like an holder historic home is.
3. Better Building Materials - An older home will often use nominal lumber vs. dimensial lumber. The difference is nominal lumber is an actual 2" x 4" width board, versus diminsial lumber which is 1.5" x 3.5" lumber, giving every structural wall another 1/2" of support, which also leads to less saggin.  This probably construbutes to why they last longer and stay square longer then newer homes. Most home shoppers don't even need to know this information to be able to ride by a histori home that is kept up, and see why it looks just as good, or better, then new homes.
4. Roof Lines - Historic homes, in our opinion, seem to have better looking roof lines then newer homes, with flatter roofs then newer homes as well. Roof lines can make a house stick out from other homes in the same neighborhood.
5. More Attic Space - Older homes seem to have steeper roof pitches, leading to more attic space for homeowner with a lot of person items which need more storeage space, tending to save a lot of historic homeowners savings on renting storage units.
6. Larger Porch Areas - A latger porch area not only leaves rooms for swings, but also gread areas for family gatherings as well.
7. Larger Craw Spaces - Making periodic home inspections a lot easier, in addition to any repairs that may have to be made in the funture.
8. More Attractive Exterior Trim Prices - While new homes will use drip edges on the roofing, older home use crwon monling, which in out opinion adds more appeal to a home then just simpy pre-fab drib edge as seen on newer homes.
9. Longevity- If you live in a historic town like Salisbury, NC, you will notice older homes genterally
10. Tax Credits - As in the recent years, escepially Rowan Country, NC and Salisbury, NC have offered substantial tax creadis on making homes more energy effiecen, and older homes have better tax credits for rehabing onler homes, eliminating some of the extra cost in rehabing historic homes. Sonething definitley looking into when making a decision on a new homel  Riht now older homes are some of the best investments on the market in Rowan County NC, and Salisbury NC.

All in all rehabing a n historic home is a great idea and and can save a lot of money in can save big money on tax creadis.

We hope we have explained in a good way on why rehabbing a historic home could be a more cost effective way in purchasing a new home.  Not only do you recieve some good tax credits, your also doing something great for the local comumminty.  If your looking at remodelling or purchasing historic home, now is the time while market prices are done.

As always, we hope this blog post has been informative, and if you need help with estimating a historic home cost versus the cost of a new home, then feel free to call us to give you a free estimate and a cost analysis at MB Construction Company at 704-267-7763 for a free estimate.  Thanks for reading our blog, and be sure to ask questions in the comment sextion below, and list new topics you would like to here about on home improvments..

Sincerly,

Brad Basinger
MB Construction Company
224 Prescott Drive
Salisbury, NC 28144
Phone:704-267-7763 (Brad)
Email: brad@mbconstruction.com
Websiter: http://www.mbconstructioncompany.com

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