Renting in Durham
What to check when renting an older house in Durham
A lot of Durham’s rental stock was built before 1960. Here is what we look at before we take one on — and what you should look at before you sign a lease on one.
Minmosa Realty 3 min read
Most of the single-family rental stock in Durham's older neighborhoods predates 1960, and a good share of it predates 1940. Those houses can be excellent places to live. They can also cost you a great deal in utilities and frustration if nobody has dealt with the fundamentals.
We evaluate and maintain older Durham rental homes as part of our property-management work, so we tend to look past cosmetic updates and focus on the systems that affect day-to-day living. Here is what we focus on, and what is worth noticing when you tour one.
Ask about typical utility costs
This is one of the most useful things to ask, and almost nobody does. A 1930s house with original windows and no attic insulation can cost twice as much to heat as a comparable house that has been air-sealed. That difference is real money every month, and it does not show up in the advertised rent.
Look at the attic, not the kitchen
Kitchens photograph well and are the easiest thing to make look updated. The attic tells you whether anyone has spent money where it matters. You are looking for insulation that covers the whole floor evenly to a decent depth, and ideally evidence of air sealing around penetrations.
Find out how old the HVAC is
Ask for the year. Many HVAC systems last around 15 to 20 years, depending on the equipment, installation, maintenance, and operating conditions — and the last stretch of that range tends to be the expensive, unreliable part.
Check the crawl space situation
Most older Durham houses sit on a crawl space, and the climate here is humid enough that an unmanaged crawl space becomes a moisture problem that works its way up into the house. You are looking for a vapor barrier across the ground and, ideally, a sealed and conditioned space. A musty smell in the lowest level of the house is worth asking about directly.
Run the water
Turn on the shower and then flush the toilet. Watch what happens to the pressure and the temperature. Galvanised supply pipe corrodes from the inside over decades, and this is the thirty-second test for it.
Open and close things
Every window in the room you would sleep in. The back door. The bathroom door. Original wood sash windows in an old house can be stiff, so try the ones you would use most.
What none of this means
An older house that fails one of these tests is not necessarily a bad rental. A house with original windows and good insulation elsewhere might be perfectly comfortable. What matters is that you know before you sign, rather than finding out in January.
If you are looking at older homes in Durham, our available rental homes show what is on the market now, and the neighborhoods we manage in describe the housing stock you will find in each area.
Looking for a home in Durham?