Let's put it this way: if the house itself is appealing, then with some renovation effort you can turn it into something worth the cost and work. With own labor and/or lots of architectural planning. But if the house is just standard and the floor plan needs major changes, then it quickly becomes very expensive without resulting in anything nice. If you just want to live there, you can insulate the roof, replace windows, and lay a few more cables. You can have the water tested, but in the cities there are plenty of rental buildings that function well with 100-year-old pipes. If you want something quickly nice and modern, and don't have around 250,000 lying around, then this is not your property.