The Old Housing Market

[aberdeen606]

I was wondering if there is already a thread on the boards where people can go to post pictures or brief descriptions of old houses for sale in their neighborhoods or cities? I have just noticed that in my town alone, there are lots of old houses that are for sale. Might be a good thing for anyone having to sell their historic home or to anyone new to the boards that is looking to buy. Just a thought...

I've been really busy lately working on the house, but I do enjoy reading all of your posts! (just never do get around to putting my own... )

But a quick update, I've always figured my house was built about 1887, but I found old newspaper articles that mention a house being here as early as 1881! (I know its only 6 yrs difference, but a long time in the old house world!!) Been working upstairs in the very hot hot unfinished attic...planning on putting two bedrooms and a bathroom up there. Also built a divder wall where one used to be that separated the old kitchen and dining room on the "ell" (that became one giant bedroom in the 80s but is now a smaller bedroom and an office) and used a set of salvaged French doors from an 1850s house that had to be demolished after Katrina so that the two rooms are still connected. Lets see, what else...replaced a few light fixtures (put in a new "gasolier" in the dining room!!) Im sure there's lots more, because I have been very busy!!

Oh one other thing that I'm really excited about...a brother and sister lived in my house their whole lives until each of them died. A cousin of theres recently gave me a box of their 8mm home movies from the early 60s that shows the now non existant back porch, the yards, some other missing details of the house, etc. Oh and she said that my house used to be that house that every town has (you know, the one where kids are afraid to walk by...) She said this was "the witches house" and the kids would run from bush to bush in the front yard trying to make it to the front porch before getting scared.

Ok, well more later...maybe if everyone demands pictures it will motivate and obligate me to post them...I'm just so horrible at that!

[1880 Stick Victorian]

ok...consider this a demand... after what you wrote you have to send pictures !!!

[rehabbingisgreen]

OH how exciting to get all that history!! I'm still hoping to find some history on my house although I'm thinking it's going to be quite boring if I can find anything. No one so far has owned this house long back to 67.

I'd sure love to see pictures of your house!

[aberdeen606]

Rehabbing, you might be able to track down the previous owners through the deed books at your county courthouse. That's how I found owners all the way back to the 1880s. Usually there are the deed books themselves, but then there are usually indexes that cover a few of the deed books at a time (say, one index for Deed books A-C). Also, once I had the names, I found a lot by slowly going through the newspapers on microfilm (week by week by week... ) and looking at the social column. What county and state do you live in? I might be able to look online and see what resources might be available there if you haven't been able to find anything yet. I know in lots of cases, old records were destroyed by fires or other disasters. Why are courthouses always catching on fire???

[rehabbingisgreen]

Yeah I'm in the process of hunting down info via the deed records but it's slow going. We took a break at 1967 for now till both hubby and I can get back over there because it's hard to try not to miss anything. We ended on a husband and wife joint owners but found out the wife is the second wife and now we are looking to see if the husband and first wife had owned it or what because there is no purchase in for on hubby and second wife, only sale info. We did dig back into the 40's but found nothing on our property, only on another the husband and first wife had purchased. Problem is there are already at least two transactions missing in our search that we accidentally stumbled on a prior owner because there was a gap somehow.

I sure wish they had kept the information sorted by property instead of deed transfers, sure would make life easier! Our assessor only has info back into the 1980's so that's not helpful either.

Oh well I'm going to keep plugging away at it

[Don M]

I know in lots of cases, old records were destroyed by fires or other disasters. Why are courthouses always catching on fire???

Too much paperwork Don

[oldhouseluvr]

I too demand pictures!!!

Also, are you familiars with historicproperties.com or oldhouses.com? Both are old house real estate websites. Aparthsia (sp) aka oldhousedreamer also has a blog or website where he/she posts pictures of old houses currently for sale and some that were for sale in the past.

[1880 Stick Victorian]

is it just New York, or in any other states, when you buy a house you get the abstract of title. It shows who bought the land/house and the dates and what it sold for and who it sold to, etc, etc...

[Don M]

I don't recall receiving this information on our farm. The neighbor who did some research on her house (related family to ours) gave us information on early owners she obtained through record searches at the court house. Was your abstract provided through your title insurance search? If so then we probably do have that. Don

[melissakd]

is it just New York, or in any other states, when you buy a house you get the abstract of title. It shows who bought the land/house and the dates and what it sold for and who it sold to, etc, etc...

I wish! These days you just get title insurance (bought ours 1 1/2 years ago). I was able to reconstruct the chain of title, but only because my public library is a genealogical research powerhouse.

Northeast Indiana property titles go back to the purchase by the U. S. government from the Miami nation. In the East, do the titles go back to the King or Queen?

MelissaKD

P.S. The local photo shop can put old home movies on CD, at which point the interested old-house owner probably could extract stills to post here.....