What should a house cost? When we see properties in the Metro Boston area, it is impossible to judge their value without considering the cost of repairing and maintaining them. That’s why electronic valuation programs are so wildly wrong; they can’t tell the difference between a not-renovated house, a badly maintained house, or a maintained-but-not-updated
Houses built for veterans returning from World War II went up in large numbers between the late 1940s and the end of the 1950s. What should you expect if you buy one? Houses age. Some age gracefully. Some get updated and renovated. Some updates and renovations fail. I looked at an inspection report of a
If you see powdery mortar, don’t panic. We see brick or stone that needs pointing on almost any house hunting trip. Repointing is normal maintenance for stone or brick foundations and chimneys. Over time, mortar deteriorates and becomes a powder. The powder falls out. It looks scary when you touch a foundation and see the
When I am looking at properties in the metro-Boston area, it is impossible to judge their value without considering the cost of repairing and maintaining them. It is way too easy to be wrong, when getting specific about repair costs. When a problem begins, it is much cheaper to repair than the same problem left