In 2016, I got married in Pittsburgh to my girlified of 5 years. Although we lived in New York City, she was from Pittsburgh, we had met in Pittsburgh several years prior, and we were interested in moving back.
When we had first met, housing stock in Pittsburgh was cheap, especially for the older homes that we both loved. By 2016, however, prices were already starting to creep back up. We were early in our careers, had massive student loan debt, no major savings, and were not in a position to pay any significant down payment.
Our solution was to look at homes marketed under 100k. Our first look was at a 1902 house in Carrick, PA. The asking price was 80k. The house needed work but, from the pictures, it seemed to have good bones. It had original fireplaces, a parquet floor in the dining room, and a large yard. After speaking with the realtor, he explained that sales on the house had faulted multiple times after buyers were unable to finalize loans.
We set up an appointment on September 6, 2016. To say we were excited was an understatement. Was this going to be the home we raised kids and grew old in? Was this the home that was going to bring us back to Pittsburgh?
Ultimately, as neat as the house was, we felt that too many original features had been removed. The original woodwork on the staircase had been removed (probably stripped for sale) and covered up with a fake wall. What we thought was an original parquet floor in the dining room was actually a cheap and poorly finished imitation. More importantly (what we didn’t get from the pictures) the third floor had, at some point 20 years ago, been divided into a separate apartment. The beautiful staircase was cut in two and reversed so that the entry to the third floor could be isolated to an outside staircase. Now, the only way to access the third floor from inside the house (the outside staircase no longer existed) was to crawl through a hole made in a bedroom closet. Worse, the third floor had been abandoned for years and was filled with junk, water damage, and mold.
We did not put an offer on 40 Carrick. While it was disappointing, this was our first experience inspecting an older home and getting a feel for how to evaluate required work and costs of renovations. I peeled up carpets to examine floor quality and crawled through an air vent with a phone flashlight to evaluate original woodwork that had been hidden behind older renovations. We also started to get a feel for how to interact with and read relators regarding homes and neighborhoods.
40 Carrick was our first stop on the journey to find a forever home. What we didn’t know at the time was how long that journey would take and where it would lead us. Pittsburgh was still strongly calling us, although, watching the prices rise, we knew our window to find a buy a home there was limited.
The Round Hill House 