Chatted with my old mentor and it changed how I look at property valuations

I ran into my real estate instructor from 8 years ago at a coffee shop on Whyte Ave last weekend. We got talking about how I do my market comparisons now compared to back then. She asked me if I still use the same rule of thumb for older homes in neighborhoods like Glenora. I said yeah, pretty much. She laughed and told me I was probably leaving 10-15% on the table by not accounting for updated plumbing and electrical in a different way than the textbook teaches. It hit me different because she was right. I had been treating a 50 year old reno'd house the same as a newer build in a different area. Has anyone else had a mentor call them out on something they thought they had nailed for years?

2 comments

2 Comments

pipera5027d ago

Hang on, but doesn't that logic kinda fall apart if you think about it? I mean, an older house with updated plumbing and electrical is still an older house with all the other aging bones and hidden problems, right? A newer build has modern insulation, a proper foundation that settled decades ago, and way less chance of surprise mold behind a wall you just finished paying for. You can't always just jack up the price because someone dropped 20 grand on new copper pipes, especially in a market where buyers are already scared of old homes. It feels like a good way to overprice a house and have it sit on the market for months while you wait for someone who cares that much about the wiring.

jennifer_west27d ago

Oh totally agree, the wiring is just one piece of the puzzle while the whole rest of the house is still creaking away at its own pace. You can swap out pipes and breakers all day but that won't fix a drafty attic or windows that were installed back when insulation was basically just newspaper. Buyers these days are way too smart to pay a premium for a house that still has a 60 year old roof and foundation issues just because the copper is shiny.