Many people have the question about how old their apartment building is that they live in. How does someone find out the answer to how old a building is?
Some want to know for municipal rules regarding what the apartment complex should be doing, and others want to know what the age of the building is before they move into it.
The two easiest ways to determine how old your apartment building is to look up the age at the County Recorder’s Office, or look it up through the Assessor’s Office.
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There are a ton of reasons why a person would want to check out how old an apartment building or complex is. Some are people who are looking to invest in an apartment building and want to know the age and condition of the property before they put an offer in with a seller.
Other times, people who are moving into an apartment building want to know how old the building is to quickly gauge what could potentially be some issues that an older building might have that a newer building doesn’t.
The best way to check the age of an apartment is through the County Recorder’s Office. Many times, these offices have an online portal you can go through to get the information very quickly.
The date the building was built is considered Public Record. That means that anyone can freely obtain this information if they wanted to. It’s free for all and fairly easy to get. The other thing you can find out is who owned the building when.
Most county offices have records that go back to the beginning of the building and will track who owned the property from construction to the current date.
Why Does The Age Of The Apartment Building Matter?
There are a couple of reasons why the date of your apartment building might matter.
The first, and main reason why people look this up, is due to potential maintenance issues.
The older a building gets the potential increases for maintenance issues such as HVAC, plumbing, and the roof. Very old buildings are not going to have the same systems as a construction company would design today, and if something goes wrong, new code might force a landlord to do major renovations to get the building back up and in working order.
From a tenant’s perspective, they may have lived in an apartment building built during the middle of the 20th century, or even older, and are familiar with the potential problems. While the building’s construction may be extremely sound, the guts of the place may need some updating.
Other things like Air Conditioning may not even be a choice without major renovation being done to put the HVAC system in the building. This means that during the summer months, all the unit is going to have are window air conditioners at best.
Because some people are looking to avoid places with just window air conditioners, the date will give them a good idea of what condition the place is on the inside.
The last thing that potential tenants could be on the lookout for is old wiring. There is little more hazardous than old wiring in a building. You don’t want to just assume that the owners, or past owners, of the building, have updated everything in the place since it was built in whatever decade it was built in.
Knowing how old a place is before you go do a walkthrough will be able to let you keep in mind the important things to be on the lookout for when you are doing the walkthrough.
The second reason is for potential buyers of the apartment complex. They want to know the age of the property before making an offer to a seller.
Many times, one operator of an apartment complex will buy up other apartment complexes as they fit into their business model. Because some of these offers are unsolicited, they want to get as much information as possible before going to them with an offer.
They can use the age of the building to gauge how old the roof is on the apartment building. Say, for instance, that the building is 30 years old, but the place looks like they have brand new shingles on it. Because roofs last about 20-25 years, you can assume that the roofing is fairly new and won’t need to be replaced in the relative near future.
By knowing the age of the building, they can also make some other generalization about the state of the property just by looking at it. From potential sewer issues to electrical, to HVAC, while some of these things can only be assessed after going inside and looking at the bones, you will be able to get a good idea of the overall state of the place just by knowing the age and the outside appearance of a building.
Now, in older legacy cities in the construction may be quite a bit older than in newer cities, so that has to be taken into account. Buildings may easily 100 years old or more, but just because the style of the building may be dated, doesn’t mean that it is the same way on the inside.
Over the last hundred years, there has been almost constant updating in most apartment buildings that are still standing and operational.
It is sometimes easier to simply gut the place and bring it up to code on the inside than it is to build a new building entirely. This is almost COMPLETELY due to municipal code and red tape on new construction. But that doesn’t mean that the old building isn’t a really neat place to stay.
Regardless of why you want to know how old an apartment building is, you can easily and quickly find it out. Go to your County Recorder’s Office or Assessor and simply ask them for the information you want. It is public record and is free to all.
You also may want to check and see if these offices have an online portal where you are where you can just request the information from the comfort of your own home. It is really quite simple, the most you should have to do is make a phone call and the information will be given to you.
