How to find the right project house!

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[00:00:25] Eric Goranson: And that can cost a lot of money. Here's my tips that I've got for you. If you're going to be doing this. And where to start in the first thing I want you to do before you even go take a look at it is do a quick little bit of research, especially if you're looking online at it, there's a lot of things you can do, but I want you to verify the square footage with the building department.

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[00:01:04] Eric Goranson: Thanks for tuning in today. If you want to find out more about us, head over to our website, which is around the house online. com. And if you've got a home improvement question, give us a call at 8 9 41 44. That number again is 8 3 3. Two, three, nine, four, one, four, four. Thanks for joining us today. I wanted to talk today about what to look for if you're buying a project house.

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[00:01:55] Eric Goranson: He went out and it was down the street. He's looking for a place for his parents to stay because [00:02:00] they're getting older in life and he wants to be close to them and make sure that he's caretaking for him, which makes sense. But he found this early 1950s single level home on a nice piece of property.

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[00:02:40] Eric Goranson: It looks deceiving. You walk in and go, Oh yeah, it's got hardwoods under the carpet, rip that out. And we can do a few things to it. And this is where we start to get into trouble because this can be very expensive on a project like this, especially if you're paying someone to do it. So let's talk about that 1952 house.

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[00:03:17] Eric Goranson: They had taken the garage and taken the two car garage. At some point and had added this little laundry room slash mud room off the side and made it a one car garage, but you could tell it was horribly done. It wasn't done right. So they'd extended the brick out, but didn't really lay a foundation for the brick.

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[00:03:56] Eric Goranson: You've got cloth two wire, at least it's not [00:04:00] knob and two, but you have no grounded outlets in the entire house. And You've got a pretty full electrical panel and this had the 1952, 54, whatever year this thing was push button breakers. And so to reset them, you pushed in, they were not your traditional breaker.

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[00:04:37] Eric Goranson: So you had drywall plaster combination, which is hard to match up to sometimes, but you had that with textures on many of the walls and then wallpaper on others. And so you start looking at that going, wow, okay, I've got to open up a lot here to get this going. So there's one thing. So you've got, at least you'd have to get numbers on it, [00:05:00] but for a decent size house like that, you can spend 10 grand on a rewiring super quick, depending on where you're located.

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[00:05:29] Eric Goranson: And needed to come off. So now we've got another 2025 up there. Cause there's probably needs to be some Ruth sheathing is you don't know what's underneath that. So all of a sudden you're getting into 40 or 50, 000 bucks to do something. And we haven't done anything to make this thing look beautiful. Then you start looking at the heating and cooling system on it.

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[00:06:06] Eric Goranson: And so all of a sudden that price of the home, you're just doing foundational stuff, right? This is starting to add up quickly. So then you look around and you start looking at the plumbing and go, okay, plumbing is decent. It's galvanized. So now we're talking about a new plumbing system in there. There was some copper, but you're looking at some galvanized in there.

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[00:06:51] Eric Goranson: And go around and get that dialed in. And that gets to be really expensive now, because now you're doing drywall. Now you're bringing everything up to code and you've got new [00:07:00] HVAC coming in. It looked like that was going through most of the crawl space down below. And then you wanted to add a bathroom.

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[00:07:30] Eric Goranson: And then if you're going to be paying for other stuff, it gets expensive. You start looking at what a good kitchen would be. If you start looking at the cost versus value report, and that really starts to give us information here of what the average things cost and that's where it gets expensive. We talked about kitchens last week, but if you're paying for a kitchen, You're 75, 000 to 125, 000.

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[00:08:12] Eric Goranson: Absolutely. But are you going to get that value back out of the house when you go to sell it again down the road? No, you're not. Cause it looks like you just did. The bare bottom cheapest in there. So this is where you got to be really careful with, because this is the stuff that can really burn you on resale.

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[00:08:47] Eric Goranson: That can be anywhere. And like I've talked about with lead paint in the past. A lot of this has to do with what are you running into, and especially when you're doing demo like that can be a much bigger project because now you're having to get rid of all that plaster and drywall [00:09:00] as a hazardous materials, especially if there's a, you could have asbestos in the plaster as well.

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[00:09:32] Eric Goranson: So let's get into this next segment here. We're going to talk a little bit more about what to do before we get to this. But I wanna just illustrate how prices and costs can get way outta control before you put the pretty and beautiful stuff in there that's gonna make this thing really beautiful and attractive to a potential buyer round the house will be right back.

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[00:10:10] Eric Goranson: to the around the house Show. The next generation of home improvement. Thanks for joining me. I'm Eric G we've been talking today about what to look for when you're buying a project house. And we just told a story here in this last segment about a buddy of mine who was out doing this and trying to eyeball what would be a good project for him, for his family.

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[00:10:56] Eric Goranson: If you take a look at it and go, wow, this is pretty cool. I want to schedule a listing. I want to go over and take a look [00:11:00] at it, jump on the listing and see how many square feet it is. If it says it's 2, 200 square feet and it's a house, it was built. Not brand new, but it's something that's older. Get ahold of the building department.

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[00:11:34] Eric Goranson: I have had homes that were 2200 square feet in the listing only show at the building department 785 square feet. So what you're running into then is you've got a bunch of unpermitted work, which could really burn you down the road. So like I was talking about last segment, if you got this thing down to the studs and you're now going through and having to rewire, and you've got a electrical permit, a plumbing permit, and a few other things you might need in [00:12:00] your area to do this.

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[00:12:21] Eric Goranson: Up to date in 2024 building code in most cases. So before things were grandfathered, now you're not, that is considered a new build. And that can be a very problematic experience, especially if building code is not cost effective right here. We had this with a kitchen one time where a, in my area, a remodels forgot 25 years ago to get the final.

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[00:13:12] Eric Goranson: But that eighties edition now had to be brought up to 2020, 2020 at the time, 2020 building code. So what happens now is that project now turned out to something that we were going to have to rip down to the studs, put in better insulation. We were going to have to do a lot to get that thing back up to code.

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[00:13:50] Eric Goranson: There's no way to tell if you are or not, but if it's 2, 200 on the listing and 2, 200 on the building department, you can go, all right, cool. That seems you can check that [00:14:00] box. But if it's really different within more than a hundred square feet difference, That's where I start going, huh? Okay. We've got a problem.

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[00:14:31] Eric Goranson: They'll do it tomorrow. They really don't care. They just want to collect the tax money. But the building department has to have permits to get from A to B and that's really where you want to go. So don't call the assessor's office. Call the people you get the building permits from and talk to them and see if they can get you that information.

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[00:15:16] Eric Goranson: This is where you need to bring that structural engineer and get an engineering report on it and see what goes on, because this could all of a sudden go from a three or 4, 000 repair using carbon fiber, if you're paying somebody to do it to a 25, 000 repair. Cause I have to go in and put helical piles.

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[00:15:53] Eric Goranson: And are the breakers in there even available? Is it a split main like one of the Cutler hammers? Out there that you [00:16:00] saw that had the split mains or any of these other brands that had the federal Pacific is the big one. Actually, if you have that federal Pacific one, where you can't really turn off the main feed coming in and those split main ones, a lot of those have been recalled.

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[00:16:31] Eric Goranson: I was weeks away from a fire with that. So now's the time to fix those things up. That's when you want to tackle that. And then the problem other, the other issue you have is now with much of the new electrical code, you've got to put in arc fault breakers on certain circuits. Some things will be grandfathered, some won't, but to figure out with your electrical code department, what needs to happen on that.

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[00:17:18] Eric Goranson: And then make sure that the next step is that HVAC system. And we're running into problems right now. And this is where I want to talk about this for a minute. We'll probably talk more about it in this next segment, but we're running into some issues here where every few years we're seeing the refrigerant getting now changed out.

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[00:18:03] Eric Goranson: So you could have a 15 year old system that's out there working and it's working great, but in a year or two. Especially now that we're changing again into different refrigerants. We're starting to see that go and go again. And it's, we're not going to get into the debate on this. Cause it's a, it's an ugly debate.

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[00:18:35] Eric Goranson: So you now have to replace them. So they're forcing you into the obscurity of having to go into the next system. And that's where this gets really expensive. We'll be right back after these important messages.[00:19:00]

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[00:19:25] Eric Goranson: And it's been really interesting. My brother and I picked up one here that I've been helping him with. And we've been working on this thing. He's been busting it out. I've been out there helping him when I can just due to my busy schedule. But this was one of those project houses that was due to be condemned.

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[00:20:22] Eric Goranson: So we knew when we were looking at, we were going to have a heck of a mess and it did not disappoint something. We figured that out into the value of the house and we're going to come out okay with this thing. But we knew that there was going to be significant framing and a lot of new lumber going in this thing to make it sure that it was going to be right where it needed to be.

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[00:20:55] Eric Goranson: One of the next ones here is very important is to be taking a look at that sewer system. If [00:21:00] it is a sewer that goes out to the street, have it scoped, have it taken a look at, and maybe it needs water jetting. Like the one that we had on the coast last week, I was out there. And I had a guy come out and water jet it and it had a significant buildup.

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[00:21:34] Eric Goranson: The bad part of that is when it's sitting there with water in the bottom of it, it's just corroding. It's like taking, you think about it, you have an engine block or something that's sitting there that's cast iron and there's coolant going through it and it can run for a hundred years that way because you've got things that are anti corrosive and that kind of stuff.

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[00:22:11] Eric Goranson: And so we had the same problem out there. We had actually have a water jetted and scoped and wanted to make sure it was good. Once we got it, it was pretty good, but you could definitely tell that it's sitting there for 15 or 20 years with rare use didn't do so well on that system. So that does take down.

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[00:22:52] Eric Goranson: And again, that's something you should get checked no matter what, because the last thing you want to do is put somebody's health in danger. Just have that right on test and see what's going on. [00:23:00] And take a look at it and see what's going on. Now, one of the other things that I recommend, and this is something, if you listen back in a couple of years ago in our episodes, Caroline Blazowski, my former co host of the show, America's healthy home expert.

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[00:23:38] Eric Goranson: So if you spend a few hundred bucks on mold testing, that can take you a long ways and understanding what's going on. And if you go out and tackle it, you find it and you test it, you can see that it's down cause you have a baseline and you've got a tackled. So these are things that I always recommend.

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[00:24:12] Eric Goranson: And all of a sudden you're getting that those oil smells coming in, that's showing up on the air test. All things you should know about and that's something to take a look at. Now, the next things I want you to do is take a look and see what the furnace was like the house that I was Out there with my buddy.

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[00:24:50] Eric Goranson: And I tell you what guys that can be the biggest gamble of them all. A lot of all this, I have seen these tanks be no [00:25:00] big deal to, Oh my gosh, we've got to dig up the entire front yard and take down trees and everything else just to get the environmental cleanup taken care of. I had a house that I was renting in years ago when I was going through divorce issues.

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[00:25:34] Eric Goranson: And they had that whole front yard dug up for about three to four months putting that thing back together. So you think about that, that can get super expensive when you've got to have that kind of environmental stuff. You've got to haul off stuff. That's all hazardous waste. You could have it down into a water table.

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[00:26:07] Eric Goranson: Cause you're like, I don't want to take a six figure risk on this. The I'm going to lose the entire project. If I do this. And it takes a brave soul to dive into those because they can be expensive. And it depends on what state you're in, what local government wants, what level it has to be restored to.

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[00:26:40] Eric Goranson: So this is something you don't want to mess around with. If you do this wrong and you do this kind of out of the, with the tractor kind of stuff and you get caught, it could go really badly. And I don't want to see that happen to anybody, especially if you didn't do it right. And this is not something you want to take that soil and just throw out and bury it in another hole.

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[00:27:16] Eric Goranson: It's affecting your health or somebody else's living there. So we want to keep that super careful. So be really careful with that. So the next one here is we're going to talk about is the plumbing system. If you've got galvanized pipe in it. That's where I start looking at that going, okay, galvanized pipe, time to go.

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[00:27:48] Eric Goranson: If you want to hear more about that, head back and look at that. But I tell you what, that stuff there, I've had more problems with it. In previous homes, I had a house that I had that I had with that and it was the entire house [00:28:00] was plumbed It was a mid 2000s house that they had built And I tell you what, we'd be sitting there in the living room and I could hear in the crawl space something go poof, and it was a blown fitting, and it would crack, it blew up, the stuff was brittle like glass, and any kind of a, any kind of a, of a movement in those pipes or anything like that, or pressure variance, and all of a sudden you had a broken pipe and you had a three quarter inch line someplace.

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[00:29:08] Eric Goranson: Welcome back to the Around the House show, the next generation of home improvement. Thanks for joining me. I'm Eric G. If you want to find out more about us, head over to Around the House. Online. com and don't forget to check out we've got coming up on 400 videos over there on our basically It's over on around the house online.

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[00:29:39] Eric Goranson: com. Once you click on those videos, you can go over to the playlist and that will take you to that. And you can find out more about us right there. And if you're listening out there, we just loaded up 300 of our latest episodes over on YouTube podcasts as well. And so you can catch the audio version of this over there.

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[00:30:20] Eric Goranson: Now, here's another one here is just, we talked a little bit about this, but asbestos and lead paint issues, these can be very big and expensive. Asbestos was used up until the two thousands in building materials. So basically I test anything before 2004, because that's what my local area requires. If I show up at my local.

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[00:31:10] Eric Goranson: So a lot of people miss asbestos is being gotten rid of in 1978, but they're confusing that with lead paint only in the last couple of years to the actually outlaw. Using asbestos in residential building materials. But that's the thing. And then as well as I can't take tar paper down, which is crazy too.

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[00:31:47] Eric Goranson: Asbestos in that place because it kept going up until the mid 2000. So just be very careful with that. That's a misconception where the internet is typically wrong on. And it's something that we've found out there testing that you just got to be really [00:32:00] careful with. So just because you can't confuse it up with lead paint, we'll just keep it at that.

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[00:32:22] Eric Goranson: That roof was not in amazing shape, but they're like, oh, it's, oh, and I had to fight it, but we got it financed. And that was in 2019 here and Ruth's been doing great. Do I need to replace it? Yeah, it's coming up on one of my next projects, but those are things you got to be careful with. So the next thing here I want to talk about, which is a big one that you need to know is, are you in a historical area?

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[00:33:01] Eric Goranson: Some of these places, especially with historical, but now HOAs can be this way as well. I've had HOAs and said, okay, here's your 12 colors. You can paint the house in like, what do you mean? I don't like any of these colors. Those are the approved colors for that neighborhood. And so this is where you got to be really careful.

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[00:33:38] Eric Goranson: More problems than good sometimes with them with people saying, Hey, I can't park my work truck in my driveway because it doesn't meet the specifications of the HOA. And you're just a working class person and you're trying to get to work. And that work truck can't even go on the front driveway on the street.

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[00:34:11] Eric Goranson: So understand that. And then the other thing is too, is understand what issues you might have with property lines in boundaries. I've run into this on houses I bought where they're like, yeah, see, there was a permitted building in the back. That is technically six inches on the neighbor's yard, but it's grandfathered in everybody knows about it.

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[00:34:50] Eric Goranson: And if that's something that's a serious building like an ADU or a garage or shop, That could be a significant problem because now you have to reframe part of that. Maybe you're cutting concrete, [00:35:00] maybe you're doing stuff like that. So these are things you got to be really careful with and understanding where those property lines are.

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[00:35:28] Eric Goranson: Satellite images with the, with the property lines laid out on it that really gave him a great idea where stuff is. And then he realized that what he thought was his yard, isn't his yard. That was actually the area behind his house. The open space was part of that. So it's just one of those things you just got to be really careful with.

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[00:36:02] Eric Goranson: It can be on a rock. It can be on a, it can be just a little nailed in tag into someplace. It could be a piece of rebar. So sometimes getting that map, getting out there with a metal detector can sure help you try to find stuff. I found one of mine on the metal detector and it was just a, a piece of rebar drove into the ground that if you had the metal detector, you could sure find it.

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[00:36:42] Eric Goranson: That you've got your budget put together on this stuff before you get in. And this is what I want to round up at the end of this. If you're doing the project yourself, that's going to cut the numbers typically by half because you're taking the labor part of what that project is many times. And it's not always this way, but many times labor is about half [00:37:00] of what that budget is for bringing a contractor in.

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[00:37:34] Eric Goranson: The sizing, the configuration, the ducting, all of those things are what make that a superior system. So the problem is you're only halfway there and you really need someone that is educated on that system. Great example. I would not have, I like to have certified people. If you're buying a system, I want to, let's say it's a carrier system, which I love.

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[00:38:15] Eric Goranson: I look to this brand system I want to go with and I go, okay, I want to go with carrier. I want to go train. I want to go with. Americans, whatever you're looking at, go on their system and look for their best certified installers and start working there. This is not where you want that Chuck in the truck or guy coming out there that has just not affiliated with anybody else, but used to work for a company.

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[00:39:02] Eric Goranson: And then all that money is out the door and that's more and more important as we get down the road with these things On this is a super important thing to be taking a look at because I tell you what not having that dialed in It's going to be expensive and it's going to burn you. All right, everybody not to end on that negative note But I wanted to get out this information to you So you could take a look and really understand what things cost a little bit And what to look for before you jump into this project.

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[00:39:43] Eric Goranson: house