What You Are Likely to Find In An Inspection Before Purchasing a Hyde Park Home
- 6 hours ago
- 9 min read
Long before I knew anything about building, new construction, or how to remodel an older central Austin property, I was a 28-year-old first-time homeowner moving to Austin, and just starting to explore older Hyde Park homes and learn about their common maintenance needs. I was also super freaked out learning about the quirks and foibles of my new home.
Many years, 6 remodels – 4 of them in Hyde Park – and two new construction projects later, I am still learning. I just happen to be a whole lot less freaked out (most of the time). I didn’t understand what was normal and what wasn’t in 2000, when this little house on Avenue B was inspected. Over the last 26 years, I have watched too many buyers walk away from great houses because they didn’t understand the types of issues that were well within the normal range. So my goal is to give you a summary of my experience with the condition of typical Hyde Park Austin homes based on the 30+ home transactions I have been involved with in the last 26 years.
Items that come up all the time, and how I have handled them in the past in my homes
Windows: They often come up in inspection reports. There are a few homes that have been replaced with high-quality wood windows, but that is the exception, certainly not the rule. Yes, the old windows are drafty, and sometimes in the winter they can make a little noise when it’s windy, but that is about the extent of the downside.
I would rather have the original windows than new vinyl windows that would negatively impact the house's design aesthetic — and in the Hyde Park Historic District, any window change would also require approval from the neighborhood development committee. The original windows fit in with the older homes: the glass is sometimes wavy, indicative of its age. Beyond aesthetics, new windows don't provide much protection from the summer heat anyway, so in my older houses I have never replaced them. Yes, I did put in new Marvin windows when I built my ADU in the Hyde Park Historic District, but that was new construction. I could be convinced to replace them with very high-end wood windows, but there are other issues in these older homes I would prioritize first.
Framing: One thing everyone seems to forget when inspecting their home is that it is not meant to be a current code inspection. Context is everything, and the context of an inspection is the standards listed in the inspector's report. Texas home inspections follow the TREC Standards of Practice, which is a limited visual inspection, not a code review. They aren't checking the home against the International Residential Code; that's a separate ICC discipline.
What does this mean for the framing in the attic? It means that modern engineering specs require lumber to be spaced closer together, but these homes are not built to modern standards, and the wood we have today is not as strong as the wood these homes were built with, because it is grown faster and kiln-dried in most cases. The framing in the attic will not meet modern standards, and we need to remember that the homes have stood for over 100 years without any negative impact from that framing.
Plumbing: Most homes in Austin’s Hyde Park were built with galvanized pipes, though the occasional one has copper. Over the years, property owners have replaced the pipes with PEX, and if they were replaced before the 80’s, there is a chance that they were replaced with copper. I haven’t seen many homes in the area with copper supply lines, so I wouldn’t make this a requirement of purchasing a home. I recently had the supply lines replaced at a property for $10,000, so just expect it may need to be done if you don’t have new pipes. While we are on the topic, let's discuss the difference between supply lines and wastewater lines. At least once a year, I have a realtor colleague who is negotiating with me on an old house and refers to them both as "plumbing" and doesn’t know the difference between them. While we are not plumbers, we should know those basics – supply lines = water in, wastewater = p**p out.
While we are on the subject of the wastewater line, most of the homes in Central Austin built before 1980, which is almost all of them, have cast iron sewer lines that tie in the plumbing under the home to the city sewer tie-in. Some even had something called orange berg, which was efficient paper used during World War II when iron was being used for munitions. The yard line, as it is commonly called, is easy enough to replace. Provided the distance covered isn't too long, the bids should be under $10,000. Replacing the cast iron that runs horizontally under the house is more fiddly but tends not to be as far decayed as the cast iron in the ground, although it can still leak and might as well be replaced when found leaking. We have been told by plumbers that the cast iron in the ground has decayed faster, and in general, all of it is nearing the end of its useful life. Even in a home that has had most of the cast iron replaced, some vertical segments will remain, as they tend not to hold water and thus have not decayed. I have been told that some of the most expensive newer home builders have been using cast iron to reduce the noise from showers and flushing.
When the wastewater lines are replaced, they are typically made of PVC, and we can run a camera down the PVC cleanout to check the current condition of the pipes and ensure there isn’t a tree root that has broken through.
Foundations: Pier and beam foundations are the most common foundation in the Hyde Park area. These foundations are made to move; they are not like slab foundations; there is no expectation of them being entirely flat. Our soil expands and contracts with the seasons. When we have more water, it expands, and in the summer or during a drought, it shrinks dramatically, causing our foundations to move with these changes.
My rule of thumb has been to leave my foundations alone if I can. I have replaced three perimeter beams that were rotted on my Avenue H home. The engineer and the carpenter were very surprised that the house had no negative impact from these rotted beams and suggested that the sheer strength of the shiplap walls likely held the house firm to some degree.
Under another house on Duval, we found the original cross-sections of cedar trees used as piers in the pier-and-beam foundation. Cross sections of the trees - over 100 years old! The foundation was very uneven on this house, and the lot sloped away from the street, leaving the home very low on the lot. Since we were going to do an entire remodel of this home, we decided to change out this foundation and raise it 8”. Since we were putting in new work in the kitchen and bathroom, the expensive parts of the house, it made sense to take the opportunity to do the foundation work first. If you move the foundation of a home after replacing the tile and countertops, you are likely to cause cosmetic damage during the adjustment. The cost of the new foundation in a 900-square-foot home was $18,000 in 2012. Adjusted for inflation, I would expect the cost in 2026 to be approximately $30,000. Foundation work doesn’t have to be scary.
Insulation: Well, surprise: the insulation will not meet modern standards because it is not a modern home! There is very little chance that any of these homes has insulation in the walls. Full stop. If a home has been rebuilt – and I have seen several that look old but were largely totally rebuilt in the last 20 years – then you may find insulation in the walls. There is a retrofit solution in which holes can be drilled in a wall, and spray foam insulation can be squirted through them. To the best of my knowledge in over 30 Hyde Park/Hancock/North Loop transactions, I have never seen that in a home a client bought or sold.
One of the worst insulation travesties I have seen…fiberglass insulation held under a pier-and-beam foundation with chicken wire. Horrifying but easy to fix. Imagine the funkiness in that insulation when there is moisture in the crawl space during the rainy season, or when the occasional rodent finds its way under the crawl space? Eew. I have lived in pier and beam homes for the better part of 26 years, and I have never wished my floors were insulated. The homes were not designed that way; they are drafty, and when you seal them up, you can create moisture issues that would not have happened previously.
My homes? In the old house on Avenue H, there is nothing in the walls and nothing under the crawl space. In the attic, there is some older, scary, gross insulation in the attic. When I am done with my new ADU, I may add more blown insulation in the attic, but I will remove the ancient insulation first. This leads me to...rodents.
Rodents: Why does insulation make me think about rodents? Because if you live in an area where rats and squirrels have an unlimited food supply of pecans, rodents will thrive. (Did you know that Hyde Park used to be a pecan orchard?) They will get in your attic, make nests in your insulation, and leave evidence of their existence. Remember the part about old homes being drafty? It’s true. And mice need only the tiniest hole to find an entrance.
It is a fact of life that rodents get into old houses, but the fix is fairly simple. We can recommend pest control specialists who provide a service called an exclusion. They will trap any living things in the home (that aren’t supposed to be there!) and then seal all the entry points to keep anything from re-entering. However rodents, being who they are, will find new ways into homes. But not to worry! Just make sure you have an exterminator who checks on the house annually. They will often charge a higher fee for the initial exclusion appointment, and then a maintenance fee to warrant the work year over year. But it is most certainly money well spent!
How does this help the clients who ask us to sell their Hyde Park homes?
Understanding the frequency of the issues in our older homes is critical when it comes time to sell. We share our dataset with our colleagues when we negotiate, in an effort to shift the negotiation from a win-lose mindset that doesn’t serve our sellers well to an educational context mindset. It is hard to argue with compelling data.
I've been to showings where a colleague brought buyers to a home in Cedar Park, another in Tarrytown, and then my Hyde Park listing all in one day. In that situation, I can't rely on the colleague to understand the full context of my listing. It’s important for me to be there to walk them through what makes the neighborhood and the home special. The data and analytics we share with colleagues are tools to help our clients get the most out of their Hyde Park sale.
When it’s time to sell my Hyde Park home, the buyer's agent may be newer or not familiar with pier and beam homes. Almost certainly, they have not transacted on over 50 homes in our neighborhood over the years. 🙂 So we need to be able to explain what is normal and what is not to our colleagues so that they can help their buyers understand the homes and what to expect. Remember that 28-year-old who bought that house on Avenue B in 2000? Someone needs to take the time to teach the new buyers of your home, what to expect when we care for, preserve, and value in our little corner of Austin.
Our goal as your trusted real estate advisors is to provide you with the information you need to help you reach your investment goals.
As always, real estate is hyperlocal and extremely situational, so please reach out to us to discuss your specific situation. We’d love to help you and strategize what’s in your best interest.
Cheers!
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