What do you wish you knew when buying a house?

In My Humble Opinion
81

I used to live in a second-story walkup. One day I fell down the steep and slippery stairs and really bruised myself up good. No broken bones, but I kept thinking “What if…”. I live alone. I really don’t know how I would have fared managing up and down stairs with my leg(s) in a cast, all by myself. And as a colossal klutz, I believed it was just a matter of time before I would find out.

So I moved into a rental house with just a couple of steps on the front porch. And when I went house-shopping, I made sure I had “no stairs” as a criterion.

But if even sven is more in the market for condos than detached houses, it will be tough to find something without a vertical climb.

82

I love split-levels, but yeah, they are a beast when it comes to accessibility.

83

My wife and I bought our first home 3 years ago. Our priorities were, in no particular order:

  • Short commute to work
  • Relatively walkable to at least some nearby restaurants and activities
  • Within a 30-minute drive to a variety of restaurants and activities
  • While we both work full time, affordable on only one of our salaries
  • Good schools
  • Relatively quiet and non-busy at night

Things I wish we had done differently:

  • Bought a smaller home. While our home was a fairly good deal, larger home = more maintenance = more personal time and money spent on maintenance.
  • Signed up for Angie’s List to find inspectors, instead of using one of our buyer agent’s recommended general inspectors. In particular, I would rather have paid a bit more to get specialized inspections of: roof, drainage+plumbing, electrical, foundation. Knock-on-wood, we haven’t had any major issues, but quite a number of minor issues with the roof and drainage.
  • Gotten a buyer agent who was more hands-on. We were first time buyers and didn’t know what we were doing. Our agent tried to be very low-pressure and not “bother” us. I would have preferred a bit more of her “bothering” us, as well as her offering up her personal opinions on the various homes we saw rather than just “so what do you think about this house?”
84

When dealing with an inspector, make sure that they will bring a ladder and climb on the roof. I’ve heard of too many people whose inspector “forgot the ladder”, and didn’t go on the roof. I also encourage people to get their own inspector instead of relying on the agent’s inspector. Our inspection took about three or four hours. He climbed on the roof, he checked the outlets, he checked the furnace, a/c and the water heater, He tried all of the fixtures, and he spent some time in the basement with a moisture meter. The sellers had to fix the waterproofing in the basement, rip out the framing on a wall because the framing was sitting on earth, replace the electrical panel, and a few minor issues as a result of what our inspector found. We waived the minor stuff on the bathroom fixtures since we were planning on gutting the bathrooms once we bought the house.

85

If you really love your home with the stairs, there are chair lifts which can be retrofitted and carry a person up and down the steps.
Having to quit your home of 50 years due to failing legs is no longer a hard and fast rule.

But yes: bedrooms and bathrooms go on the same floor.

You want a downstairs bedroom for you and let the kids have the upstairs? That powder room needs a shower added.

86

I bought in a very different market, so these may or may not translate well.

Our biggest thing was location. I knew the exact neighborhood where I wanted to live, and told people I knew in the area that I was looking to buy. We found our house when one of those people saw a neighbor putting a For Sale By Owner sign up – we got a phone call, and I talked to the owner that night.

I also wanted to have a little less house, as opposed to a little more house. That’s really personal style, but I would rather clean a smaller house, and having a smaller house is a good deterrent for me about acquiring stuff I don’t need. (And I have a young kid, and all that kid stuff really snowballs and it’s nice to have a natural barrier on that.) I was also excited about spending a little less for a smaller house, so I would have a little more to spend on dealing with the house.

My other tip is hard to come by, but I bought the house from a lady who was eight months pregnant, and I’ll tell you, no one wants to sell a house faster than a lady who is eight months pregnant. Even our mortgage guy was impressed.

87

  1. Catchment area for my preferred primary school for my daughter, proximity to my family, walking distance of train stations.

  2. Yep, too damn close, and 0.3 miles :slight_smile:

  3. I wish I’d listened to my mother when she said buying this house so close to a park could be trouble. On one hand, I have a lovely open view over grass, trees, shrubbery and a kids swing park. On the other hand, most dry summer nights there are gangs of teens hanging round the park gates across the road, and pre-teens have taken it up themselves to start chucking bottles and rocks at our window, plus playing the hilarious knock the door and run away game.

Apart from that, lovely house. So follow that old piece of advice about visiting at different times of day, plus weekdays and weekends to see what the surroundings are like, any noise from neighbours at night you might miss during daytime viewings, etc.

88

That’s why I will never get a mortgage. I have no plans to ever leave my present job, but I also have no confidence that I will always be making as much money as I am now.

So the BEST thing to know when buying a house is what numbers will win the next Powerball jackpot.

89

Or, if you’re planning on more kids/already have an toddler[1], with stairs going up to the front door.

Dismantling the stroller with a wriggling child tucked under one arm, in the pouring rain, and hauling it all up the stairs one handed is no fun.

[1] Okay, I’m cheating a bit with this one :wink: Holy OMG, I preggers! - Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share - Straight Dope Message Board

90

I bought 22 years ago. One of my biggest considerations was my dog. There was no way I would have kept a Labrador Retriever in an apartment or condo. Apartment or condo living for myself is a non-starter too. No way, no how.

Now, the original 30 year loan is nearly paid off. My new dogs have their doggie door and I have my space. My Wife is currently walking the dogs behind the house that backs up to National Forest. My yard is 2 acres, and 100s of square miles of public land. I got lucky.

91

My mother’s flat is 2.5x the size of mine, but mine is in a better location. The two are valued at almost-exactly the same worth :eek:

Something that I was looking for and had to drop, but still wish I had, was an accessible flat. My building doesn’t have a lift: that and changing the tub to a shower are about everything that’s needed; right now several of the oldest neighbors are housebound because they simply can’t walk down the stairs.

I’m trying to buy my grandma’s flat; the biggest motivation is its superb location, but another thing I like is that there is a lift; the tub-to-shower replacement was done very sloppily (there is a 20cm step), so one of the things that need fixed is precisely the shower. Even though the place looks like shite if you don’t know how to look at the structure, and even though there had been very little mainenance for many years, the majority of the defects actually fall under “cosmetic”: think “white doors painted brown, clearly by hand, and you can see every brushstroke”. That’s a lot easier to fix than the one door that’s so combed it can’t close any more :smack:

92

But if you concerned you can’t pay your mortgage if something bad happened, how does renting address that problem? Or do you live with relatives or something?

93

Move to cheaper digs, couch surf, bring in another roommate, move to a place with a better economy, etc. It’s a lot easier to get out of a renting situation without hurting your credit.

94

What he was trying to say was not to do a “cash-out” refi.

Refi’s at a lower rate (especially with no closing costs) can be wonderful, “cash-out” refi’s are basically using the equity in your house like an atm and increasing the principal amount of your mortgage.

regular refi = 100k loan @ 7% - refi @ 5% … lower payments, perhaps pay off loan faster.

cash out refi = 100k loan @ 7% but house is now worth 250k so you refi 175k @ 5% … you get 75k cash in your pocket but you are now making payments on a 175k loan @ 5%. the cash will be spent, but not on mortgage payments.

95

Okay then - no argument with that. In fact I’m disturbed that the ads for cash out refis which were so common during the bubble have returned. They all make it sound like the money is free - and never talk about the cashflow issues you describe.

Slight exceptions are for things like home improvements which will actually increase the value of a home. But they are rare.

96

Fair points.

97

My FIL gave us a good tip; don’t buy on a street with painted lines. Every house has front footage that belongs to the city. They can do whatever they want to with it, but usually it’s never touched. OTOH the city sometimes widens the streets with enough traffic to warrant those lines. If you’ll notice, now and then you’re driving down a nice enough street, with nice houses, but they’re so close to the road that if you spit gum out your car window it could stick to their front door knocker.

98

I see you asked for priorities, and I never answered that.

We prioritized in this order: price, location, house. We were absolutely not going above $275k. We could have afforded more according to all the formulae, but we love to travel and didn’t want to feel too house-poor to indulge our interests.

Location was almost equally important. We are in a river town and knew we wanted to be on the east side of the river. We ended up compromising and bought slightly further away from the downtown area than was ideal for us because of price. We ended up just on the other side of our ideal boundary line, though.

The specifics of the house were less important. We wanted most of the main living space to be on one floor, but that is easy in our neighborhood due to the age and style of homes here. My husband insisted on a 2 car garage because of the harsh winters and the car-dependent culture here. Beyond that, we went in with open minds. As I said previously, we mostly looked for things to be well-maintained and for the general flow and size of rooms to be acceptable. I did not get hung up on any cosmetic issues. For example, I don’t like the carpeting, the dining room light fixture is ugly, there is 1970s wood paneling on some walls in the foyer and basement, the master bedroom is on the small side, and the yard is much larger than we wanted to have to maintain.

But, in the end, all of the features that bug us about the house can be changed, with relative ease. I can take down paneling and plant part of the yard in low-maintenance shrubs, etc. It’s all worth the peace of mind of knowing we could put 20% down without totally depleting our savings, and that we could pay the mortgage even if one of us lost a job/income. Personally, I could not live with the anxiety that comes with owning a very expensive house relative to our income and assets.

This is not to say that we don’t really like our house. We absolutely do. But we love it for the bones of the house, not the decor. And ultimately, I feel that unless you have unlimited funds, there are always aspects of a house that you settle for. It is harder to “settle” on price and location, because those wear at you every single day in the form of stress (bills and time spent commuting). Having wall-to-wall carpet and an electric stove instead of hardwood and gas, not so much.

99

Nm

100

I get it that people want to save the Earth and reuse things like appliances and such from rehab places but often those get stuck in and dont fit properly and will cause problems later on. Now if you want to use reused stuff on your own home - fine. But beware people using them on a home they intend just to resell.