Last updated February 2025
Elizabeth and Ethan Finkelstein, the couple behind HGTV’s Cheap Old Houses, dole out advice on inexpensively finding, buying, and rehabbing older homes via their TV show, Instagram account, and historic-property real estate listing biz, Circa Houses. We caught up with Elizabeth to pick her brain on keeping up and fixing up storied homes.
How did Cheap Old Houses start?
We started it as an Instagram account, just for fun, in 2016. It took off and turned into a business. I think its popularity shows what a good idea it is to live beneath your means, to buy a house that has charm and character. Plus Ethan and I love historical homes. And buying and fixing one up, one, for so many reasons, might help address the housing crisis. People can't afford houses!
So, should everyone just buy an old house?
There are a lot of people who shouldn’t buy old houses! Deciding to buy an old house is a bit like deciding to have children. It’s a life commitment. You might not want to do it if you want to travel a lot or spend all your summers at the beach, as opposed to doing house projects. Old houses aren’t necessarily for people who want a turn-key place that runs efficiently.
If you can learn to own a house and work on it, old house ownership can be a really rewarding process. But it’s important to understand that, if your house has been around for 150 years, it might take a couple of extra months to redo the kitchen or fix up the windows.
You and Ethan posit that older houses can be less expensive than new ones. Why?
There are older houses that you can buy at a lower price point, and you'll have more money to work on them and make them what you want.
Honestly, there are plenty of inexpensive old houses, many times because of where they are located, in smaller towns in upstate New York or Rust Belt cities. But there are also certain places in major metropolitan areas where there just aren’t deals.
How can I find contractors who work on old houses?
It’s important to hire people who have experience working with old houses. A lot of finding them is word of mouth. Then there are publications like Old House Journal that list some resources.
You have to interview a few contractors and get a sense of how they’re going to approach your project. Contractors should have a sense of which new materials jive with old materials and just kind of a basic understanding of older construction.
By and large, it’s not the old house that’s the problem—it’s the work someone did on it 20 years ago that messed up the whole thing. Or that 1980s addition that’s leaking. I think you want to find professionals who enjoy the puzzle of old houses, who say, “how are we going to make this work?”
What are tasks you must do immediately if you buy an older home, particularly a fixer-upper?
There are certain things that you simply must bring up to code. Electrical is one area where I think you should be careful, and redoing the electricity in an old home can be a very good thing. I’m never going to say to keep your old knob and tube wiring.
And if you have any water issues or leaks, it’s important to seal that up immediately. When you buy an old house, make sure the roof is fine, that there’s no mold.
Can you save money by keeping original features in an old house?
Yes! Unless the floor is completely rotted out, I’d hesitate before ripping it out. Try to figure out how to save your old floors, because they’re often made of beautiful old-growth wood that you can’t even purchase today.
People love to harp on old windows, but I think the old wooden ones can be patched, repaired, and last a very long time. Then you can put in interior storm windows to make them more energy efficient.
Are old houses less energy efficient?
Not always. Ethan and I restored our 1770s farmhouse in New York State, and it had brick nogging [a kind of early infill insulation] behind the wood exterior. So we reworked that. And things like solid old interior doors, shutters, and traditional plaster also have great insulating properties people don’t think about.
In many cases, old houses were built so they faced a certain way so that the sun would heat them during the day. Builders thought more carefully about these things before we had the luxury of technology.
How else does buying an old house save you money?
You often don’t have to buy as many materials because you can reuse so many things within an old building—bricks, moldings, sometimes light fixtures. When we’re working on our farmhouse in upstate New York, all of our money is going toward labor.
How can house hunters assess whether an old property is solid or a potential money pit?
Try to bring people who know old houses through it before you commit—like a home inspector or a friend who owns an older place. That’s what Ethan and I did when we bought our farmhouse. People with old house experience can look for things that you aren’t necessarily aware of, like foundation problems.
Doing some of your own home maintenance or renovation can also save bucks. How do you determine what to DIY?
I always say you either need time or money. So, if you have the money to pay a contractor to work in your older house, tasks will get done sooner. If not, it’ll take you longer.
And whether you DIY or don’t is often just a matter of your comfort level. I have young children, so anything with, like, really risky chemicals is out. I do not want to strip the staircase right under my son’s bedroom by myself. Instead I want to go vacation somewhere while someone else balloons it off, paints it, and does it right.
Any tips on shopping for architectural salvage house parts? Can’t that save you money?
There are so many great salvage places around the country, and you can also check into Habitat for Humanity warehouses. Using salvaged house parts isn’t a plug and play thing. But with a little extra effort, salvage can be cheaper and higher quality than buying new materials.
For instance, for a project we’re working on, we needed a bunch of interior doors. We could’ve gone to Home Depot and bought them for $1,500 each. But instead, we went to the Historic Albany Foundation warehouse and found antique, six-panel doors for $53 each. And we have a directory of old house vendors on the Circa website, too.
