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Kelly Conrad
  • Real Estate Investor
  • Minneapolis, MN
30
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164
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Question on stairs in old homes

Kelly Conrad
  • Real Estate Investor
  • Minneapolis, MN
Posted

Hello! The homes in our area are old (like 100 years old) and we had some questions on the stairs. It's been the same owner for 70 years, and they're looking to sell. There are two sets of stairways that I'm a little concerned about. 

The stairway above is very steep and the stairs are not very deep. Because of when the house was built, it's likely not up to code. To be fair, these stairs really have no reason to be used, since they connect to the downstairs unit, and there is a separate entryway to the top unit. We really don't have a way to fix them, would this be a liability for us?

The stairs above go into the basement and curl around to get downstairs. Again, I'm not sure how this can really be fixed in a really old home with very low ceilings (like 5'6 ceilings or a little lower) in the basement. Is this something the city will say it has to be fixed? Is that something that we could get into trouble with as landlords? There's no reason to go downstairs unless there was an emergency, but I don't know how that can be fixed with the home how it is.

I'm hoping some other folks here have some insight :)

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