My wife mentioned to our home inspector that she thought she smelled gas. He went into a big production of, “Oh there’s no gas smell, if there was a gas smell I wouldn’t let us stay in the house.”
After we moved in, we discovered that the stove was leaking. That required a raised voice discussion with the inspector.
I wish I had known where and how to look for slapdash repairs meant to fool us into thinking everything was kosher, when in fact, there were a number of shoddy repairs and other problems.
Not that we wouldn’t have bought the house, but we’d have screwed them down on the price even more. As it was, we had a lot of stuff that wasn’t obvious in 2007 when we bought the house, but by 2009, it was clear that a lot of putty and paint had been used to cover up second-rate repairs and materials.
Sometimes I wish we still rented; it would be so much cheaper and easier. But having control over our own space makes it worth it. Mostly.
The cost of upkeep and repairs is just crazy high. The mortgage calculators don’t take this into account; with our combined incomes we theoretically could have bought a house twice as expensive, but thank God we didn’t. One thing after another has needed repair or replacement, and in two years half our savings has been eaten up.
I used to love charming old houses, before I was a homeowner. Now, I see a charming old house and all I can think of is, I’d go broke maintaining it. Buy the newest house you possibly can, and avoid owner-remodels. You never know what frugal shortcuts have been taken – frugal for the former owners, that is, but expensive for you later on. Every repair ever done here used materials apparently found at junkyards. Gutters have replacement pieces made of cheap plastic that doesn’t fit the original gutter. Under-sink plumbing repairs are cobbled together from junk. Both toilets were incorrectly seated and leaked, one rotting the entire bathroom floor before the leak was discovered. A complete new bathroom add-on used what turned out to be scrap plumbing older than the house itself. There are days when I want to find the cheap old duffers who sold us the house, and strangle them.
Still beats renting, though. Used to rent a house where the landlady had a psychotic (and illegal) need to visit nearly every day while we were at work, and left evidence – moved potted plants back and forth, left cigarette butts in the yard, left McDonald’s bags in the garbage can. It was some sort of weird dominance thing she had, having to prove it was HER house not ours. I know it’s illegal but we didn’t complain because we were getting a great deal on the rent. Owning our own place, with all its problems, gives a WONDERFUL feeling of control – such a relief knowing that nobody is on our property without permission, ever. That feeling of ownership makes all the aggravation above worthwhile.
Oddly, the cretins that lived in our house before us tended to buy reasonably high quality appliances and other stuff, but just install it in the most slipshod, crappy way possible, with the exception of the fascia boards on the outside. There, they just used bright nails and a shitload of putty, so that after a few years, we got nice regular rust streaks from where the nails were.
Well, we just had an offer accepted. It’s further from metro than I thought I’d be comfortable with (just over a mile), but the house itself is a jewel- large for the area (1,800 sq ft) with a walk-out-to-ground-level basement, large yard, and a lot of charm. It (like basically everything else in the area) dates from the mid-1950s. It’s largely not updated, but in move-in conditions. The previous owner was there 11 years and took very good care of it.
It’s on a quiet street with no through traffic, and very close to a very good elementary school. We paid near the top of our viable range, but the monthly payments aren’t a huge jump.
Here is hoping inspection goes well!
Best of luck to you!
Enjoy the new home. Hope the closing process goes smoothly. And think of that 2 miles to/from the Metro as exercise.
Congratulations! The most sobering moment for a first time home owner is when something breaks and you realize that there is no super to call. Do yourself a favor and get an Angie’s List and Consumer Reports account.
Congratulations!
Some things you’ll want to do before you move in:
Change the locks.
Clean everything. Don’t forget the inside of kitchen cabinets and drawers.
Painting walls and refinishing floors is much easier without any furniture, obviously.
Great advice. If you don’t repaint the closets now, you never will!
Get the inspection and read every single line of it. Pay a contractor or a handyman who isn’t the inspector to review it with you if need be. And then, once everything comes back totally fine and you move in to your new home, be Zen about it when stuff breaks. Stuff was going to break no matter which house you bought, so just make the repair and make sure it is done right without worrying that you made a mistake in buying the house.
Now, now, we did.
Only took a decade to get around to it. 
Or, join Angie’s List for a month and download everything you can think of, then quit.
Either way. 
Although, you want to look at recent reviews on Angie’s List. A lot of times, contractors have great reviews overall, but they take on too much work and their most recent reviews aren’t great. It’l take a while for those bad reviews to affect their average.
You could do what all my friends do and try to leech off my account.
This, 1000 percent. EXCEPT: This is a horrible and vast understatement. Act like you’re Matthew Modine in Pacific Heights. Then, act like the HOA ‘President’ is Michael Keaton- only, more psychotic and determined to control your life and steal your home through some HOA technicality.
Read horror stories about it online. These are all underplaying the seriousness of the matter. IIRC, from my real estate days, and since, HOA agreements are pretty much 100% enforceable in a court of law, meaning that something that you glossed over is the tool that the HOA uses to enforce the president’s will, and to fine you and control your property. And, the courts will rule against you.
Not exaggerating. Do* not *buy if there is an HOA.
The problem is that HOA’s have the legal authority to assess fines and to even foreclose.
That power invested in random people attracts the worst people - and, as long as they ae going after the same people YOU dislike, they will have your support.
Then they notice that your grass is 1" above maximum allowed, and now YOU are the target.
It is at the point that telling an agent that “If it has a HOA, I will not consider it” elicits no response from an agent - it seems to be a common stipulation, heard often.
This is us. We are working our way back into being homeowners via rent to own, and found a dream home that we never thought someone would give us a chance on. We moved in on January 1st and although we have some struggles, and there are days (at least once a month, PMS time) that I feel we have made a mistake, I was able to sit in my living room and look out into the front two acres and enjoy the beautiful property we will be working on probably forever.
So I would second (or 3rd) the advice about buying as new as possible.
If you think you will get around to fixing it, consider how you’d feel if you never did and would you still want the house after that thought.
And last, make copies of all your paperwork, they will lose it, they will say they sent it in but it never gets to where it needs to go. Copies and replacement copies of your paperwork after you turn something in.
Congratulations to you and your family!
I will simply repeat:
Things that can be fixed cheaply are paint, floor covering, light fixtures, cabinets and pretty much every bit of plumbing and wiring.
If you are able to DIY, these become a very profitable hobby/past time. If you can’t DIY, thare are all kinds of books/videos/people who will teach you.
Things which can NOT be fixed cheaply are location and size.
How long are you going to stay? 20 years? In that time, you WILL do roof, paint, floor, and very probably bath and kitchen remodels.
I recently had my offer accepted on a townhouse, I’ll get the keys in a couple of weeks.
I wish I had been able to anticipate how big a pain in the rear gaining approval for a 401k loan would be. My plan was to take advantage of the 401k policy whereby one may withdraw up to 50% of one’s portfolio to put towards a down payment on one’s first home, as long as it is purchased to be used as a primary residence. Because of my difficulty in this area, the closing may have to be postponed by a few days.
I think the stock market is somewhere close to top territory, might as well cash out half the 401k now. Especially considering the way the Fed is behaving, they are going to raise rates over the next 12 months, I am sure of it, and so the increased payments from a 1% increase in mortgage interest would gobble up whatever I could save or capital gain towards a down payment a year from now. In my circumstances, now is the best time to buy in the foreseeable future.
But the paperwork process for a 401k loan turns out to be highly persnickity. It is $75 per attempt, for one thing. They can reject your paperwork for seemingly any reason, but really, if you put on your glasses and shine the lights really bright, they do have a defined set of labrinthine rules you can follow to finally get approved. Wish I’d done it that way the first time.
As to other considerations, I wanted a good location to cut down on my commute, which I more or less got. I compromised maybe a couple of minutes, though through beautiful territory, so ok.
The place has stairs. Two bedrooms, two sinks and a bathroom upstairs, everything else down. But it has hardwood floors everywhere except the stairs, which are carpeted. My hobby is training for half-marathons, so I hope I will be able to navigate stairs for the foreseeable future. I worry that I might get drunk one night and fall down the stairs and break my neck.
I have a detached garage in a kind of garage-park on the drive into my neighborhood. The garage is maybe 40 paces from my front door, has a mechanical door lift w/remote, lights and plenty of space. I never rented a place with any kind of garage (underground parking was the limit of luxury), so this makes my permanent home seem special in a way that no rental I ever had can equal.
The new place also has an almost 800 sq. ft. basement-unheard of in all but one Midwest rental. It isn’t finished, but it has water and electricity- ultimately it could be turned into whatever I wanted, including an entire apartment, minus kitchen I suppose.
I don’t have a yard, just a large rear patio which opens onto a large, common grassy/tree-growing space. I have my fence and my space, I can’t wait to occupy my new home!!!
So, the home inspection was- odd. We just had a huge storm, and we found a large wet spot in the basement. The current theory is that there is a drain that was, bafflingly, carpeted over. Apparently most houses on the street have them, and they back up maybe once a decade. But it will have to be fixed.
What’s baffling about it is that otherwise, the house is perfect- an absolute jewel. It’s been meticulously maintained, and the only other issues the inspector could find (in a 3.5 hour inspection) were literally a few loose screws. The previous owner clearly took very, very good care of the place.
We are working with her to resolve the basement issue. Hopefully it works out. We got a VERY good price on the house (a similar house just sold for $35k more) and it’d be a shame if we can’t make it work.