I live in a new house that my DH and I built (well, it is now 8 years old) and we have had some problems with it and we made some mistakes that are not correctable when building it. When we built the house, I didn't realize how small the back yard would be because we are in a new subdivision and none of the surrounding houses were built yet. A friend of mine invited us to swim at the house of an elderly lady friend of hers once and I just drooled over her lot. It was a cul de sac 1.25 acre lot and the house was built in the 50's. It is dated. For the first time, it is for sale now. Ideally, I would love to buy the lot and built a new house but we just can't afford it. We could probably buy the house and either A) live in a while and wait a few years and maybe build or B) remodel. I haven't seen the interior yet but it looks like a good layout. Just dated. It got me to wondering. What would you choose? New house with tiny backyard (and we do have kids) or older home with gorgeous private lot?
No question, I would always choose an older house with a gorgeous lot.
The suburban homes built in the 50s were often built like fortresses. Steel frames, plaster walls, brick exteriors. And the wood they used back then was old growth timber, often oak or maple. Much sturdier, heavier and far more fire resistant than the lightweight quick-growth pine used today.
Friends who've run into major problems when they've rennovated older homes seem to have bought homes from the 20s, 30s, and 40s that weren't built as well as those suburban fortresses in the 50s. In fact they were built cheaply and slapdash to begin with, in addition to being relics.
With a 50-year-old house one thing to keep in mind is that it is probably in need of new sewer and gas lines at this point. Excavating on an acre lot can be pricey. If you make an offer I would definitely have the sewer line scoped. On a cable home-buying show I saw years ago a new home owner was facing a $25K bill for a new sewer line and her lot was a small one.
You'll probably also need to update the electrical, although that shouldn't cost more than a few thousand dollars. Chimneys also usually need to be rebricked/recapped/relined around the 50-year mark.
Something else to consider: around here homes in older neighborhoods with acre-sized lots are being snapped up by developers who are cobbling them up into five or more lots and stuffing as many big new homes as possible on them. This is happening in my mom's city too. Even when neighbors raise a hullabaloo, arguing that all these new homes will overtax the aging sewer, water and even phone infrastructure, the town grants permission anyway because they want to expand the tax base. Even with the depressed housing market this is still going on. So there's always the possibility that even though all your neighbors have acre and half-acre lots, you might find yourself with many more neighbors, all tightly packed in, when the original owners' heirs sell off the land to developers.
That said, there have been a number of 50-plus houses around here that have been completely rennovated with new roofing, new siding, new windows, new concrete work, new landscaping, and even new additions. Truly gorgeous!