Vinyl Siding Vs. Painting

[Franddy Aguasvivas]

Hi Biggerpockets Community!

I am pretty close on having an offer accepted on a huge 3 fmly, 9 bdrms, 3 bthrms, 4,600 sq. ft. house in Dorchester, MA. The outside it's totally distressed with old, ugly, flaky wood siding paint. I am debating if I should go with scrape and paint or removing existing wood siding and installing new vinyl siding. What would you do and how much should I look to spend on each one. Thanks in advance for your help!

[Joel Owens]

I had 20 units and 5 quads before. I had this issue with the wood siding.

If this is an older building likely you have cedar wood siding. Back in the day it was cheap but is VERY expensive today per board.

You need to know what condition the current wood is in. For that you pressure wash off all the boards to determine if any wood rot exists anywhere and how bad.

If you were keeping this building and one wall was bad then I would say replace a wall at a time but I wouldn't do that for a resale. If the cedar wood is all good except for a couple of boards then buying a few boards and repaint, caulk, and seal makes sense.

Whatever you do I wouldn't use vinyl siding. It's not even used much in my state of GA for a building material anymore. It was used heavily in the 90's and early 2000's. Problem with vinyl is it warps from heat, wind blows off pieces, balls hit it and lawn mower and weed eaters eat up the bottom portion and knock out pieces.

Even if you have extra vinyl pieces the color doesn't match years later because of sun fading on existing pieces.

If you are going to replace the old cedar wood because most of it is rotten or damages then use hardi-plank siding. It's a composite concrete board and is tough as nails and last a long time. You can also repaint it a different color if you desire over the years. The hardi board costs a fraction of cedar wood siding.

No legal advice