How Does the Age of My Home Affect My Home Inspection?
House Years · Introduction
Tell me the year a house was built and I can tell you a great deal about what I'm going to find before I ever open the door.
That sounds like a party trick, but it isn't. Houses are built by people, using the materials, the methods, and the labor that existed in a particular year... and all three of those things change.
A 1960s ranch like one I inspected recently and a 1998 colonial are not two versions of the same house. You probably know that already! But many of my readers are my newest real estate friends, and we're just getting to know each other. :)
So here's what I'm up to. I decided to start a series on houses by age, because it's something I love to learn about and talk about. I also think it's one of the best parts of being a Virginian: we get to see them all, from the 1800s right up to today. Come join me? It's a monthly series, twelve installments, working forward from before 1900 all the way to the houses going up in Goochland as we speak.
And while I'm making introductions... I've been fortunate to work on some beautiful luxury real estate over the years, both commercially and residentially, across the country. Oh, how I adore it, about as much as I love natural stone, and along my journey the two have gone hand in hand. So grab a cup and settle in. Once a month we'll walk through a decade of Richmond architecture together and talk about how it shapes the way I inspect.
"What does the age of my home tell you?"
When folks tell me about a house, they usually lead with size, bedrooms, and style. Those matter for how you'll live in it. They tell me almost nothing about how it will behave.
The build year tells me:
What it's made of. Plaster or drywall. Cast iron or PVC. Old-growth lumber or engineered joists. Each one ages differently, and each one fails differently.
How it was wired and plumbed. All perfectly normal in their day, and now anywhere from "totally fine" to "worth a conversation."
What was standard practice at the time. Building practices are really a record of what the industry learned the hard way. A house built before a practice changed isn't defective. It was built right for its year!
How tight it is. This is the big one, and almost nobody thinks about it. Older houses leak air all day long, which isn't efficient... but it's very forgiving of moisture. Newer houses are sealed up, which is efficient and much less forgiving. Same Virginia climate, opposite problems.
The thing nobody says about old houses
There's a whole genre of inspection content that treats an old house like a list of hazards. I don't work that way, and this series won't read that way.
Old houses in Richmond are still standing because they were built well. Picture a Church Hill house that has made it through well over a hundred Virginia summers: the storms, the freezes, the August heat that sits on your shoulders. It has proven something no new build can prove yet.
The lumber in a 1920s bungalow is denser than anything you can buy today. The brickwork on a Fan rowhouse was laid by people who did nothing else. Walk those streets slowly sometime and look up at the cornices... it's craftsmanship you can still touch.
Every era got things right, and every era got things wrong. The 1970s gave us aluminum branch wiring, and some of the first serious attention to insulation. The 2010s gave us beautifully tight houses, and a whole new kind of moisture problem that comes from being tight. No decade is the villain.
So each installment does both: what holds up, what doesn't, and what I look at first.
Why Richmond makes this so much fun
National articles about old houses don't quite fit here, because our housing has its own story.
We have real pre-1900 neighborhoods in Church Hill and Jackson Ward. We have the streetcar-era ring of the Museum District and Northside. Then the postwar years roll west through Henrico and Chesterfield, decade by decade, until you can almost date a subdivision just by driving through it. And underneath all of it, the soil changes from Piedmont clay to Coastal Plain sand, sometimes inside a single neighborhood. That means the same foundation can behave differently on two sides of the same county.
And then there's our humidity... I know! It's the most persistent force working on a Virginia house, and every era handled it a little differently. That thread will run through every installment.
How to find your home's build year
If you don't know it off hand:
Your county's or city's real estate assessment records list it, and you can search them online in Henrico, Chesterfield, Hanover, and the City of Richmond.
The deed history at the circuit court clerk's office goes back even further.
Electrical panels, water heaters, and furnaces usually have a manufacture date on their labels. Just remember those tell you when the equipment went in, not when the house was built.
The framing itself will tell you, if you know what you're looking at... which is a big part of what this series is about.
One gentle warning: assessment records on older houses can be approximate. A house that was heavily rebuilt after a fire may carry a date that doesn't match what's in the walls.
What's coming
We start with pre-1900 Richmond: balloon framing, lime mortar, slate roofs, and why repointing an old brick wall with the wrong mortar can do more harm than leaving it alone.
If you've ever asked, "How does the age of my home affect my inspection?"... you're in the right place. If you own a home in Central Virginia, one of these installments is about yours. See you there!
Already home and staying put? Houses keep changing long after closing day. A maintenance inspection gives you a fresh look at what's aging, what's perfectly fine, and what to plan for... on your own schedule, not in the middle of a sale. Pick a date for a maintenance inspection here.
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Clear details. Confident decisions.ACCM Residential Services, a different kind of home inspector. Serving Richmond and Central Virginia. Alison L. Mullins · inspections@accmva.com · accmva.com
Clear details. Confident decisions.
ACCM Residential Services, a different kind of home inspector. Serving Richmond and Central Virginia.
Alison L. Mullins · inspections@accmva.com · accmva.com
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