And here I was going to suggest the opposite: buy something that costs a bit less than you can afford. I guess it all depends on what you want to do. I couldn’t stand the thought of being house poor and having to scrimp and save because of an ongoing mortgage payment. Yes, I wanted a nice house. But I also wanted to afford vacations, furnishings, my hobbies, etc. I guess it’s just a personal preference thing.
I heartily agree on the mature trees thing! Nothing makes a neighborhood more pleasant than full, beautiful trees. And I just hate those toothpick trees in new developments.
The house we were looking at was about 75 years old. After the inspection, we learned that the wiring was something called “knob and tube” which is common in old houses and is a huge fire risk. (Our insurance company said they’d refuse to cover us unless it was fixed.)
It’s also * very expensive * to fix. New wires need to be run through the walls in a lot of cases.
Second (or third) on the house poor problem. My husband and I bought a house slightly more than we could afford, assuming (ah yes! an assumption, great move) that our careers and salaries would improve over the years. Wrong. We are now in a position where we are letting the house slowly fall to pieces because we don’t have enough money to maintain it. If something major fell apart – furnace, ie – we’d be absolutely screwed.
(And we’re not driving SUVs and taking vacations, either. We have just enough to pay the electric bill and get groceries).
Think twice before buying an older house. Neither I nor my husband had much DIY experience; I guess I thought it would just come to us as we slept, or something. Turns out we’re both lousy at DIY. The house reflects this. See above for why we can’t hire anything done. Also see above for the astonishly ruinous problems characteristic of older houses.
Second/third on the neighbor issue. If I had only known what the neighbors were like, I would NEVER have bought our house. This can be very difficult to ascertain but is CRITICAL to your future comfort/happiness/enjoyment of house & life in general.
And finally… stairs. I loved those 1 1/2 story Cape Cod houses, loved having rooms on three different floors… until I lived with it for several years. After 7 years of running laundry back and forth down two flights of stairs, I’m thinking that the architectural deficiences of ranch houses (IMHO) are much outweighed by the fact that my knees would still have cartilage if I owned one.
Big trees that lean over the house give nice shade, but the gutters are constantly a mess. Near as I can tell, nobody in the world makes gutters the way they should for a house with trees overhead.
If you want broadband, check what’s available. If you want satellite access, check your view of the southern sky.
Neighbors are hard to be too careful about. One of mine has stinky oil heat, and the other uses stinky perfume in their laundry all day Sunday. This makes the great outdoors somewhat unpleasant here. Beats me how I might reasonably have figured this one out ahead of time.
I wish my house was easier to add hardware to. I mean, there is noplace I can run wires out of the house or run a duct from my basement shop to the attic, because the only places it would fit are the places most visible from outdoors. If our house had the livingroom end located on the side the driveway approaches it would be fine - I wish I could flip our floorplan left-to-right.
If you’re going to add any walls at first, run lotsa wires through them; ditto ceilings. It’s about 100x harder to do once the drywall is there.
I agree with those who recommend that you have a licensed electrician inspect the electrical system thoroughly. Problems with the wiring can be very expensive and disruptive to fix, and could even cause your house to burn down. People seem to do a lot of shoddy wiring themselves.
Also, if there is more than one shower in the house, I would recommend turning on the water to both of them at the usual shower temperature, and see how long they can run before the water turns cold. Or if you have one shower, try that and the dishwasher.
I say almost anything can be fixed IF you really like the house.
My opinion is LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION is the most important thing.
My house sits close to the border between two townships. My township has lower taxes, better schools, better roads and less crime than the neighboring one. Schools are important if you have kids.
The other thing is …does the house fit your personailty. My house is on a fairly busy street but in exchange I have no neighbors across from me, decent spaces between the houses and woods in the rear. I’m also not one to be over-neigborly either so this is perfect.
But don’t count completely on what home and termite inspectors say. Almost an entire wall of mine was termite damaged.
Never, ever trust anything with quotes around it. As in the case with my home which stated, House offers a “50 Year Roof” The roof needs to be replaced…after 7 years and they knew bout the water damage before we bought the home.
If at all possible, don’t get a house built on a slab. Get a crawlspace or basement. Our house is on a slab, and the cast iron sewer pipe was in contact with copper water lines. The cast iron rotted away because of electrolysis, and dumped sewage into the heating ducts. The only way to fix it was to dig up the floor for $2500…
Also. when you go looking, take along a big ol’ screwdriver and use it to thump the woodwork. If it sounds hollow, run like hell because there’s termites. Also, look for mud tubes running up the foundation.
If it’s your first house, have it professionally inspected. If you’ve done this a couple of times and you know what you’re doing, you can do it yourself.
If at all possible, don’t get a house built on a slab. Get a crawlspace or basement. Our house is on a slab, and the cast iron sewer pipe was in contact with copper water lines. The cast iron rotted away because of electrolysis, and dumped sewage into the heating ducts. The only way to fix it was to dig up the floor for $2500…
Also. when you go looking, take along a big ol’ screwdriver and use it to thump the woodwork. If it sounds hollow, run like hell because there’s termites. Also, look for mud tubes running up the foundation.
If it’s your first house, have it professionally inspected. If you’ve done this a couple of times and you know what you’re doing, you can do it yourself.
I don’t know if it’s a factor where you’re buying, but think about snow when you’re buying a house in June. A place that’s off the beaten track in the summer can become cut off from civilization in the winter. Find out who plows the roads, if your road is one being plowed, and who pays for it. And take a good look at your driveway and think about what it’ll look like with a foot of snow on it.
On a similar note, check for things like street repair and garbage removal in your neighborhood.
One more thing, inspired by kelebrian’s DIY comment. Seriously consider how much house repair and maintenance work you want to do. I know people who buy broken down houses, fix them, and make a profit. Our neighbor in one place was an architect, and he added on a beautiful circular deck. I can handle installing new fans and the like, but I wouldn’t want to do major rennovations. Also, if you like to garden, you can get a big lawn and garden, but if you hate it, you’ll wind up paying someone to do it.
Around here schools are the number one factor in house prices. Even if you are not planning to have kids, consider them.
