How old are the roof and furnace? How to find out

You ask, in writing, and you verify it from more than one direction. Ask the seller for the age of each major system and for permits on any work that has been done, then check the answers against the data plates on the equipment, the city’s permit record and your inspection report.

Six systems carry almost all of the money in a house: the roof, the furnace, the air conditioning, the water heater, the electrical panel and the sewer line. A system at the end of its life is just a number you can plan around. A system nobody can put a date on is the one that costs you, because you cannot budget for a replacement you did not know was coming.

Why age beats condition

An inspector tells you the condition something is in today. Age tells you what happens next.

A furnace that works fine and is twenty-two years old is a functioning furnace and a replacement you should be saving for. A roof that is not leaking and was installed the year the house was built is a roof with a horizon on it. Neither will necessarily show up as a defect, because neither is broken. They are just old, and old is a planning problem rather than a negotiation problem.

This is why I push clients to ask for ages as a separate question from the inspection. The inspection tells you what is wrong. The ages tell you what is coming.

The four places the answers live

Source	What it gives you	What it misses
The seller’s disclosure	The seller’s own account of ages and work done	Only what the seller knows or remembers
Data plates and serial numbers on the equipment	A manufacture date for the furnace, air conditioner and water heater	Manufacture date is not always install date, and it tells you nothing about the roof or sewer
City or county permit records	Dated, official records of permitted work — reroofs, panel upgrades, additions	Unpermitted work leaves no trace, which is itself informative
Your home inspection	Condition now, plus an inspector’s estimate of remaining life	Estimates, not records

Use all four. Any one of them on its own will mislead you at least some of the time.

Check the permit record yourself

I check permit history for clients before they write an offer, and it has never required the seller’s permission. Call the building department for the city the house is in, or look for their online portal, and ask what permits have been pulled on the address.

That is a phone call, and it can happen before you are under contract. I have had clients discover a permitted reroof from four years ago — good news that made them more comfortable — and I have had clients discover a finished basement with no permit attached to it, which is a different conversation entirely. Both were worth knowing before writing.

What the Utah contract gives you

In Utah, the seller delivers a Seller’s Property Condition Disclosure under the Real Estate Purchase Contract, and you review it during your due diligence period. That document is where a lot of these answers should already be, and where you should notice what is missing.

The deadline structure is the thing to plan around. Before the Due Diligence Deadline, you can cancel for any reason by written notice and your earnest money is returned. After it passes, canceling forfeits the earnest money unless a remaining contingency, like financing or appraisal, applies. So every question in this post belongs inside that window, and the window is shorter than it feels. Book the inspection immediately, and send your written questions the same day you go under contract rather than the day before the deadline. What due diligence actually means in a Utah contract goes through the mechanics, and what a seller has to disclose in Utah covers what you are entitled to and what you are not.

Going system by system

The roof. Ask for the install date and whether it was a full tear-off or a layover. Ask whether it was permitted, then check. If there has been an insurance claim on it, ask about that too. Roofs are the single most expensive item on this list for most houses, and they are the one where a dated answer changes what a buyer is willing to pay.

The furnace and the air conditioning. Both have data plates. Ask when each was installed rather than manufactured, and ask who services them. A unit with a service history is worth more to you than an identical unit without one, because it comes with evidence.

The water heater. Cheapest of the six to replace and the most common one to be quietly ancient. Ask the age, look at the tank, and note where it sits — a water heater in a finished basement that fails is a much more expensive event than one in a garage.

The electrical panel. Ask the age and whether it has been upgraded. If the answer is “the original,” that is not automatically a problem, but it is the item most likely to constrain what you can add later — an electric vehicle charger, a hot tub, a shop, air conditioning where there was none.

The sewer line. The one people skip and the one that produces the worst surprises. A sewer scope is a separate service from a standard inspection and it is not expensive relative to what it can find. On an older house, I would not skip it. What a home inspection actually covers is worth reading so you know what is included by default and what is not.

What to do when nobody can answer

Sometimes the seller genuinely does not know — an estate sale, a rental held for years, a relocation where the owner never lived in the house. That is not bad faith, but it is a risk transfer to you, and you should treat it as one.

Three reasonable responses:

1. Get a specialist’s opinion inside your due diligence window. A roofer for the roof, an HVAC contractor for the heating and cooling, a sewer scope for the line. Faster and more definitive than arguing about it.
2. Price the replacement into your own planning. Not into your offer necessarily — into your reserves. Assume the undated system is at the end of its life, and decide whether you can still afford the house on that assumption.
3. Consider a home warranty for the first year, with clear eyes about what it does and does not cover. Whether a home warranty is worth it in Utah is a genuinely mixed answer and worth reading before you pay for one.

What I would not do is ask for a price reduction on a system that is old but working, and treat that as having solved the problem. You do not get everything on the inspection report fixed, and an old furnace is not a defect. It is a schedule.

The short version to bring with you

Ask for: age of roof, furnace, air conditioning, water heater, electrical panel and sewer line. Ask for permits on any work done. Ask who services the mechanical systems. Get all of it in writing, inside your due diligence window, and check the permit record yourself.

I am Kelsey Earl, a Realtor with Keller Williams South Valley, and this is the list I send clients the day they go under contract, because the answers take a few days to gather and the deadline does not move.

If you want the written version to hand to a seller, the answer sheet is the place to start, and if you want someone asking these questions on your behalf, get in touch.