Replace Windows or fix windows

[Kyle McVay]

So we are buying (6/5 close) our first rental and it's needing a lot of rehab before we rent it. We're trying to find things NOT to fix. We have to level the house and we are turning a 2-1 into a 3-2 . The house already has new lights, brand new roof, A/C & Water heater so these big expenses were done by the previous owner who originally wanted to flip the house. Every window in the house looks pretty close to original (house c. 1937) and some of the glass is broken.  All windows are single pane. 

My husband and I are wondering, should we:

*just  repair windows & sills and fix broken glass 

*Or change out all of the windows 

What do y'all think? 

[Kyle McVay]

Quote from @Randall Alan:

Quote from @Kyle McVay:

So we are buying (6/5 close) our first rental and it's needing a lot of rehab before we rent it. We're trying to find things NOT to fix. We have to level the house and we are turning a 2-1 into a 3-2 . The house already has new lights, brand new roof, A/C & Water heater so these big expenses were done by the previous owner who originally wanted to flip the house. Every window in the house looks pretty close to original (house c. 1937) and some of the glass is broken.  All windows are single pane. 

My husband and I are wondering, should we:

*just  repair windows & sills and fix broken glass 

*Or change out all of the windows 

What do y'all think? 

 Definitely definitely definitely, just fix the windows! We made the mistake of changing out the windows in a 1925 house that we were rehabbing. We thought we could slide under the radar, but ultimately had to pull a permit and that resulted in us having to bring the entire window structure up to 2023 code (for 25 windows!!). This required installing metal braces at the bottom of the windows and also reframing the windows completely differently than they were done way back in the day. Long story short it cost us an extra thousand dollars per window to replace the windows… That is beyond the cost of the window itself. It required hiring an engineer, a general contractor, and a very experienced framer. Had we bought custom windows that were the exact same size as the original windows, we would not have had to pull the permit. But as soon as you modify the size of the window by more than 5%, you are in for one hell of a ride in my state! 

Be very careful what you jump into…It can get very costly very quickly. 

All the best

Randy

 Okay that's terrifying. We are in a small town with very few building codes, and no permits. But still...