Advice, tips, warnings?
My father has always told me to never buy a house that’s at the bottom of a hill, as those are the ones that get flooded first. From what I can see, he’s right.
We have EXCELLENT credit, and can easily afford to buy quite a large house. We bought a house in the 90s, (we own it outright) but we want something nicer.
We’ve already figured out that “Has a lot of potential” means that “This house needs a lot of work to be livable”.
If I already owned a house outright and could afford it, I’d consider buying a vacation/retirement home instead. A cabin on a lake or in the mountains, or a little place close to a beach. Rent it out when you’re not using it.
Other than that, no advice except to think about the things that bug you about your current home. Do you need space for crafts/hobbies, a library, a workshop? How’s your outdoor space? Do you want a porch or a deck? A big yard with space for gardening, or a small yard that doesn’t take much maintenance? Do you want neighbors? If you have outdoor pets, can you fence the yard?
Twice now I’ve bought the first house I looked at, and while they turned out okay, I wish I would have looked more. The first place didn’t have a garage and was a bitch to heat/cool, and I paid too much for the second place.
Make a list of what you think you need, what you think you want and what you think would be nice.
Rate every house you look at against it and be prepared to fall in love with something that doesn’t have anything on the list. At least then you’ll know it’s a concious choice to live without something and not just have forgotten it in the first blush of house love.
Before you make your offer, visit the house you are looking at at a couple different times. Get out of the car and see what things sound like.
Rush hour - Does traffic suddenly appear on what you thought was a quiet street.
Friday night - Maybe you hadn’t noticed that bar a block over that has really loud bands.
The middle of the night - Our last house was 1/2 mile from a truck stop. We never dreamed that you would be able to hear the trucks idling all night. You also want to check and see where the street lights an neighbor’s lights shine.
Paint is cheap - and carpetting isn’t much more expensive. Don’t pass up a house because the bathroom walls are turquoise. Some houses get passed up for very superficial reasons, and can be a bit of a bargan because of it.
Try to talk the sellers into a house warrenty - I think we paid $300 for one when we sold. It covered all the appliances/furnace/ac in addition to the structure, for a year after the sale. The last 2 houses we have bought have ended up having more than $300 in repairs in the first year. (An added bonus for the seller, it covered up to a year while we were selling the house. If the stove had died, we could have put in a new one for free.)
Snoop when you go through the house you want to make an offer on. Are there cracks in the closets. Does it look like water has been dripping under the water heater. Is there a back room in the basement that is the only room with new flooring? Maybe that is to cover up water damage.
Imagine what the house will be like in the worst weather. Up north, it’s a good idea to look at the driveway to see if you want to deal with it in snow.
Run a google search on the street address. I found out that the house we ended up buying had been on the market for 2 years (motivated seller), and that there was a water damage cleanup company that had placed a lien on the property in the past (turns out there was flooding in the basement that the sellers hadn’t mentioned.)
Finally, don’t just trust what the bank says you can borrow. Work the numbers out on your own, and figure out how much you are comfortable paying on a mortgage. If we spent as much as the bank was willing to loan us, we’d have been eating ramen noodles for years.
Don’t look for the perfect house; this way, you won’t be disappointed when you don’t find it.
Do a lot of open houses. You may not find your home there, but you’ll get an idea of what you’re looking for, what you like, what you don’t like, etc.
When the time comes that you find a house you’re interested in, ask the owner or realtor to arrange to come back a second time, with a camera if possible. You’re likely not a home inspector, but the second trip is so you can take a long time inspecting the house to your specifications. In addition to making an inventory that you can later refer back to, check things out like:
– The roof. Is it in good shape? When does it need to be replaced? How are the gutters?
– Electrical work. Enough plugs? GCI outlets? Outlets outside of the home? Wires coming into the house hanging too low/tangled in trees?
– Water damage. Look up at ceilings. Look inside closets. Look at drywall conditions. Check drainage. Does the house need a sump?
– Any trees outside that need to come down? (That one cost me last time). How’s the yard? Lots of landscaping in your future? Is the deck rotted out? Wooden fencing? Termite damage?
– Flush all the toilets. Run all the faucets. Is the water running slow? Could be nothing, could be a sign of plumbing problems.
– Open every door, open every cabinet, open every drawer. Realize that you’re going to be living in the house, not just for a year but for a long time to come. Anything you’re not thrilled with now is something that you will be responsible for changing down the road, with your own time, money and endless trips to Home Depot, not some landlord.
– Look at your future neighbors.
– Again… LOOK AT YOUR FUTURE NEIGHBORS. Especially if you’re buying a duplex/townhome. Those are not only the people you’re going to see every day, they’re going to be the people who toss trash over your fence, don’t chain their dog, and bring down the property values in your neighborhood. Many times I’ve found a “perfect” home only to be scared away by the condition of the houses near me. Sure, I will take care of MY home, but that doesn’t matter if the rest of the street is filled with lazy folks who don’t care about their property.
– Be prepared to spend a lot of money. Not just to buy the house, of course, but to furnish and tweak the house after you move in. (Oh… and paint the house before you move in, take out the carpet, re-finish floors, etc. None of that gets any easier once furniture is there. If you’re not ready to redo the paint yet-- you want to see how it feels after you move in-- then at least consider painting the ceilings if necessary: odds are those will be white anyway, and they’re the worst things to have to paint once you’re moved in).
I’m sure I’ll think of something else…
Good luck, and have fun!
At the same time - don’t fall for staging. Those clean granite countertops - imagine them with your stuff on them the way you live. Those cool art prints on the wall - you don’t own them, it will be your own art on the wall. Those streamlined lines of a room without stuff…make sure there is room for your stuff.
And on the stuff front - imagine your stuff fitting into a house. I can go house shopping and say “no room for the piano (a big upright), where do the kids put shoes, not enough kitchen storage” and walk out. Watch traffic patterns, particularly when you are likely to be carrying things - how far from the garage to the kitchen when you haul groceries - is it up stairs?
Take photos as you houseshop, good notes, and if you can, sketch the floorplan - they all blend together.
Watch for “good bones” - a good foundation, good windows, good roof, well done concrete work - anyone can paint the walls a trendy wine color and lay down some funky geometric area rugs and put in some pottery barn furniture - not everyone can build a house that doesn’t get water in the basement.
Watch for the amount of work the place is long term. “Lovely house, wouldn’t want to snowblow the driveway” is what we call it here.
Best of luck - currently house shopping myself. Though not for me.
If you’re very VERY patient and want a pretty good deal on a house, consider a short sale.
A short sale is a device used that, in essence, allows the bank to take over control of the house but doesn’t get the previous owners into foreclosure and the financial mess that accompanies it. Usually the previous owners are allowed to even stay in the house until it gets sold which, unlike foreclosures, means the property stays occupied and not left to be destroyed by thieves looking for copper wires. It also means the people living there have an incentive to not throw sledge hammers into the wall and leave all the faucets on before fleeing into the night.
If you go the short sale, you’ll get a fabulous deal on a home and can use any savings on repairs/renovations to get the house back up to your standards. Any house is going to require repairs and it behooves you to be the one to do it, rather than trust the sellers to slap a quick coat of spackle on and call it a day.
So what’s the downside? It’s a long, long looooooong process. On a typical house you make an offer, they counteroffer, you counter couter offer, they accept an offer, and then 30 days later you close. Boom. Keys in hand in maybe 45 days.
Expect that process to be more like 3-6 months on a short sale. Banks move slowly and they want every t dotted and i crossed in triplicate by a notary from the United States of Zimbabwe before doing anything. Your Realtor must be willing to call and pester and nag every single day until it becomes so burdensome the bank will sign the documents just to stop hearing from you.
But again, if you get through it, there are some really great deals to be had. Good luck!
If you have uncapped chimneys, get them capped right away. Make the sellers do it, if you can. We just went through having a squirrel fall down the chimney, urinate, and die in our water heater flue. The smell was, as my dad used to say, “enough to gag a maggot”. We thought this was a minor thing that it was OK to leave till “someday”, until it happened to us.
QFT.
And you probably shouldn’t take the tax advantages or investment potential of the house into consideration when you make this calculation. Shit and alternative minimum tax happens. Houses do go down in value, as we’ve all seen in the last few years. Don’t depend on your house for all of your retirement savings. Don’t stretch yourself too much financially. People lose jobs. Shit happens.
You want a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with at least 20% down. If you can’t afford a house on those terms, you can’t afford it period.
Don’t completely clean yourself out of ready cash to make the down payment. You’ve owned a house before, so you know that stuff breaks. Water heaters die and toilets leak. And it sucks to not have enough money to fix those problems, or to have to pay interest on credit cards.
Some people think you can get away from stuff breaking by buying a newer house. You can’t. Even new stuff breaks sometimes, especially if it was installed by a builder who was trying to cut corners.
If you’re in a college town, bear in mind that neighborhoods might be quieter at night now than they are during the school year. Try to find out how many nearby houses are rented by students, and how loud they tend to be at night. “Students rent houses nearby” probably shouldn’t be an instant deal-breaker, though. We have some renting houses near us. We hear them at night occasionally, but it’s not that bad. I’m sure some college neighborhoods are much worse than ours, though.
Smells are another thing that can vary from day to day. Go in some different weather conditions. Find out if anything smelly or noisy goes on around there seasonally, especially if the house is in an agricultural area.
I wouldn’t buy a house in the same block as a police or fire station, because of the noise.
Don’t buy the largest (or most expensive) house on the street or neighborhood.
Don’t buy one without an inspection, even if it’s brand new.
Houses on corner lots tend to sell more quickly than those that are not, all things being equal.
If you don’t like the curb appeal, most likely you won’t like the inside either.
Women like large master bath tubs in houses even if you never use it. Without one, it will effect your resale.
Be careful of professional house inspectors. We paid $150 and all we got was a visual examination of outlets and walls. He didn’t even look under the sink or behind furniture. Imho, I think you can get much more information if you find somebody in construction to look over the place. Our guy gave us a POS folder with useless information and totally ignored the $10k in roof damage. Luckily, it came up in the condo association notes.
You don’t have to limit yourself to one home inspection. You can have additional inspections with whatever experts you want. So if you’re not 100% sure about the roof, get a good roofer to inspect it. Plumbing, get a master plumber, etc.
One-size-fits-all inspectors are sometimes less than competent. And even if you find a really good one, there will still be areas they are not really experts on.
Two words: double sinks.
They’re god’s gift to American marriages.
Also, home inspectors are utterly worthless. Get a real plumber, electrician, carpenter, and painter to walk through the place and give their feedback. You’d be amazed what they find. My mom owns several investment properties, and she was set to make an offer (cash, only one other bid that wasn’t cash), when her last worker of the four I mentioned - the painter - did a walk through and told here there were literally 5 layers of wallpaper, and that it would take thousands just to scrape it all away. He advised walking, so she did. Get a roofer to look at it too, if the roof is a few years overdue.
And don’t live at the bottom of a hill or even a pseudo hill, like my future MIL. We bailed her basement out last night - yech.
Oh god, ditto. We had a beautiful binder of all the things our inspector said were okay, then summer arrived and we discovered that the air conditioner had been on FIRE. Apparently they are only responsible for inspecting what they can see and 6 inches of snow on top of the ac cover was enough to prevent them from inspecting it. So beware of large pieces of furniture that seem slightly out of place or piles of boxes along a wall. Make sure it’s clear that they need to be moved for the inspection.
Go to the home inspection as well. Follow the guy around. Don’t be afraid to ask him questions if you don’t understand something. Make sure he has a digital camera with him. Ours took four hours to do an inspection he said would take three, but damned if he didn’t do a very thorough job. If you trust your realtor (and you effing well should!) they usually know who the good home inspectors are.
Don’t buy a property that’s down a set of steps.
Don’t buy the largest house you can afford. You said in the OP that you could, but I advise against. Buy the biggest house you can use. All that extra space will NOT make you happier to live there, it’ll cost you money to buy it, and you’ll have to heat/cool it too.
Instead, take that extra money and spend it on LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. Trust me- 5 minutes closer to work x twice per day x 260 days a year = worth it. Or you can get a better school district. Or a quiter neighborhood. Or a safer one.
Buy what you need, not what you can, and spend the rest on location.
I’m reading this thread, but [thread=570921] I have also opened a new thread [/thread], as I am also looking at buying a house, but my questions are more basic, and I’m in Canada, so I didn’t want to hijack this thread.
If you can, stop by and help me figure this out for the first time.
Thanks,
A3D