Oh yes – check the zoning. Both to make sure that you can do there what you’ve got in mind to do; and to check what the neighbors can do, especially what they can do without needing special permission. If there’s no zoning: bear in mind that this means the neighbors can do just about anything, ranging from large-scale pig farms to big box stores to dirt track shows making lots of noise till three in the morning.
And check the likely cost of taxes and of property insurance, so as to consider that in your finances.
One more vote for home inspection. My daughter was thinking about buying a house and got one. She sent it to me. It was like 70 pages long. That would have been a disaster.
Make a list of the features of the house and neighborhood important to you, ahead of time. You had some already, but do you want a quiet street or a noisy one? Our house is one story with no steps - that was really helpful after my wife got her knee replaced, and will be even more so in the future. If you are going to be in a house a long time you should think about mobility issues. How close do you want to be to stores? How busy a street? We are across the street from an elementary school, which is annoying a few times a day but it is a place where there are a lot of walkers, so we feel safer. Crooks are more likely to target a house on a quiet cul de sac than here.
Check out the commute at commute time, if you have one. Drive around the neighborhood at night and a few times during the day.
When we were looking all the Realtors we went to showed us the test scores for the local schools, since that is a significant factor in home value around here - even if you don’t have any kids.
When you are on the home tour look at fit and finish and do things like turning on the water to check for drainage and water pressure. Even if you think you can fix it, you might be able to get the price knocked down. Look for little indicators. When we were looking in NJ, basement flooding was a big issue. The guy we bought from had a home electronics repair business, and I noticed that he had expensive equipment on the floor, so I figured the basement was dry. I was right.
I’m not sure about the neighbors. If the neighbors like the seller, they might not tell you bad things to help them out. And vice versa. Maybe if you are about to make an offer, but not to screen the house.
This is something more applicable to rural properties, but I think it’s prudent to check in all cases. Spend some time at the county records office and research CC&Rs (covenants, conditions and restrictions) and easements. They may all be fine or there may be none at all, but you definitely want to know this information. Example: If someone has the eternal right to cross your property to access their own, it’s a good thing to know.
Maybe it’s a New England thing, but a stranger knocking on doors isn’t likely to find a chatty response. GTFOOH is the most likely response.
In fact I am this very morning reading my neighbors Facebook responses to Jehovah’s Witnesses in our neighborhood. People are quite friendly with their neighbors once they’ve moved in and settled down. But strangers? Not so much.
I personally knew a woman years ago who thought an inspection wasn’t worth paying for. She bought a house that was not in very good condition overall, but it was in her budget, so she took out the loan. Fast forward a year. A year of doing dishes and laundry and taking showers. She’s noticing a pretty rank smell, so hires someone to poke around. The person checked the crawl space and reported that the drains (other than the toilet) were not connected to a main, but were instead draining directly into the crawl space, which had a dirt floor.
Might be more true in the city than out in the country. Anybody coming down a back road may well be noticed by the neighbors, making nefarious purposes more risky.
Hey, the neighbors here stopped me on the street to talk to me.
This probably is variable by place. But I’d certainly try. Lead off with ‘I’m thinking of buying the X place’ so they know that you’d be about to be a neighbor if you do, and also that you’re not trying to sell them something.
(If you suspect the neighbors are making meth, on the other hand, stay the hell away. But I also wouldn’t buy there if I could help it. – and that’s one of the things you might learn from other neighbors. ‘It’s OK you knocked on my door, but don’t knock on their door!’ They might tell you why.)
– Jehovah’s Witnesses are a different matter. They are trying to sell you something, and some (not all) of them are persistent. People’s negative reactions to them doesn’t tell you much about their reactions to others.
I guess you have still learned something - that it’s not a friendly neighborhood.
Perhaps my White privilege is showing, but in the middle class to moderately wealthy areas that I have bought I have found that people are quite chatty if you knock on the door and explain that you are buying a house nearby and want to say hello to the neighbors and get to know the neighborhood.
I do say that I am buying, implying that I’m getting to know my new neighbors; not that I am thinking about buying, and screening potential neighbors.
I am currently sharing a house that has a busy road on the other side of the back fence. And a stop light. I hate it. Amazingly we get some good bird species at the feeder because we’re nearby a river/bike trail. But the traffic/loud engines/loud music? No thank you.
Our personal experience in 25 years of home ownership is that the estimate of 1% of home value per year in maintenance costs is too low if you’re not handy.
But even roof, siding, exterior painting, furnace, A/C and major appliances will run more than 1% a year (assuming a $500k value) around here.
I bought my house in 2003 when I was 49. I didn’t want to ask for advice because I wanted to surprise my friends and family, who never imagined I would do such a thing. (I didn’t either.) I bought the Dummies book and one other and followed the steps exactly. My loan officer said she had never seen someone so prepared. For a month or so I set up viewings on my own. I eventually met a realtor I liked and hired him. I got a great house from the original owner who had lived here 50 years and was meticulous with upkeep. I’ve followed his example. I’ve been here 20 years and am paying off the mortgage in a few months, 10 years early. Best decision I ever made.
To again emphasize what others have said about inspections, the $300 I spent inspecting a house I didn’t buy was possibly the best investment I’ve ever made. Probably saved me $80,000.
I’ll push back a bit the other direction, though. No house is going to be perfect. If you have unreasonable requirements, you’ll never find anything. It’s fine to have a few deal breaker level requirement (unlicensed septic system? run away!), but others need to be classified as desires, and put into the total weight of making a decision. Garage could be larger, the roof is old, a second full bath would be nice, etc, but the price is right and the location is fantastic.
It would be interesting to study how maintenance costs scale with various house parameters. I’d guess they’d scale with area, but not necessarily with price, since I doubt million dollar houses of 1500 sq ft costs all that more to maintain than $300,000 houses. Probably a bit because of higher labor costs, for things you don’t do yourself, but not that much.
For sure, repairs and maintenance on our house (appraised value $1.1m) wouldn’t likely be higher than a very similar one 5 miles away (appraised value $600k) because the difference is mostly in the value of the land, not the size and quality of the house. Tonier towns might have houses with more high end fixtures and systems, but not enough to double the maintenance costs. In some cases there might even be a “Boots Theory” impact where something like an oversized, high quality HVAC system might cost less in maintenance over the long run than cheaper versions.
The actual cost might also be lower if lower income folks are more inclined to shop around and use handyman type services than full-on professional companies. I know our neighbors when we lived in a less affluent town had their roof replaced for $4000 by some guys moonlighting with their employers equipment. It cost us more than double using the same company, and some of the same workers.
A good rule of thumb is to take your monthly take-home pay (after taxes etc. are taken out) and divide that by 3. Make sure your total mortgage payment, including taxes, insurance, etc. is less than 1/3rd of your take home pay.
At the age of 53, you should be looking at either a 10 or a 15 year mortgage. With a 10 year mortgage you aren’t bound by your mortgage and can retire at 65 with a couple of years to spare. With a 15 year mortgage you will have to wait until 68 to retire.
If there is recent termite damage, walk away.
If the basement shows evidence of leaks, walk away.
Look at the surrounding terrain, and see where the water is going to want to go when it rains. If it naturally wants to head for your house, walk away. Similarly, look for any nearby water sources like creeks and streams and try to picture where a huge amount of water would go from there if it floods, because at some point it will flood.
Modern furnaces last about 20 to 30 years. Water heaters only last about 7 to 10. A roof will last about 15 years, maybe more if they used higher quality shingles. I put the longest-lasting shingles I could buy when I did my roof a few years ago. I don’t want to have to replace them again during my lifetime. Most people will go for the cheaper shingles though.
When planning out your finances, you’ll want to have about $10k set aside for emergencies. Houses have fairly low maintenance costs, with occasional “surprises”. You can go for months with very few, if any, issues. Then WHAM. Something big breaks. Might be an appliance like your washer/dryer, might be your fridge, might be your oven. Maybe your furnace has a major issue. Maybe you get termites (which requires a professional exterminator - don’t try to handle termites on your own). Maybe bees build a nest inside one entire wall of your house. Who knows what the issue will be. But once in a great while, something will happen. It’s not like an apartment or a rented house where all you need to worry about is the rent and your maximum expenses are capped and are easily predictable.
Avoid adjustable rate mortgages. You want fixed rate.
Good luck!
Remember, even though interest rates suck right now, you can always refinance once they go down. You’ll lose a couple thousand in closing fees and such during the refi, but if the rates drop enough you can still save money in the long term.
