How Old is Too Olde?

Age is such a deciding factor for so many things in life. You can’t drive until you’re 16, vote until you’re 18 and drink all the way until 21. You can’t become President until you’re 33, which is a little strange since you can vote for the president when you are much younger. Eventually you retire or hope to at 67 or is it 70, they keep moving the bar. There seems to be this obsession with age, as if like a kitchen timer, when a person reaches that magic number a significant change occurs instantaneously.

Similarly the stuff people make, like cars and houses, also ages and eventually begins to breakdown and fail. But unlike people, when that begins to happen, the old stuff gets thrown into the trash heap, replaced with shiny new and improved stuff. There are many variables that decide when something eventually takes that final trip to the big trash heap in the sky, um dump.

Buyers can become fixated on age when buying a home as well. Some may want a newly constructed home, others prefer the charm of an antique abode. What someone wants in a home is a diverse as the folks who are buying houses, but there is at least one exception.

Every buyer is concerned with the age and longevity of the stuff that makes up the house.

New construction not so much in the context of the home inspection, the builder I’m certain takes the brunt of the age concerns, but almost every other home buyer wants to know out of the gate, how old is the roof?

The age question becomes for the home inspector a delicate dance on a thin line. Buyers generally do not want to purchase old roofs or aged boilers, yet it often unavoidable and as inevitable as aging itself.

For the home inspector some old stuff is quite clear cut, an old roof must be replaced, no ifs ands or buts about it. An old water heater or boiler that is functioning becomes an issue simply because it is after all, working. There are some instances where the argument for replacement can be strong, particularly when the unit is very old. The seller will no doubt cling to the thin thread that “it works”, hoping to avoid subsidizing a new unit.

At the end of the day old is olde, and will eventually give up the ghost or more accurately become one.

James Quarello
Connecticut Home Inspector
2010 - 2011 SNEC-ASHI President
NRSB #8SS0022
JRV Home Inspection Services, LLC

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