After spending a million on an old home, buyer wonders
I am an unabashed fan of old homes. My wife Karen and I bought a 100-year-old fixer upper in Natick seven years ago and just finished an addition to it.
With an older home, whatever its size, there's a charm and a history you just don't get with cookie cutter new construction.
But is it what buyers want? I tend to be skeptical - our sadly neglected village colonial would likely have ended up a tear down if we hadn't bought it. Most developers would have sized up our lot, market and location and immediately thought townhome or duplex.
So maybe not the best investment, but I bought a home, not a mutual fund.
But that's just my longwinded way of coming to Alison's recent note to me wondering about the marketability of her seemingly charming, mid-19th century home in a western suburb.
She acknowledges buying near the top of the market - for just over a million - from a young couple eager to buy a McMansion.
Alison is no hurry to sell and can hold on, but still has that nagging feeling that big bucks buyers are going to want something new and boring, not charming, old and quirky.
I hope she loves her home - it sounds great to me - but we live in a market where, sadly, the allure of the new trumps the charm of the old.
But enough out of me. She'd love your thoughts, so I will turn the stage over to her.
"What does interest me, though, is really a question of taste. Are the people who have the resources to buy a house in this price range actually going to buy a house with slanted floors, plain pine door casings etc.? The house was built in mid 1800s and has been added onto since then in a quirky way, (long corridors, several different types of flooring, from painted wide pine through newly refinished heart pine). Tons of fireplaces; we put gas inserts in one and a gas franklin stove in the kitchen, which has been great. There was significant remodeling done about 10 years ago so kitchen is relatively up to date; one bathroom we completely remodeled so that it looks old but has all new amenities (kept the tub and all fixtures but put in a heated hexagonal tile floor, beadboard wainscoting, shower with jets, etc.)"
At this point, I took out some details about the landscaping, that, while interesting, were a little lengthy. More now from Alison, who concludes the McMansions out there are still likely to be a stronger draw than homes like hers, however charming.
"My sense is that more and more houses like this will come on the market as the older boomers sell out and move into Boston, and that the young families who can afford them won't want them because big money types tend to like new stuff. I occasionally read opinion pieces that say that all the McMansions are going to get divided up into condos because small is the new big or whatever. But I still have a sense that the market for them will stay stronger than the market for the charming and nicely maintained house that will never see 100 again."
