Old homes can be a bargain, but you need to be careful and get a good home inspector.
My parents bought their first 3 bed townhouse/condo in Buena Park in 1989. The home was built in late 1960's but had really nice park in front, and elementry school w/larger park across the street with plenty of nice trees. We paid $120,000 for it in 1989 and sold it in 2003 for $270,000 in "as is" condition to the buyer.
Some of you might be wondering "why so low? Shouldn't the townhome be valued at $350k-400k at least?" Well, let me explain the problems. It was a unit in the center of a 5-unit building. That is, we had 2 neighbors to the right and 2 neighbors to the left. The building used asbestos for insulation. If you go into the attaic you'd see abestos everywhere. The whole building is also infested with termites and the outer-edge units (to far right/left) was so bad that you could stick your finger through some parts of the exterior wood.
There was a wooden patio with shade in front of our unit, in the common-use lawn area. Termites had eaten the wood to tbe point where they had to replace the whole thing.
The obvious solution was to get the whole place tented and fogged to kill those little buggers. Our association refused to pay for it and insisted that it's our own responsibility. The not so little old lady to the right refused to pay for it, saying that she's "almost dead anyway" and can care less. The couple who lived to the left were anti-insecticide/chemcial nuts and refused to have anything to do with those "harmful chemicals". They insisted that we use heat treatment instead. They wanted to bring in lots of propane burners and cook the whole structure at 170 degrees, at which point the other owners/tenants said "no friggin way, you're going to damage my <insert item>".
Fortunately, being in the middle, the termite damage to our unit was still very light. But after baging my head against the wall a few times over my neighbors, we decided that it was best if we unloaded the house and let someone else deal with it. So we sold the townhome "as-is" at below market value and told the buyer that they'd have to deal with the problems. We found a buyer who insisted that he'd flip the property soon anyway and can "spot treat" termite problem. Okay buddy, all yours, good luck. Last I checked he's still living there, prolly feeling smug at buying a property at well below market value.
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Now, there are some really good deals with older homes, you just need to be more careful with buying them. Older homes tend to be darker due to its design. Some can be fixed by installing tubed skylights or new/additional windows. Recessed lights, mirrors, light-colored carpet, paint, and decor can also brighten up the place. If the Kitchen cabnets look dated, you can sand it and re-paint, or even replace all the cabnet doors and knobs. In some cases you can knock out the ceiling, re-route some pipes/cables and have yoruself a nice tall ceiling (former attic space).
I just did some interior work with my buddy at his dad's house last year. We paid some $$ to have contractors come and rip out the old abestos insulation. Then we replaced the carpet with nice wooden floors, took out a wall between kichen/dining and the living room area, installed some recessed lights, installed new window blinds, and re-painted the wall in white. His father was so happy with the result that he went out and bought a new creamr-colored couch set, mirrored cabnets, and a new dining set. Now the living room to dining area looks very nice. Next item on list is the backyard (ugh).
if you're looking for more "room", there's 2 ways to get it. One is to expand physically, the other is to reduce the amount of crap in the room itself. Try tossing out as much as you can and go with minimalist style decor in simple white colors (can be bought cheaply at Ikea). Space your furniture apart and use smaller furniture pieces. Don't clutter stuff on top of tables. Get rid the old rear-projection or tube TV and the big entertainment rack, replace with a slim flat-panel TV from Costco with a small/low modern TV stand. Replace old ta;; brown bookshelves with short light-colored ones. It'd make your room look bigger, and moving a lot easier.
