These Relics Could Sink a Sale

Housing fashions flare and fade nearly as fast as clothing fads. The backyard fire pit? It will go the way of the ruffled tuxedo shirt. The soaring two-story foyers? They might as well be women's shoulder pads.

Obsolescence is more serious. People will reject the obsolete. Their needs have changed, and technology has rendered the old stuff useless.

A drive through Georgetown or Old Town Alexandria proves that obsolescence is not just a function of age. An old house can be rehabbed so it nicely meets the needs of a buyer willing to spend a couple million dollars. But unless owners periodically invest in repairs and upgrades, their homes will fall so far below the standards of current buyers that they become obsolete. Property value then lies almost entirely with the land.

Infill builders, maligned (often with justification) for plopping out-of-place McMansions in established neighborhoods, serve a valuable function when they replace obsolete housing.

What's obsolete? It could be an extremely small stand-alone house, say 900 square feet or less. Buyers who want only one or two bedrooms, which are all you can jam into such a small house, today look for condos. Other relics:

• A house with only one bathroom. Even a house with one full bath and a toilet/sink powder room is going to turn buyers off.

• A house without some form of air conditioning. In the hot, humid Washington summer, air conditioning is a must.

• Electrical systems protected by a fuse box instead of a circuit breaker. That's not going to do the job for a plasma TV and computer.

• Spiral staircases. They're relatively rare, and for good reason. The tight spiral and wedge-shaped stairs make it next to impossible to safely carry a laundry basket, not to mention a baby.

• Basements with only an outside entrance. When that space was strictly a cellar housing a coal bin or an oil tank, outside access was all you needed. Today, homeowners expect convenient access to that valuable space.

Nick Kuhn, an associate broker with McEnearney Associates' Arlington office, hesitated to call any feature obsolete. After all, he never knows what type of home he might have to sell. Nevertheless, he came up with a few nominations of his own:

"Ceilings that look like they've been stuccoed," Kuhn said. Most, but not all, date to the 1960s and 1970s. "Some people are still doing it because it covers up a bunch of cracks," he said.