Property Assessment in Kingston, NY

Buying an old Kingston house is buying a hundred years of other people's repairs. A systems assessment looks at the plumbing, heating, electrical, water and septic as one picture, before you commit to the purchase.

What an old-house buyer actually needs to know

A standard home inspection tells you the roof is old. It usually will not tell you that the supply lines are galvanised steel, that the panel is full, or that the boiler is at the end of its service life. Those are the numbers that change what you should offer. We report on the systems we work on every day, with photographs and plain English, and we tell you which items are urgent and which can wait.

Not a home inspection

To be clear about the boundary: this is a systems assessment by a contractor, not a licensed home inspection, and it does not replace one. It is the second opinion you get when the general inspector says 'the plumbing appears functional' and you want to know what that means in dollars.

What is different about homes in Kingston

• Much of Kingston's housing stock dates to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in Midtown and along the Rondout.
• The Stockade is the site of the original 1658 Dutch settlement and holds some of the state's oldest continuously occupied homes.
• City water comes from a protected Catskill watershed, so the supply is soft surface water — but aging interior plumbing still causes trouble.
• Uptown, Midtown, and the Rondout sit at different elevations, so water pressure and drainage behave differently block to block.
• Frost depth in the mid-Hudson Valley runs roughly 42 to 48 inches — deep enough to reach buried water and sewer lines.
• Many older homes still heat with cast-iron radiators and older boilers rather than modern forced-air systems.

Areas we cover: Uptown / Stockade Midtown Rondout Ponckhockie Wilbur East Kingston Eddyville Sawkill Town of Kingston Kingston Waterfront