San Francisco Landmark #55, the Board of Supervisors will vote this afternoon on a Mills Act historical property contract for the Lilienthal-Orville Pratt House at 1818 California.
In exchange for agreeing to seismically reinforce the foundation of the two-story building at an estimated cost of $253,000, and to provide ongoing maintenance to preserve the building at an estimated cost of $22,667 annually (a cost that’s often overlooked in rent versus buy calculations), the contract will reduced 1818 California’s annual property tax bill from $42,309 to $10,692, a savings of $31,617 per year.
Other items on the agenda for today’s Board meeting, Supervisor Mirkarimi’s resolution seeking an investigation into the going-ons at the Historic Sacred Heart Church and a few final zoning hurdles for the development of 222 Second Street for which an EIR has been approved and exceptions already granted.
∙ Historical Property Contract for 1818 California Street [sfbos.org]
∙ San Francisco’s Sacred Heart Church: A Modern Day Crusade [SocketSite]
∙ 222 Second Street Seeks Certification (And Exceptions) This Week [SocketSite]
I don’t know much about maintaining historic residences, but $20K+ for maintenance per year seems mighty high. Among the more questionable claims, the report suggests 2500/yr to repair flooring, 2000/yr to repair windows, 1500/yr to inspect plumbing, 3500/yr to inspect and repair interior plaster, $2500/yr to inspect the furnace….the list goes on…I realize some of these amounts capture the long-term replacement costs, but this is pretty excessive.
Maybe this place is leaking like a sieve- in which case the owner needs to do more than the 250K of foundation work. If the reduced property taxes are based on these claimed expenses, the city is getting taken for a ride.
PostIt, you got it right in the first eight words of the first sentence of your comment.
It’s highly likely that the maintenance is not being done by José Handyman that someone picked up in the parking lot at the Home Depot that morning, and that accounts for the higher cost.
Someone who actually has a background in preservation/historical carpentry doesn’t come cheap, and the work they do is not at all interchangeable or comparable with the skills someone has “picked up on the jobsite” over the last few years (“lath and plaster, what’s that?”).
On top of that, I suspect there’s been a lot of “deferred maintenance” that this budget is trying to cover “catch up” on.
Yeah, it may be code for “it’s gonna need at least $50K over the first couple of years.” I mean, you can get a pretty good gardener and housekeeper for $2K/mo.
I don’t live in an historic residence but I do live in a very old residence that miraculously has been preserved in largely original form. It’s form was quite good for the time and holds up well today. Maintenance and repair is more complicated then the average house. Steel frame windows? You don’t buy a $200 replacement at Home Depot; you buy a $5000 replacement from one of handful of shops still doing this work. Mahogany doors and trim; custom trim, plaster; pewter light fixtures which all need to be rebuilt with modern wiring – the list of special skills to maintain and repair such a place is long. It would be expensive to have someone else do it.
I suppose maintenance will become outrageously expensive when artisan-type labor is involved.
So the city of San Francisco loses over a quarter million dollars in revenue over the next 10 years to preserve this building. That’s a nice transfer of wealth to the owner of this multi-million dollar property. I guess I’ll have to drive by some time.
djt: Sure, but how often should that stuff need replacing? Every couple of generations?
EH: not if you’re living with kids and/or pets! I could easily see new doors, moulding, etc., every 5 years under the right conditions…
PostIt: If you have to replace doors and moldings in your house every 5 years, you really should train your kids and pets a little better.
I’m not sure if this estimate is correct or not but I will say that upkeep on an older home costs a ton of money, especially if there is deferred maintenance and especially if you are going to do it right.
my home was built in 1909. in the last 7 years we’ve put around $100k into it, and we’ll put another $100k into it next year.
by no means are we typical… and I’m hoping that we’ve finally “caught up”. but everything is more expensive when you have an old home. Almost everything has to be custom.
For instance, when I went to replace a 6 panel closet door I found that the doors in my house are not the same size as doors made in the 2000’s.
thus I had a choice: buy a custom solid wood closet door for about $800-1000 or scour the metro area looking in salvage shops. I did the latter and the door still cost me hundreds of dollars not including painting.
I had to buy a custom front door. obviously I had to buy custom windows, and obviously they had to be wood.
Siding can be super expensive as well. You really have to do wood siding to stay authentic, although Hardie Board will also work (also expensive). no aluminum siding for you!
The knobs on my buffet cost me $10-20. each. I spent many many hundreds of dollars. On knobs.
as for the timing/frequency of the repairs:
I don’t think most of the stuff has to happen often, but it does have to happen more often than you think.
and it crops up EVERYWHERE.
For instance: when we redo the kitchen next year we have to go down to the studs because we have plaster walls. Thus, can’t just put up any old cabinets… the walls are not straight. so instead of just taking out cabinets and replacing, we have a to-the-studs remodel. there will be holes in my kitchen floor, so we have to replace that. and we have to match with the 100 year old floors in the rest of the first floor. $$$
Don’t even get me started on the cost of 12-16 inch custom baseboards. (where a special tool has to be built to cut the boards to match the old). I just paid $400 for 8 feet of baseboard in my closet. not including painting. I cringe at the cost of baseboards after the kitchen redo!
lastly: I’m not sure how big the above house is. Mine is a 3 story 1850 sq ft home.
by next year I will have spent $200k in 8 years.
admittedly, we are sort of sticklers for that stuff and the prior owners were not. so some of this is undoing what they did, and some was deferred maintenance.
I certainly hope it doesn’t remain $200k repairs per 8 years! I’ll go bankrupt!
i can sell a bridge to anyone who really believes this number is even close to being accurate. yes, restoration can be costly, especially if you want it quick. but this is maintenance folks. inspect the plumbing for $2,500/yr? i’ll do it for half that (and still put all that $$ in my pocket).
“(a cost that’s often overlooked in rent versus buy calculations)”
suuure. a phantom that is used to convince people that owning houses is too scary? that’s more like it.
Totally agree with above comments. Sure, it’s expensive to renovate as ex-SFer points out.. New doors, replacing molding, etc can be pricey on an old home. But that’s not what they’re talking about.. They’re saying $22,667 in maintenance. And it will save them $31,617 in taxes. Where do I sign up?
R has a point that the tax savings are more than the submitted budget amount, however my understanding is the difference is produced by a formula set out by statute in the Mills Act. Anyway, don’t you think it’s highly likely that they’ve spent way more than the approx. 8.9k one year tax reduction in architect’s, attorney’s and consultant fees as well as fees to The City?
anonee’s comment reflects what I like to call the “Walmart attitude” that’s so prevalent nowadays; no matter what the cost quoted of anything is, someone can just say “that’s too high”, just like wal mart treats it’s suppliers. And when the supplied good or service at the lower price is of significantly lower quality, well, the Walmart attitude is to just ignore it and pretend everything is okay.
Guess what? It’s highly likely that the commenter anonee isn’t qualified to inspect the plumbing on a one hundred thirty year old house and wouldn’t know what they were looking at if they were given the opportunity. This Victorian is already a city landmark, and any maintenance done has to be to very high historical/preservation standards by people who have the requisite training and skills, not the standards of any random person who can buy a pipe wrench at Lowes and offers to “do it for half that”.
If this is the upkeep of the Lilienthal Orville-Pratt house, I wonder what it costs for the Lilienthal-Haus house?
Not all artisan trades people are the same. There’s high end shops as well as low end. The high end shops tend to have slick marketing and sales operations. At the low end you’ll find some dude who smokes a lot and drives a beat up pickup full of tools. I’ve hired the latter and have received high quality results as well as learning a little about the trade. As far as I can tell the only difference between high and low end vendors is the price. Well that and the low end dudes tend to be a lot more passionate and picky about the jobs they take.
How will the city confirm that the owner is complying with their obligation to maintain the house in a historically sensitive manner ? Scheduled inspections ? In any case there’s a lot of wiggle room for subjectivity.
And don’t be surprised if there’s significant deferred maintenance passed on to the next owner.
bra ha ha ma,
“It’s highly likely that the commenter anonee isn’t qualified to inspect the plumbing on a one hundred thirty year old house and wouldn’t know what they were looking at if they were given the opportunity.”
yep, historic plumbing and electric…gotta preserve that stuff..even if it was not installed in the original house.
what you seem to not comprehend is that the best way to preserve these structures is by putting in new systems,foundations and roofs. its not by hiring ye olde brickmason,gas lamper and redwood shake roofer.
The ideal way to spend a bazillion dollars on this house is to replace all the old systems.
Don’t have a bazillion dollars? Just need to replace one short piece of plumbing that was damaged or is not sloped properly, and need to interface with the existing plumbing throughout the house?
Ye olde plumber versed in the old stuff is needed.
Need to replace a radiator in a heating system? Why not just put forced air? Oh, you want to preserve the comfort and look of the radiators? Ye Olde radiator mechanic is needed.
Anything else?
“Ye olde plumber versed in the old stuff is needed.”
Not really.. Plumbing hasn’t advanced or changed all that much.. only the materials have changed. And it’s easy to swap in a piece copper wherever you need to. No special training needed.
anonee, there are lots and lots of Victorians around this city where the owners agree with you that “the best way to preserve these structures” is to put in new systems, and have done so. The Mills Act isn’t intended for these types of owners.
What you propose might be the most “cost efficient”, where we take that term to be a euphemism for cheapest, but when the entire point is to preserve as much as possible the historical integrity of said structure, it is far, far from “the best way”.
R – true, plumbing hasn’t advanced as rapidly and the technology is largely the same as it was fifty years ago. But that doesn’t mean that anyone should try to mend those systems without understanding the basic code involved. Take your “swap in a piece of copper pipe” example. Hopefully you know that you cannot directly interface copper to steel pipe without a proper dielectric barrier in-between. But others may not and set themselves up for disaster. There are dozens of ways to screw up plumbing that aren’t apparent for years later.
That’s the downside of our DIY culture. There’s a lot of Ys who think that they can DI without understanding what they’re doing. Cargo Cult Construction.
I like the point that anonee brings up about the plumbing and electrical systems being later retrofits in houses of this age. Its a good thing that the historic preservation board is not absolutist, otherwise the occupants would be reading by dangerous gaslights and having to nip out back to the outhouse to relieve themselves. And forget phone and cable.
MOD: No doubt. But djt was implying you needed a plumber with some special knowledge of old systems. I’m saying you need a plumber. Any licensed plumber in the city will know dis-similar metals and anything else you need to deal with in old plumbing.
Sticking with plumbing, if you don’t know the old thing you are looking at and how it is assembled and how to break it apart or remove it, you can do damage to the thing to which you would attach your new copper pipe, making it so you need to cut back the old part even further, which at this point may involve removing plaster and trim and who knows what else. When repairing things, careful removal is more than half the job, and careful removal can require specialized knowledge.
I’ve deliberated about how to drill a particular hole for hours and days ( not while on the clock obviously), and when done right it makes the remainder of the job take 5 minutes. A blunderbuss would drill the hole in 5 minutes, and then spend 2 days repairing the damage.
It’s really not that hard. I swear. It’s plumbing. Been done the same way for generations.
And if you take 2 days to deliberate on how to do a five minute job, maybe you’re the Y MOD is talking about.
Any licensed plumber in the city will know dis-similar metals…
Don’t count on it; my bathroom was redone (down to studs, new tub) in the mid nineties. The separate fill faucet gives evidence every time I turn it on that the plumber did not insert a dielectric barrier. Oh, and not to mention pictures that the homeowner took during construction. The tile wall mocks me every time I fill the tub…
R – sorry, give me a F for reading comprehension today ! So we agree, any competent plumber ought to be able to handle the job. Though along what djt mentioned some are clods and will whip out the sawzall prematurely to, claiming to the owner that the only solution is to open the wall. It makes the plumber’s job easier though leaves the homeowner with the problem of repairing the wall. A better plumber would have tried every trick in the book before tearing the wall open. But sometimes the only way to repair the problem requires that the wall has to be opened.
And like djt I’ve pondered how to attack a problem for a long time to ensure it is done right whereas a pro might have instinctively known the right approach immediately. An incompetent DIYer on the other hand would have just done something, anything, just to “finish” the job.
But like EBGuy mentions, even the pros screw up too. I had an even worse issue last year where a new pipe spring a leak about two months after it was installed. Fortunately we detected the problem before it soaked the house frame severely and also that the contractor stood behind his work and immediately came out to fix his problem.
djt,
“Ye olde plumber versed in the old stuff is needed.”
“Ye Olde radiator mechanic is needed.”
“Anything else?”
you are wrong, wrong and wrong again…but just keep on throwing spaghetti…
i actually know quite a bit about historical preservation and the standards required.
“When repairing things, careful removal is more than half the job, and careful removal can require specialized knowledge.
I’ve deliberated about how to drill a particular hole for hours and days”
this is a ridiculous statement if uttered by a pro; this is an expected statement when uttered by an amateur. i would advise you to stick with your day job…
As it is the home my mother (grand niece of Orville Pratt) was born in, I do agree with the idea behind its conservation of course however it seems costs could be trimmed without sacrificing any of its restoration or future maintenance needs