Anyone buy a really old house with lead paint

and Asbestos pipes? We are looking into buying a house from a family member in a great area but the house is super old. we could not afford to carry our current mortgage and live in this house while we reno the other, but I'm really worried about the lead paint on the walls and the pipes.

What did you do if you purchased a home like this? Can we just paint over and leave the pipes? (i'm pretty sure some of the pipes are crumbling)

can we open walls to update electrical without exposing the lead paint?

what kind of costs are we looking at?

for the walls there is a lot of wallpaper everywhere but we are assuming there is lead paint due to the year built on the walls under the paper. so pulling it down ourselves might be out of the question?

DH worked in construction and is capable of doing all the work, we are just concerned about building codes/permits for doing this kind of stuff which I think meas we would need to hire professionals for?

Any advice would be really helpful!

Re: Anyone buy a really old house with lead paint

I am not an expert on this, for what it's worth:

Almost every home built prior to the 1970s had lead paint in it. But most people paint fairly often, so it's usually buried under layers of other, non-lead paint, in which case, it's fine. Peeling/chipping paint in an older home often raises a concern -- especially when babies or young children are going to be living there. But if the paint is intact, you can generally just paint over it.

Since your familiy member owns the home, can you find out when the wallpaper was put up? Maybe they painted and then put up walllpaper? If it's a concern, you can have it tested. But assuming the paint on the wall was intact when the wallpaper went up, I don't know that wallpaper removal would even disturb the paint layers underneath. So that might not even be a problem.

I think with asbestos - it's best to leave it alone if it's not deteriorating/crumbling. If it is, then I think you need to have it addressed and removed, but would need a professional to do that. But I know when we bought our house, the inspector pointed out some asbestos insulation in the garage, but said it was fine since was intact.

If you were going to buy the home, you'd still invest in a home inspection, right? I am sure the home inspector could flag areas of potential concern and recommend steps you can take to further investigate or remedy the potential problems.

Also, if you are getting an FHA loan, I know that anything like peeling paint and the like would raise a flag and would need to be addressed prior to you getting your mortgage.