I am looking at an apartment building built in the 60s. The built in refrigerator cubby in an apartment building built around the early 60s is both too narrow and too short for today's standard sized refrigerators. Any replacement refrigerators either have to be specially ordered, or the cabinet installation has to be reconfigured and reinstalled to allow for modern refrigerators..

Washer and dryer sizes are larger now. The doors of laundry closets have to removed in order to get the front loading washer and dryer to fit. The washer and dryers will stick outside of the closet. Some tenants want to bring their own appliances.

What other things do you guys see in homes that scream old, obsolete, bad layout, or too small?

Electrical wiring for a house that only needed 60-100 amps when it was first built. Sometimes the entire house has to be re-wired to meet modern electrical codes. Every house I have bought has had major electrical repairs/upgrades to pass a city inspection.

Ancient galvanized plumbing pipes that have so much rust built up inside, the water only trickles out in a brown reddish color. Re-plumb the house with PEX. Been there on several occasions.

24" bathroom doors! When Mama is pregnant, that has always been a tight squeeze. 32" accommodates a wheelchair, 36" accommodates a wheelchair with fewer door dings.

No space for recycling bins.( And tenants don't PLAN for recycling. Tenants are out of date too! Lol!)

Narrow angles to get bedroom furniture into bedrooms. I widen doorways whenever I can.

Double check the refrig size. I have a late 1950s 4 plex and it is a 28 inch refrig. They are available at big box and have never had an issue getting one.

Bathrooms are probably fully encased in concrete. Good and bad. Good for durability, bad for remodel as you will be working twice as hard on remodels.

Electricity in kitchens and bath. Probably running off of other circuits and setup for breaker trips when running hairdryers, instapots, etc.. Is it easy to run new circuits in the building?

Check the attic insulation.

If it is brick building expect no insulation in exterior walls. Brick air gap and plaster.

Cast iron plumbing stacks with galvanized horizontals. A recipe for clogs in the horizontals.

The good part is they provide good money flow. I can have two units down and still break even. The bad news is tenants getting along. Some tenants are just not cut out for multi-family buildings and that is hard to screen for.

Houses built before 1960? never had a laundry room. Most of my old houses have a small room built on the back of the house just to hold a washer/dryer. And where the small room addition roof meets the existing house roof, that area always leaks when it rains.

Many old houses (50-75 years) have floors that slope to one side due to sagging floor joist. The 75 year old house I looked at last week the entire living room floor had collapsed into the crawl space. I did offer my usual $5K for it.

Personally, I would never live in a house that did not have Central Heat and Air, however, many of my tenants don't seem to mind using cheap space heaters and window a/c units. It is what it is.

You have a challenge on your hands. I purchased many older 1920's apartments that were narrow with 18" counters and barely enough space with a stove and refrigerator on one side and the sink on the other side. So I did some creative designing each time a unit became vacant.

Ken

Knob and tube wiring. Still acceptable and functional in my area, but we upgrade where it's acceptable. Also, bedrooms with small closets, or none at all.

Knob and tube wiring. Still acceptable and functional in my area, but we upgrade where it's acceptable. Also, bedrooms with small closets, or none at all.

JAC describes my personal residence. When I redid the bathrooms, they were cement with lovely colored 4" ceramic tiles - walls,floors, ceilings, vanity tops - it all flowed together and was such a nice look. And basically no insulation in my walls.

Many of my houses were built with no indoor bathrooms. It is kind of comical where they were placed and bedrooms or balconies chopped up to accommodate them. I've got several houses where there was no electricity - you can still find the gas lines in the walls for the wall lights.

Avocado appliances

Orange counter tops

pink tub surrounds

All my rentals were built in the 1870's. Push button switches, knob and tube, no grounding, etc. We update them to have 100 amp service on each floor (duplexes) for a total of 200 amps. duplex we are working on now had a fire so the upstairs was gutted anyway.