There is an old saying that age only matters if you're a cheese. In the case of houses and even of condo conversions, age can be a case of age and depreciation.
Or it can be a matter of how buyers see the traces of age in design, fixtures, and proportions.
It turns out that age is not necessarily a process of flipping the pages of a calendar. It can be a nuanced thing in which value lies in the very age of the structure.
Roy MacGregor, proprietor of Owl Home Inspection Service Ltd., is a carpenter who knows residential construction from the foundation to the chimney cap. As he sees it, in physical terms, houses lose value with the passage of time and the improvement of building codes.
"Any house built 70 to 80 years ago is old because construction methods in use then are not as good as they are today," MacGregor explains. "An old house may have a stone foundation that is being pushed in by the surrounding clay soil. Its mortar is turning to sand. There may be no reinforcing steel. It is likely to be poorly insulated."
Even newer houses, if not retrofitted with up-to-date wiring and plumbing, can be dated. In the 1960s and 1970s, a lot of aluminum wiring was used. That was stopped in 1977 because improper use caused too many fires, MacGregor says. Iron water pipes corrode, he adds as further example.
Most of the problems can be addressed, though it's expensive. If a standard twostorey home with 600 square feet per floor has a 20 x 30 footprint, it would not be out of line to allow $25,000 for the removal of exterior walls and replacement with proper insulation and new siding, and even more for new windows.
 |
There is another way of looking at older houses. Tough to maintain they may be, but they have qualities that are not reproducible at any reasonable cost today. Drive through Eastgate and Westgate in Winnipeg to see the mansions of early 19-century grain barons. Look at the fretwork on porches, the cupolas on staircase towers, the grand staircases on the few that are occasionally open to the public when offered for sale and you realize that history can be as precious to houses as sparkle is to diamonds.
In the home-building market, the socalled great rooms that were part of mansions a century ago are back as status symbols, says Dov Secter, a masters in architecture student at the University of Toronto with an interest in residential structures. "In terms of efficient use of the environment, we should be downsizing, but there is a trend to bigger rooms - huge kitchens that are fashion statements and real dining rooms rather than dining alcoves attached to living rooms."
The movement to retro in details such as elaborate ceiling trim and plastic panels that reproduce the look of old tin ceilings reminds one that the standards of the late 19th century. Decoration disdained by architectural minimalists who helped builders turn out boxy, cheap apartments and houses after the Second World War is back in style.
The return of the great room where owners might once have taken guests for a look at walls of paintings of ancestors, of the kitchen large enough to accommodate the servants before they were replaced by appliances and plastic-wrapped food from the supermarket, of dining rooms where a dozen friends might have taken a meal without crowding, all show how tastes turn.
|
The past is prologue and it is the familiar model for today's houses. Look at a Roman villa. You'll often see a peaked roof and an atrium with a pool that would suit the owner's budget, a hearth - the "focus" in Latin - where the family would gather, galleries of bedrooms above and salons or reception rooms below and you realize that if form is function, then history is the form.
Old houses depreciate, but fixing up the plumbing and the wiring, even the foundation and walls, could be a good investment.
Fashions don't change as much as they rotate. As for those post-war boxes, they too may come back into fashion. Buy low, fix up the property and wait. The market should, if history is a guide, come back to praise what it has condemned. And remember, as things become scarcer, they become more valuable.
In the end, the question of what makes a house old deconstructs to the whims of taste and the manageable matter of renovation. A brand new house is just an old house in the making. It will hold its value for a few decades, then begin the process of decay and renovation that turns rambling Victorian mansions into gems. Age, the thing that makes old houses lose value, returns to confer huge value on rare, surviving properties.
|
