Real estate listings often tout "good bones" as a selling point, especially when a house lacks curb appeal or needs a significant update. Ugly shag carpet? Outdated appliances? Pastel pink bathroom fixtures? No worries! The house has good bones.
In reality, though, there's no correlation between good bones and carpet, appliances, fixtures or anything else you can easily swap out or update. So before you get too excited about a listing that hypes good bones, find out what that really means. Then you can determine whether the house in question is one you want to invest in. No bones about it.
Bones, good or not, are all the things that contribute to the home's structure from the ground up. They're not surfaces, fixtures or things that you can remove.
"The defining characteristic of a home with good bones is a strong foundation and envelope that are in great condition," says David Steckel, a general contractor and home expert with Thumbtack, which helps homeowners find qualified service providers.
"This means you can do any sort of major renovation, like building up, down, out or gutting without having to be too concerned about existing infrastructure."
Here are five signs a house has good bones:
A solid foundation ensures that "the base of the home can support all of the rooms and the spaces inside of it," says Steckel.
While there are various types of foundations, nothing beats poured concrete, says Chuck Vander Stelt, a real estate agent in Valparaiso, Indiana. Poured concrete foundations, he says, require less maintenance than other types because they keep out water better and are less likely to shift.
Regardless of the foundation material, a walk around the perimeter should give you a sense of the foundation's integrity. If you see cracks or sinking in one corner, the house likely does not have good bones according to Bill Samuel, owner of Blue Ladder Development in Elmhurst, Ill.
You can always get a faulty foundation repaired, but it could cost you thousands of dollars. The national average is around $4,700 according to Home Advisor, but Steckel says it can range from $1,200 to $15,000. It may not be worth it, depending on how the rest of the house's bones are holding up.
As for the depth and thickness of the ideal foundation, standards can vary by municipality. The key is making sure the foundation meets local code requirements.
We wouldn't recommend making assumptions based on this one piece of information, but the build year can provide clues as to whether a house's bones are good or not.
"The golden era of U.S. residential construction was from the 1970s through the late 1990s," Vander Stelt says. "Homes built in those years are the ones with good bones. [They] typically have all the structural and system elements [that provide] a safe and long-lasting home." This was also a period, he says, where building codes were strong and home builders typically used high-quality materials.
Another good bones era? Pre-1945, says Ian Katz a licensed associated real estate broker who specializes in brownstones and other urban dwellings in and around Manhattan. "(These homes) had a certain quality and proportionality that is not easily found post-World War II," Katz says.
Remember the nursery rhyme about the crooked man who lived in a crooked house with his crooked cat and mouse? Well, that house probably lacked good bones. If it did, it wouldn't be crooked!
Vander Stelt says straight walls and level floors are "easily identifiable features" of a home with good bones. In some cases, simply eyeballing it will give you the information you need. Otherwise, ask your home inspector or verify it with leveling tools.
Mike Powell of Red Flag Home Inspection suggests a few DIY-friendly tools that should give you a reliable result:
Lumber comes in a lot of sizes, and technically you can use almost any to build a house. Houses with good bones, though, usually feature 2x4s or 2x6s, with studs placed 16 inches on center.
"Walls with this framing are stronger, straighter and offer more options for utilization regarding what and where things are hung on those walls," Vander Stelt says.
How do you know whether the house is built with the right lumber? Start by measuring the thickness of the walls.
With a tape measure, Powell suggests measuring the width of the wall between a door frame or on any edge, adding about one inch to account for the plaster or drywall. (In most cases there's about a half-inch of drywall on each side.) Because 2x4s are a nominal 3-1/2-inches wide, the wall thickness for a home built with 2x4s will be about 4-1/2-inches, or 6-1/2-inches if built with 2x6s.
After learning the thickness of your walls, use a stud finder to locate the studs. Or, again, ask your home inspector for this information.
That means it has an efficient, workable and pleasing floor plan, says architect Eugene Colberg, owner of Colberg Architecture in Brooklyn, New York.
Good spatial quality often goes hand-in-hand with things like high ceilings, open spaces and flexible options. But an awkward floor plan can cancel out all the other good bones qualities because, no matter how solid the structure, you may not enjoy living there.
"If a home . has a closed-in floor plan that isn't functional, this could be a red flag for a few reasons," says Steckel. For one thing, he says, it could make it harder to renovate and sell. Or, if you intend to live in the house, he says "the incoherent floor plan may become a burden and cause the space to become one that brings more stress and annoyance than enjoyment."
Bottom line: Make sure you don't overlook issues with the floor plan because everything else is on point.
Along with all these important attributes, be sure to: