How do you pick a house?

In My Humble Opinion
21

For me, the most important criterion is that my wife says we’re living there. Pretty much trumps all other considerations. :o

My only real input on this is paying for it. And, of course, living there.

I’m sure HER criteria are all rational and well-thought-out. The place we live in is about 4 blocks from the school the kids go to, and 6 blocks from her best friend’s place. So those probably figured in.

Of course, that gives me a 30 minute commute, but that’s not important. Because she has a 5 minute commute.

22

TLDR: Figure out what areas broadly work, get to know them inside out, then wait until you get lucky.

23

That’s awesome! Although I do find you want to ensure it actually IS hollow. Good houses always are.

24

We’re about 50-ish miles from DC and lots of folks from around here commute there for work. Some drive, others do park-n-ride and take charter buses. I can’t imagine we’re the only area with that option.

As for the house itself, before we bought this one, we had a fairly firm list - 3/2, unfinished basement, attached 2-car garage in a non-HOA neighborhood. Since we were younger and more energetic, we didn’t worry about dealing with a fixer-upper. We had a preferred area, but we didn’t dismiss surrounding areas. And we hit the jackpot. We got what we wanted on 3 acres in an older, established neighborhood less than a quarter of a mile from a main road. Our jobs have changed over the years, with my husband winning the “worst commute” contest when he worked at NASA in Greenbelt. Other than that, we’ve mostly managed to work within 30 miles of home. But for us, the house, where we intend to retire, was more important than the commutes.

Ya gotta decide what’s most important to you.

25

But if the house taps back you maybe want to pass.

26

In five years from now, self-driving cars might have changed how we experience commuting.

27

Or the termites start screaming at you …

28

When I see comments about “the paint was just horrible!” or “the carpet was (some kind of wrong)”, I sigh.
A house is a long-term proposition.
In 20 years, you WILL:
Re-paint. Now you get your perfect colors.
Replace floor covering. That tacky vinyl is now gone.
Changing some stuff is easy and cheap.

Moving a house is generally not possible. Like the location before buying
Number/size of rooms in almost always cost-prohibited. Exception: turning 2 small bedrooms into one large one can sometimes be simple and cheap.

Do you really want a large yard? Unless you pave it, it will need repeated care. Unless you want kids and/or entertain large groups, they may be contraindicated.

29

Thank you, everyone, for your replies. I read every word of every one, and I will probably go back and re-read every word again in the morning. I’m actually a bit surprised, as this thread got more replies than I thought it would, all of them kind and constructive. Clearly I need to give more thought to exactly what I want, but what you guys said gives me a starting point for my thoughts.

I tried to gather together all the quotes that had questions. If I missed a question I’m sorry, let me know.

I don’t want to publicly share the location. We do have the option of working off-peak hours. My husband works shift work, so quite often he has to work non-peak hours, but sometimes he has to work regular hours. The core hours at my job are 10:00-3:00, so I have some flexibility to work with as well. This is a big help, as I wake up really early anyways so it wouldn’t be too outrageous to suggest that I leave for work at 6:00 AM.

I could. The houses close to the Metro tend to be small, crowded neighborhoods, and more expensive, but it may be worth all that to be near mass transit.

Oh, also, I ought to mention that reading on the Metro makes me carsick, so I don’t know how well I could read/work unless I was able to tackle that.

Because we’re too poor for that.

First one.

My work is Metro-accessible. (Is Metro a localized term? Subway, maybe?) Maybe I could take a train if I could transfer to Metro. My husband needs to bring his work car to work, though.

Umm … Not sure how to answer this. A river separates Maryland and Virginia, so even if we went further north/south we’d still have to drive to one of the bridges to cross into the other state. But I have heard that – gosh, how do people put it? Essentially that traffic is heaviest in the city, so that going ten miles out will add an hour to your commute, but another ten miles further won’t add nearly as much time onto your commute.

30

Two easy solutions I want you to think long and hard about.

Number 1: If you were to get a house in the country with acreage and a swimming pool (always have a pool because its good for exercise and if you dont use it you can always have it for the home value and plus its fun to have parties by a pool just ask Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne.) would you be able to get to city transit? A lot of places I know of have a place where you can park and either carpool or hop a bus or city transit services.

Number 2: If you were to get a house in the country with a lot of acreage would you be willing to learn how to fly a helicopter? Aviation fuel right now is at a pretty decent low meaning that helicopter usage would be very beneficial if you are near a city with public use helipads (NYC and Chicago have many public use helipads that charge very reasonable access fees).

So helicopters or public transit? Its like choosing between the ghetto oldsmobile or the souped up Escalade with rims and a hydraulic bounce system.

Plus an investment into a helicopter would drive your home value through the roof particularly if you were to have a storage area for the helicopter on your property or even a leveled grass area for a helicopter to land.

31

Missed the edit window, but I want to give Misnomer a few more details. There are a few single-family homes in our price range. But there are other problems. The more affordable parts of DC are often more dangerous, which we don’t like. Also, the gun laws in DC are super strict, which doesn’t affect me, but – well, I think they’re a deal-breaker for my husband.

32

Since this is your first house, I would recommend talking to a friend who owns a home or even an actual home inspector to get informed about maintenance and structural issues to be aware of. You don’t want to fall in love with a house that has issues like drainage, foundation, roofing, etc. If you haven’t owned a house before, you might not be aware of the potential pitfalls and how much things like AC or a roof cost to get fixed.

33

Lucky for us, my father-in-law is a building inspector! So we’ve been consulting with him when we see houses we like that are in questionable shape.

34

I live in Tysons and my office is in Rockville, so I cross a bridge every day. The distance is 17 miles. It takes me 30 minutes in the morning and average 40 at night but once in a while it’s over an hour. If there is a major accident on or near the bridge I am totally screwed.

Going the other direction is worse, though.

About once a week I go to my client’s (federal agency) near Union Station in DC. Also about 17 miles, averages 1:10 in the morning and maybe 35 minutes home if I get out by 4:00. A long commute can be tolerable but there is something soul-sucking about a commute where you average 13 miles an hour.

35

When looking at the commutes, don’t look purely in terms of distance: look in terms of time and driving… uh, shittiness.

I bought my house when I was working in an office building beyond the Pamplona beltway. From my house to the office: 25km, or 20 minutes of a very pretty drive. From downtown to the office: 7km, or 45 minutes of bumper-to-bumper traffic (that’s if the traffic is actually moving). To me, the deciding factors were: commute, price (my house cost about 1/2 to 1/3 what its twin would have cost in town) and the fact that the little town where it is happens to be a “county head” equivalent, so it actually has all the services of a much-bigger location.

36

Yes!!! I used to do that commute across the Legion Bridge (Bethesda to McLean). The distance was only 8 miles, but it could take 45 minutes in the evening (the morning was never nearly as bad). When I started looking for an apartment, my criteria was that it could be no more than half an hour away without traffic. My friends who weren’t from this area asked “Why not make your criteria half an hour in traffic?” I said “Because that just doesn’t happen.”

37

For me, privacy/seclusion was the most important feature. I told my real estate lady that I only wanted to look at houses if I could walk out the front door nekid, walk around the outside of the house and re-enter without being seen.

To her credit, she only showed me houses that fit that description. I bought the third one I looked at.

38

If Metro makes you sick, you might consider MARC. It’s kind of a pain because the schedule is so set, but it is a much smoother ride and generally more reliable.

39

We’re dealing with a similar situation to the OP, except she’s looking for a job and mine is always up in the air, but with a high likelihood of downtown or Arlington. Traffic in and around DC is asymmetric; you can live farther out but have a shorter commute. And I spent so much time traveling when I started working here that I don’t have a good sense of what parts have safety issues.

40

All right, I think it’s time to provide a little more personal info. I had expected the answers to this thread to be more generic, though I’m not complaining! If enough people are familiar with the DC area, that’s great. So let me give you all a bit more background on our situation, hopefully without crossing the boundary of sharing more than I’m comfortable sharing online.

First relevant piece of info: My husband insists that if there is one mandatory criteria for the house, it’s a big garage. He has a big car he does work on, so he wants a garage for it, as well as room to back a trailer into it (for towing this car, since it’s not legal to drive on the road). This severely, severely limits our options.

Second relevant piece of info: I live four miles from my job. I literally jogged home from work yesterday. So I do have a certain reluctance to move at all, purely because I am in such an ideal situation right now. But I do understand that my husband’s commute is, well, not fun. My husband has, for years, had a second mandatory criterion: he did not want to cross a bridge in his commute to work.

When you consider that our salary is, well, typical for people who have never owned a house before, this limited our options so much that there really wasn’t room for me to want much of anything. Last year, we put an offer in on a short sale, and the house was essentially his dream house. As a result, when the short sale fell through, he was much more devastated than I was.

I finally, very recently, broke. I suggested to him that we move to some houses that were close to my work and had big garages. He initially refused, asking me how I could expect him to have that commute every day. I responded that he had suggested houses that were a worse commute for me than these houses were for him, and that it’s not fair to ask me to make such sacrifices if he’s not willing to do the same. He relented, and we are now considering some houses that are close to my work (something I want) with either a garage or room for a garage (something he wants).

So right now, we’re essentially considering four types of houses:

(1) Houses in this town that’s close to my work. This is, naturally, my first choice, but I can see why my husband would be resistant to the idea.

(2) Houses that are technically a midway point, but would be more of a commute for me because I would have to cross the bridge and drive with the flow of traffic, while he’d be driving against it. There are people at my office who take this commute, and they say it’s awful and warn against doing it, but since other people do it, that means it’s possible. This seems like the best option, but it’s not without it’s pitfalls: These houses are more expensive, limiting us to homes around 1,200 square feet, which is smaller than we’d like since I want to set up a home workout space. Also, remember the garage he needs. It means a lot of otherwise good options get tossed out.

(3) Move further out, get an even worse commute but a nicer house. We’ve found a few fixer-upper homes that would allow us to live in neighborhoods we otherwise couldn’t afford. We already went through the process of working with a contractor and obtaining a 203k loan with the short sale we almost got, so we’re comfortable with the process. We are considering whether extending our commute further would be worth getting a better house. We’re also trying to estimate factors like reverse commutes, alternate routes, traveling during non-peak hours, etc.

(4) Buy a house that is impossible for my commute. I think I mentioned earlier in the thread that one option we have considered is buying a house, then seeing if I could get permission to telecommute, and if I can’t, to quit my job. This is my least-favorite option. However, it is worth considering that if it weren’t for my job, we could afford nicer houses in nicer neighborhoods.

Oh, one other thing I should mention before posting this: I have been in some car accidents in the past, which has resulted in a messed up back. It irritates my back to stay in the same position for too long, which sort of complicates this whole commute thing. But the suggestions to take the Metro actually speak very well to my back problems, because if I took the Metro I’d probably be standing for an hour, rather than sitting. Though truth be told, I really don’t like public transit, what with the recirculated air and people encroaching on your personal space, so just on a personal level, the idea of taking the Metro doesn’t appeal to me.