What a Memphis house hides, by the decade it was built

Out-of-state buyers keep asking what a Memphis rehab costs, and the honest answer is that the year on the tax record tells you more than the zip code does. Two houses at the same price on the same street, one built in 1928 and one in 1978, are completely different projects.

Here's what I brace for by era. This is what I've found opening walls, not a chart from somewhere.

Pre-1940. Assume the plumbing is original or close to it. Cast iron drain lines that are bellied or cracked, galvanized supply rusted down to a straw's worth of flow. Knob and tube or early cloth wiring, fuse panels. Pier and beam on clay, which moves, so expect leveling. Plaster over wood lath, which means any wall you open costs more to close than drywall does. Original wood windows, usually painted shut. These can be beautiful houses and they're the most expensive per square foot to bring back. Never buy one without a sewer scope.

1940s and 1950s. Post-war stock, a lot of it in Frayser, Raleigh, parts of Berclair. Still cast iron and galvanized. Panels usually 60 to 100 amp and needing an upgrade. Small original bathrooms with steel tubs and mud-set tile, which is fine until you touch it and then it isn't. Original hardwood under the carpet is common and often salvageable, one of the few places you get money back. Asbestos in floor tile and mastic shows up in this era, so plan for it rather than discovering it.

1960s and early 1970s. A big share of the Memphis rental stock and generally the sweet spot. Slab construction becomes common, which removes crawlspace and pier problems but means a plumbing failure is under concrete. Copper supply starts showing up. Panels 100 to 150 amp, sometimes Federal Pacific, which insurers do not love and which is worth budgeting to replace. Single-pane aluminum windows. Roofs on these have usually been done two or three times, so the question is what's under the current layer.

Late 1970s and 1980s. Aluminum branch wiring is the one to check on late-70s houses. It's a real fire and insurance issue and the fix isn't trivial. Polybutylene supply shows up in the 80s and fails without warning. Original HVAC is long gone, but what replaced it may be an R-22 system that's expensive to service now.

1990s and newer. Mostly Cordova, Bartlett, Southaven, parts of Hickory Hill. These behave like normal houses. The rehab is usually cosmetic plus mechanicals at end of life. You pay more going in and you get a much narrower range of surprises. For a first out-of-state purchase, that tradeoff is often worth it.

Things that don't care what decade it is. Termites, because this is high-termite country and a WDO inspection is cheap. Roof age. MLGW meter set and turn-on timing, which can hold a turn up two weeks if nobody sequenced it. And if you're going Section 8, the HQS list is the same regardless of era: handrails, window locks, GFCIs, no peeling paint on anything pre-1978, working smoke and CO.

The practical version: before you make an offer, get the year built, get a sewer scope on anything pre-1970, and get a photo of the inside of the panel. Those three cost a few hundred dollars and they move the rehab number more than everything else on your inspection report combined.

Full disclosure, I run a construction company here and own about 70 rentals in Memphis, so I see these all week and I'm obviously biased toward finding problems before they find you.

Locals, what would you add or argue with? I'd especially like to hear from anyone who's done a lot of pre-1940 work, since that's the era that has surprised me the most.