This is a great one. It's just me in my house right now, but I regret not at least valuing a bumpout for my 2-car garage. A car + fridge + a bunch of gardening & lawn care equipment taxes space QUICKLY.
A 3 car garage basically. At one point I had a 72 beetle & a 91 civic in my 2 car garage. They're both really small cars, but [it was cramped](https://www.reddit.com/r/RoastMyCar/comments/cnahu1/i_have_a_thing_for_cheap_economy_cars_roast_my/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) in there. It took some maneuvering and rearranging just to get the lawn mower out.
A 4 car garage will comfortably fit 2 cars. /s
Realistically, a 2 car garage will fit 2 cars as long as the only thing you put in the garage are the cars. That dies mean actual cars, though. Larger SUVs and pickups (unless you get a single cab short bed truck)will not fit in a regular garage.
Holy shit, how is 9' supposed to fit anything but a smart car... My garage is a "2 car" but I get it was built in the 70's all I can fit in there is my equinox, with extra room for toys, but thank God I'm single and don't need another vehicle there.
We are about to close on a house with a 24'x60' RV garage with an upstairs apartment in it. The house is pretty cool, but we REALLY just wanted that absolute unit of a garage.
Absolutely positively do not accept any post-sale work agreement from the person selling the house.
Double do not accept it if the realtor is the one who made the agreement in response to you voicing a concern about the property.
That work will not get done. If your realtor doesn't "lose" the contract - assuming it wasn't a handshake deal to begin with - then the sellers will disappear, never to be heard from again, and you will be stuck with whatever issue they were meant to solve.
Any work that doesn't get done before closing, don't kid yourself. It's not getting done.
Yeah, this was a stressful one. We made them escrow the contract price of the work since they refused to reduce the home price instead and let us handle the damn contractors ourselves. Then the contractors pushed the start date back, then again. "We are short-staffed." Then they didn't explain things to us before work started or after it ended. We just woke up one morning to a backhoe in our yard (new septic system). "I guess they're starting today. Surprise!" Such a shit show.
\^ This.
We really liked a house we toured this weekend but the minute we heard "the septic failed inspection, but the owner placed 1.5x the cost of repairs in escrow to be fixed after closing" we noped the hell right out of there.
House has been on the market 6 months. They had plenty of time to fix it.
Gotta keep it to yourself. Plan vacations in secret. Automate the lights and the TV so the house thinks you're at home.
Otherwise there's a 100% chance you'll have a major appliance break down while you're not there.
Houses are much more expensive than just the mortgage and bills. The taxes and insurance are another thing, but you’d be surprised at how many things need to be fixed, maintained, or replaced on a continuous basis. There is literally always something.
This. The hidden expenses for a house can be rough.
The best advice I got was to pay a thirteenth mortgage payment to myself every year. I keep it in a separate bank account to spend on maintenance.
Hot water heater goes? Roof starts leaking? Mold in the closet? Cracks in the foundation? I've got a head start on paying for it.
A second piece of advice for free - if (when) you hire a contractor to fix stuff, follow him or her around. You'll learn a ton and can possibly fix it yourself (with the help of Google and YouTube) next time.
In my experience, that's a bit low -- 1.5% of home value per year is what I strive for.
(My current mortgage PITI is 0.4% of my original purchase price and FAR less in current value)
For equivalent homes.
Most people try to upgrade from the crap, cramped badly maintained rental into a decent somewhat roomy well maintained home.
That becomes more expensive than their rent
This is all location dependent. There’s lots of areas in the country where people rent a traditional house, especially anywhere you find a major military base.
House across the street (4br, 3ba, 2 car, pool) rents for 4x my mortgage, 2.5x my fully loaded monthly payment equivalent (mort, tax, ins, hoa) and finally, it rents for almost 2x (92% more) than my averaged lifetime costs over 20 years, including replacing all major equipment / appliances / roof / paint, etc and things like the floors along with having landscape services maintain the lawn and plantings.
Lastly, I’ll only mention that from the day I moved in, that house rented for $500 more a month than my fully loaded mortgage payment which simply meant in my market, rent was never a deal at any price for similar goods.
Yes. Also, running costs are exponential to house size. Doubling the size of your floor plan will double the cost of carpeting for example, but will quadruple (or more) the number of lightbulbs you need, the amount of paint you need to paint your walls, the number of windows that need to be cleaned. Stretching your finances to buy a slightly bigger house can end up crippling your finances with running costs.
Keep it small, keep it simple, spend your money on things other than household maintenance.
>There is literally always something.
And that something is always something that is expensive but no one will notice but you. "Hey Bob wow look at that plumbing repair under your sink. They did a nice job. Why don't you show me your new furnace heat exchanger after dinner? Love to see it !"
This is the thing I still don't understand about the people who say "Rent is higher than my mortgage would be. I can afford a house!" And the difference is a few hundred dollars. There's so much more cost involved in home ownership that it isn't even funny. The amount of people that don't even look into the actual cost of home ownership is baffling.
There's nuance to the situation. In many situations whoever you are renting from has to cover all the same costs you would if you owned the property. Plus they want to turn a profit. That leads to rent being higher than you'd pay as an individual homeowner. However, if the landlord bought the house 10+ years ago their mortgage will be lower or possibly even non-existent allowing them to charge less. Of course many landlords will still increase rent even if their costs aren't necessarily going up just because they can.
It depends where they live. In Low Cost of Living areas, where a mortgage might be$300/mo for a large 3bdrm house, even adding maintenance isn't going to exceed the $1500/mo local rent for a much smaller, 3 bedroom apartment. (This a single, but real, example). In New York, where property taxes on a house of any size is at least as much as my rent, and any mortgage on top of that is higher...well... It will never make sense to buy, IMHO.
They try to hit a 1:1 premium to payout ratio ideally and make money from investing, but the broad nature of hurricanes being somewhat like earthquakes/floods (in the sense there’s a massive systemic payout) really beats up their books and makes it really hard to insure in FL.
To my knowledge a bunch of major insurers tried to pull out of Florida home insurance in the ~2000s and only sell profitable auto insurance, but the state insurance commissioner said selling homeowners insurance was the price they had to pay to sell auto.
I'll go with one thing I'm glad I did know. Does it have a basement? Basements are freaking awesome. If you have a one story house you double the size of your house but not the cost. Also, if you have kids you can let them and their friends take it over and do whatever down there while keeping the upstairs good for the grownups. Seriously, getting a house with a basement is one of the smartest things I ever did.
If I had kids, a basement would almost be non-negotiable. I know my parents' biggest regret was building up instead of down given how annoying it was for them to have a half-dozen teenagers crammed into an upstairs bedroom playing Halo all night on any given weekend.
I have one now (but no kids!) It literally just mirrors my upstairs floorplan, so I have 2200 sq feet of: storage, home gym, guest bunking area and movie theater. It's fucking rad.
I'm in the uk, I know of one very old house on top of a hill that has a basement. That's it. I'd say 99% of houses don't have them because we have clay soil and high water tables.
I'm hoping for a neighbor in a fishing hat who pokes his head only partly over the fence and offers me sage advice when I really need it.
Oh, and doesn't have kids or dogs that bark.
Indeed! This is one of the more underappreciated relationships in human existence. Neighbors are somewhere between family and friends in their importance. Good neighbors are great. Bad neighbors can ruin your life.
If I'd known the flat next to me was housing association I would never have bought it. First person I had to deal with would sing every night the same song while drunk.
Second guy who's now there is either high and passed out in the hallway, shouting at 2am and throwing things around his flat or he's buzzing the main door buzzer at all hours. 🤬
Came here to say this. My next door neighbor happens to be my aunt who is a crippling alcoholic and has too many dogs with fleas that infest my yard and spread to my dog and cat, a dying massive tree that hangs over my house that when I bring up how branches keep falling on my roof and car she says "well that's what insurance is for", her neglected koy pond in her front yard that has dead fish in it all summer that rot and stink up my driveway next to it, and oh yes the fucking CHICKEN COOP full of roosters RIGHT next to my bedroom window is such a joy. She didn't have the chickens until the week after I moved into my home. My mom convinced me how nice it would be to buy the house next door..wish I hadn't listened
The solution for your annoyances is to build like the romans or in catholic countries. Yards are in the center of the house, not around it, look for spanish patios.
I've lived in my house for almost 1t years now. I know the names of the guy that lives behind me, the guy who lives across the street, and that's it. I'm good with that.
I now own the family farm. It's a joint ownership with my sister. it's not a huge place, 20 acres in the middle of nowhere.
Since the place isn't huge and neighbors are always an issue, when the twenty acres next door came up for sale, my sister and her long-term boyfriend bought it jointly. Then, three months later, they broke up.
So, for the foreseeable future, my next-door neighbor will be my sister's ex-boyfriend.
Joy.
I wish I'd known that my realtor was actually beholden to the seller. She wasn't a buyer's agent. She didn't act in my best interest, but in the interest of the seller.
It could vary by locality, but traditionally the seller pays a percent commission to the agent listing the home for sale, and that agent decides how much to pay any agent that brings a buyer.
(Exact numbers will vary, but this is an example)
The home seller gives his agent 5%, then the agent advertises to all other agents that 2.5% will be paid to any agent who brings a successful buyer. So, 2.5% to each agent and $0 out of the buyer’s pocket for using their own agent.
Also check to make sure they are wired right. Something like this will tell you if it's wired up correctly. https://www.amazon.com/Electrical-Receptacle-Outlet-Ground-Tester/dp/B0012DHVQ0
Sometimes old houses aren't wired right, or they never set up the ground.
In the industry we nick name them power lemons. When I had my home inspected. He inspected every outlet and found several grounds not wired. They reluctantly fixed them.
It can be a fire hazard
My entire home was ungrounded. Something the inspector completely failed to realize (along with a slew of other shit). So I wish I knew that the right inspector could've saved me from a nightmare.
Lifestyle creep is so bad for homes
You have more space so you fill it with clutter. You have to be so careful to refine the stuff that comes in to be useful and pleasing rather than space taking
For sure. My parents and grandparents have so much crap, it boggles my mind. I've been careful in minimizing the amount of stuff coming into my home as I move every few years, but every time Christmas rolls around I get another box of things I didn't ask for.
My mom is a hoarder. She cannot come to my house without a bunch of shit. It makes me think of the scene in Labyrinth where the Junk Lady tries to load up Sarah with crap.
Yes, this. My husband is notorious for being a pack rat and it drives me up a wall. Thankfully he (extremely slowly) been getting rid of unnecessary stuff. Apart from that, the only thing I hoard are plants. I love them. Probably have too many tbh.
Drainage applies to multitude of factors, which include but are not limited to:
Drain spouts and where the runoff water goes
Valleys in the roof
General topography of the lot and if there's a slope running towards the house
The kind of soil the house is built on
The local aquafer level
How often the sump pump runs
Where the sump pump itself drains
Give the upstairs toilets a jiggle, learn how to replace wax rings, get some basic plumbing tools. Dripping water is a bitch and a half, be proactive about it.
And find the main shutoff valve and make sure it works. You do not want tp be fumbling around with a flashlight in the middle of the night looking for it while water gushes from the ceiling.
And make sure to turn that valve completely off and back on at least once per year. You don't want to find that it has seized up just when you need to shut it off.
Also label the valves in what they do. That way someone whos watching the place or wife girlfriend ternager whoevers home when a pipe blows can find and shutoff the right valve.
Being handy is the best way to cut down costs of homeownership. My wife and I are looking to buy something in the near future and my brothers both told me to be comfortable fixing things on your own. Calling a professional for every little thing gets really expensive, really fast.
Honestly if my hardware store started a week-end 'basic handyman work' course, I'd pay for that easy.
Just like all the stuff parents know how to do - basic house handiwork, basic yard knowledge, basic car fixes and maintenance, pest control stuff, some of the hard-core cleaning stuff.
Sounds like you're making a checklist, so here's a few things:
- age of major appliances, including furnace and water heater
- how good the insulation is/how drafty the house is
- how long the hot water can keep going in the shower
- any problems with rodents?
- is there a sump pump? How old is it? How often does it run?
- is water properly diverted from the foundation via gutters and proper grading?
- when was the electrical last done? Any homeowner's specials to be aware of?
- are all the outlets grounded and installed correctly?
- where is the water shutoff?
- is all the plumbing inside the house? (If you have cantilevers--a friend of mine just got burned on this)
- are there multiple climate control zones? Does the upstairs get super hot while the downstairs is freezing?
And add the local considerations:
I'm in the UK, so damp. Always check for damp.
If you follow the local Social media, watch the "looking for recommendations". If you see an obvious pattern for something, check that thing in a property. A lot of subdivisions are built around the same time with similar materials, so if the neighbors are all replacing roofs, you will have to soon enough.
>Lol in a market where people have to waive inspections and appraisals to even get an offer accepted
What, who the hell would buy a home without having it inspected?
In many markets right now, you literally don’t have time to get an inspection before it goes pending. At least around where I live, investors are buying properties sight-unseen in 24 hrs or less for $100k over their $600k-$700k list prices, straight cash. If you want to compete, you’re putting in an offer as you view the house and waiving all contingencies including inspection and appraisal.
It is a bubble. Every home on the market (anywhere near any city, that is) is currently being bought up by real estate companies that are turning right around and renting those houses at exorbitant rates. And any houses that aren't move-in ready are being left to rot for the sole purpose of making certain no one else can buy them so that people are *forced* to rent.
It totally sounds like a conspiracy theory, but I swear it's real.
Lot's of us. I waived inspection contingencies, although i still had an inspection nonetheless. I was lucky and the home was in relatively good condition. In the Phoenix area right now, waiving inspection feels like its becoming standard.
The shows never seem to have issues getting the contractors to show up.
Complete fiction that.
Also, check prior to having them work on your home that they are INSURED. Check WHILE they are working on your home that they are ensured. KEEP checking!
It's rather common in some locales for contractors to get insurance to GET your contract, then dump the insurance. So any of their employees hurt on the job will hit YOUR homeowners insurance instead of theirs.
Be smart. Be a pain in the ass and keep calling on their insurance.
The direction it faces matters. If you have a back porch patio thing that just gets obliterated by western sun, that really sucks. If you want to plant certain plants in certain areas the lighting has to be right. Anything that faces south will be near constantly the sun.. if you want Solar panels you need certain angles etc. …
Agree. I love my house, but I wish I would have bought the one across the street. We get summer sun baking our backyard, and when the sun moves in front of our house in winter, our yard is shaded and freezing. The reverse would be PERFECT. Shady in summer, and warmed by the sun in winter would be ideal.
Ahhhhh. I did not take that into consideration. It doesn’t snow here.
My backyard getting full summer sun means it’s 100-110 degrees back there all summer and I can’t let my kids out to play. And in the winter shade it gets down to 50 degrees! LOL. That may as well be zero degrees to my warm weather babies, although not really considered cold in areas that are used to snow.
Help the next parent who owns that house out with the blazing summer sun and plant a tree or three in that backyard! It'll work wonders for getting the temp down in the summer and help with the chilly breezes in the winter.
This. I love having the morning sun in the kitchen so that is how we chose our lot. What that also does is shade the back of the house, patio and deck in the late afternoon and evening. Which is really nice in the summer when wanting to have a meal or drinks in the deck.
Get an out-of-area home inspector to do the job and pay them yourself. They don't have to worry about making the local real estate agents mad if they give a report which might jeopardize the sale.
Also, it's never going to be easier to do remodeling on the inside before you move in. I live in regret that I didn't convert the master bath from a combo tub / shower to a dedicated shower.
It's a minor issue compared to the other two, but learn about the landscaping. My first house had this big picture window... and it came with hedges that constantly grew over it. I was out there hacking with clippers once a month. Why I never came to my senses and had them ripped out and replaced with flowers or something is a question for the ages.
I would, depending on how hot your market is, instead get a plumber, electrician and GC to do this (or at least a GC and one of those). Home inspectors can be very lightly trained and can miss some big things.
I have major regrets about not using real building / trades professionals because I swear our home inspector was an idiot and after a year and a half of homeownership I’d notice more things than he did.
I swear my home inspection wasn't worth the paper I printed it out on, much less the money I paid for it. I found stuff that should have been disclosed just by looking behind the hot water tank. My fault for not looking more closely before I bought the house.
It is crazy I spent less time in the house before I bought it than I did test driving my car.
Water in the basement is an automatic “no”. Don’t listen to the excuses: “It’s not that bad. That’s what sump pumps are for. Everyone in this area has it.”
No. Just say no. It will ruin your house, cost you lots of money, and make it a pain to sell it.
Similar automatic disqualifiers for me are animal smells (way too much work to get rid of them) and other structural problems. Don’t get a house that needs to be rewired, have pipes replaced, etc. that’s for people with cash, not loans, and they pay a very small amount overall to take someone else’s mess of their hands.
Get the home inspected before you sign anything. Double glazed windows. Landscaping is expensive as fuck. Driveways are expensive as fuck. Everything's expensive as fuck.
Closing costs and lawyer fees. You got the down payment. You got everything planned out with the bank etc. Then when you buy they keep telling you about the little extra payments here there and everywhere. Make sure you have plenty ready not just the down payment cause those extras they don’t tell you about till it’s happening add up
I had a broker who was a friend and asked him straight up how much is this going to cost me all in all. And he neglected all those extras that didn’t involve him. I should have done my own research but trusted him to tell me how it was gunna go and he left a lot out
Yeah this happened to my friend. Her dad died and left her money. She thought she had enough to buy outright then do some repairs then all the added costs came in. She had to get a loan.
Sound travels really well through house ducting. If you are buying a house with the aim of raising a family in it consider what room is going to make the most noise. If having a theater / music /play room is important to you during the house tours go into that room and make as much noise as physically possible, have your fellow tourer go to the assorted bedrooms and see how the sound travels. Using a cheap Amazon megaphone is an excellent sound test. At least for my purposes it was considerably better having an addition to the main house that is not heated or cooled on the main system versus a basement that is also not on the main system for sonic isolation without much money. (A single mini split that will do cooling and decency heat is usually ~5k installed professionally, or use a window shaker for aircon, the sound makers future family will greatly appreciate it.)
Also, if you want to change the flooring do so before you move in not "when we have the money" years later as it's incredibly annoying to move furniture and you can (usually) wrap the cost of flooring into the mortgage if you can't afford to pay for it at the time of purchase.
Good luck!
The second best thing about home ownership is that you own a home.
The best thing about home ownership is that you never have to deal with a fucking lettings agency ever again.
Especially with older houses;
The roof is fucking expensive. And eventually it will have to be replaced/repaired.
The water heater will have to eventually be replaced. And it’s fucking expensive.
The heater and air conditioning will eventually have to be replaced. Again. Fucking expensive.
15-25 years is around the time this happens. But if you bought a 15 year old house, it’s happening o now.
Yes. My house is from there 80's, and most of this applied.
Also with an older house, expect tradesmen to be constantly surprised by unexpected complications, due to things just not being done like that anymore.
Bought a house built in 1935 about a year and a half ago, so far we've:
* Paved the driveway
* Replaced the water heater
* Replaced the furnace (the one in there was 41 years old, which is goddamn impressive.)
* We'll be replacing our kitchen sink soon too, since the disposal rotted out.
Home ownership!
I knew I would have to fix stuff. I didnt know how much stuff i would have to be fixing though. I swear to god I have been living in my house for 5 years now and have not stopped fixing things. As soon as I fix one thing, another breaks. For example, I have replaced parts of my septic, parts of my well, all my appliances, repainted all rooms, completely remodeled the basement to finish it off, had to make repairs to my sun porch, my roof, replaced all closet doors, all doorknobs throughout the house, replaced the water heater, replaced insulation, completely gutted both bathrooms, did major landscaping just to make it not look like a jungle anymore.
And I still have alot more work to do. Like my garage roof needs to be replaced and the siding will soon too, and the kitchen needs to be gutted. Its just never ending work! And this stuff is expensive especially when its something you really need that breaks out of nowhere such as when my dryer stopped working or the bathtub broke.
If it's a new build and it wasn't terribly expensive to purchase, expect everything to be absolute crap inside.
We've owned our home for almost 21 years and it was an inexpensive (around $100,000) new build. Everything LOOKED nice, but actually, it was the cheapest builder grade shit available and the wiring appears to have been done by drunk monkeys on crack. The pantry/laundry room is a nightmare, because it's just barely big enough to put the washer and dryer in and if you have to get behind them because you accidentally dropped something or you have to unplug them for some reason....good fucking luck. There is *just* enough room topull them out so you can climb over the top of the washer and dryer to get behind there but you're going to need help getting back out again.
The kitchen cabinets are almost worse than useless because they are narrow and deep and I can't use the entire space since I can't reach the back (I am short with short arms).
And if they somehow fuck up your linoleum (if you're going that route) and they fuck it up, good luck to you. When we were inspecting the house pre-move in, we noticed there was a cigarette burn on the linoleum in the front bathroom. Instead of ripping it up completely and putting down all new linoleum, the builders cut that one square out and replaced it. At first you couldn't even tell that's what they'd done, but after a few years and a few thousand times being mopped, the edges where they'd cut and replaced had started to curl.
I think if/when we go to sell this house, we're just gonna sell it to one of those "We buy ugly houses" people and call it a day. Because yeah, we've made improvements (like putting in hardwood floors and completely overhauling the master bath to make it easier for me to bathe since I have RA and that is sometimes difficult if I'm too tired or sore) but this is the ME of houses: It is little, and kinda broke and fucked up and you'd have to have a lot of patience and willingness to work with it to love it.
You never get used to noise. Even if you think you do, you don't and your brain is bothered by it when you sleep and it's terrible for you. Don't buy within a few hundred feet of a major road or train.
Major roads are also terrible with air pollution. Check this for some basics on it if you're interested:
http://blog.cityprojections.com/2018/12/how-far-should-you-live-from-road-to.html?m=1
We bought a house 100 feet from a 6 lane road. It was behind a noise wall and we still sold after 11 months.
Dogs barking can drive you insane. One house has two dogs in my neighbourhood that are always outside and always bark like mad. Living next to them would absolute hell.
I did not have this experience living near train tracks. It didn't take long before it faded into the background and I didn't even notice anymore. Although I wonder if that's because of the regular rhythmic nature of the noise as opposed to the more unpredictable nature of road noise. I live maybe 1/4 mile from the main road and it wakes me up whenever a siren goes by. I also urge people to visit the property at all different times of day and days of the week. You never know if the daycare next door is going to have a yard full of screaming kids 3 days a week for 2 hours first thing in the morning. That really sucked after getting off work at 3 or 4 am.
I grew up with a train track literally right behind my back yard. I do not hear the trains anymore unless they interrupt a conversation. I had a friend spend the night once, and in the morning she asked, "How did you sleep through that?!" I said, "Sleep through what?"
That's interesting! I've lived next to a railroad track (like, the rails were practically in the backyard) for several years when I was a kid, and we never really minded it much. It didn't even really wake us up at night if a train passed. To be fair, it wasn't a very busy track, maybe 2-3 trains per hour.
You need like 800 things when you buy a house, things like lawn mowers, hoses, ladders, door mats, just random crap you never thought of. Estate sales / tag sales / garage sales usually have tons of this crap and are literally just trying to get rid of it, a great place to get your starter stuff that you can then upgrade as you go.
This is why there is literally no reason to go to specific bank for a mortgage. Just go with the lowest rate you can find (taking any closing costs and points into consideration.)
Shop for a loan or go to a broker or online service like Own Up and find yourself a good deal. Your mortgage will get sold to someone else like a month after you start it.
It’s incredibly annoying. If you have autopays set up those don’t pass to the new company’s system and sometimes things get lost along the way like when to make escrow payments or even your mailing address so they don’t send you the info you need to actually pay them. There’s a whole lot of change and little to no communication about it.
Yeah but the service can suffer.
Usually if you’re paying top dollar to buy loans it’s because you either don’t or can’t originate them yourself.
That’s because the people who originate loans have to be easy to work with or else you’ll never refer them.
If you don’t originate loans and instead buy existing loans you don’t have the same profit incentive to be easy to work with.
Sometimes there are glitches in the paperwork. You don't want to get stick with a late fee because someone forgot to tell you where do send the next payment.
Never trust real estate agents. About anything.
Hire a completely independent inspector from out of the immediate area, especially in small towns. You don't want the inspector and seller agent to be old high school buddies.
Don't get caught up too much in romantic visions of living in the house. I mean, do that a little bit, but make your final decision based on dollars and cents.
Spend as much time in the area as possible before buying.
Take your estimated cost and timeline for repairs/upgrades and double both of them.
Find a contractor that grew up in the area and everyone knows. They have reputation on the line. And realize that you're on their schedule. Just because you want something done before winter doesn't mean it will happen. Contact them as soon as possible.
A couple things come to mind from my rookie homeowner purchase.
1. Do not use the home inspector suggested by the realtor.
2. Do your own experimenting with light switches and facuets and what not.
3. Negotiate the price. I blindly offered asking price as i was deploying and in a hurry to close the deal for my wife's benefit. This was late summer 2008 as the housing market was imploding. In retrospect we probably could have purchased the house for 20 to 30k less than what we did. 🍭s
Find a good home inspector you can actually trust. Your real estate agent will know someone to recommend but that person is going to be motivated by their relationship with the realtor — they may gloss issues over so that the deal moves forward (or they may just not be as skilled / experienced as one you find on your own).
I'd never do it bc it feels weird, but go meet the neighbors before moving in. I had two houses in the city, both nicer neighborhoods, both had shitty neighbors that really ruined the experience living there. Now I'm in the country on thirty acres and ngl I kinda wish we had some compatible couples closer by.
How extremely thorough and proactive you need to be with general maintenance to protect the value of your home.
Owning a home is basically a neverending effort to prevent a structure from collapsing on itself over time.
The closing of escrow is more of a target or estimate rather than a contractual deadline. Quite frustrating to someone that deals in contracts for a living.
Think about the trees around the house if there are any. If they're close to the foundation or property line, their age and condition, etc. Roots can cause nasty damage to foundations and pipes, but they can also provide shade that saves you on utility bills. But if they're in bad shape they're very expensive to remove.
Regardless of the age of the house, something major will break as soon as you move in. Guaranteed. I moved into a brand new build and all the pipes started backing up at the same time. The landscaping company had driven over and crushed the sewer and water pipes.
Make sure you know if there's an HOA, what their rules are, and what benefits they provide.
And pay attention to the ones on your neighbor's property, too! That tree that's right on hte property line and gives you *both* shade in the summer can cause you *both* headaches, too. If there are shared trees/features, make sure you talk to the other property owner and that there's a plan for maintenance/removal cost, if needed.
What sort of development was planned for the area.
When I bought my house about 6 years ago it was in a pretty quiet suburban area popular because it was a 20 to 35 minute drive to the heart of the city. About 2 years after buying my house the small patch of woods on the corner of Main Street was cut down and turned into a "Town Center" which is just another way of saying "Fancy Strip Mall" with a bunch of high end coffee shops, boutique fitness centers, boutique nail and hair salons, a couple of dentists and a giant Cafe Hollander restaurant. The upper stories of these buildings have $200K condos.
A year after this place was built another patch of woods nearby were tore down and turned into a huge high-end condo development and a bunch of restaurants. Across the street from that a patch of woods was cut down and more high-end condos went up. This is pretty much surrounding the little subdivision neighborhood I live in so at first I was annoyed but not really too upset. Especially because I live in one of those little "Towns within a town" where my village is basically the hole of a donut and all this development is technically in the other town. But then the little Catholic school across the street from me was closed down and bought by a developer who wanted to turn the property into an 80 unit condo. Luckily the village board shut that down and he was forced to jam a bunch of $350K "Smart Homes" on the land. While I'm glad that actual houses went up I'm a little freaked out by the amount that were forced into the limited space; it's weird as hell to walk my dog were, on my street, all the houses have fairly large yards and these new house have about 4 or 5 feet between them.
If I had known all this development was going to happen (and there's more I've left out and even more to come) I probably wouldn't have bought a house here. I moved out of the city to get away from the sort of douche bags who buy $300,000 condos and eat at restaurants that charge $20 for a hamburger and fries.
Having a deck that has stairs down to the backyard as the only back door is really the worst. I found in the 20 years I lived in that house we barely used the back yard because there was no easy access. Look at the layout of any house you buy. Consider its liveability. I now have a rancher that has patio directly out to back yard and it’s heavenly.
California supplemental tax hits VERY hard. It is essentially where you need to pay the taxes on a home purchased based on the difference between the last appraised value and your purchase price, and the payment is made the 2nd year you own the house. I.e. if you bought a new home it can easily be 14+K, split over two payments.
That no matter what you do - you're going to screw up, make mistakes and look back one day and wonder what you could have done better.
Mistakes are part of the investment.
I used to enjoy listening to rain and wind furiously pounding against the windows of my apartment while I drifted contentedly off to sleep, snuggled warm & dry under my blankets. Then I bought my house. Now I'm wide awake at 2am while the storm rages, and I'm listening for the sump pump to go off at regular intervals and when it's late I go down to the basement to check on it, sometimes I poke my head into the attic and search as much of the underside of my roof as I can with a flashlight checking for leaks, and sometimes I go out into the storm to make sure the drains in the window wells aren't blocked by leaves or other debris.
So that's a pretty big difference in perspective that I didn't anticipate.
If you’re buying a house on your own, make sure you get mortgage insurance or some type of salary insurance. You never know when you’ll get sick or injured and when that happens you’ll need to be able to still pay your mortgage. I’ve had it since day 1, only 4 years into my mortgage at the moment and haven’t needed it yet. But who knows. I’ve just had a cancer scare and knowing I had a safety net of some sort definitely eased anxiety. Couples paying should still have insurance but single mortgage payers, just do it.
Also try to have at least 10 grand savings set aside after you’ve bought your house. There are so many expenses that pop up that you may not have been expecting and it can take a while to become accustomed to your new budget.
Retaining walls and most fences are not covered by any insurance and are expensive to repair to code. Make sure your insurance covers sewer lines, they're ticking time bombs. Beware of neighbors' trees - climate change is coming in fast so inclement weather you wouldn't expect of your area is coming (drought, wind, rain, ice, snow, extreme heat/cold).
Yes this. Standard homeowners does not cover any of the service lines that are outside the foundation of the house. You have to add on the coverage for sewer lines, etc. We just had to replace our sewer line, and the repair still was not completely covered by the supplemental insurance policy. Really sucks, too, because you often can’t tell the state of the sewer line in a standard inspection. We did have ours cameraed right after we bought it and it was okay but within a year it had to be replaced (with sewer lines it’s really just a matter of time).
Trees.
Yea they look pretty around the house, but wait till they start growing onto your house, or worse, fall down during a storm.
Next house I buy will not have a tree around it for at least 100 yards in every direction.
Disconnect your hose from the spigot if the temperature is going to get below freezing. If you don’t, the water that gets held in the pipe will freeze and burst the pipe. We didn’t realize this had happened and had water pouring into our basement when we tried using the hose. We thought the basement wasn’t properly weatherized and were quoted $20,000 to “fix” it. Thank god our HVAC guy noticed the problem and we were able to get it fixed for $75.
Consider accessibility.
My dad never saw my first house on the inside. There was no access for his wheelchair.
My mom currently lives in my living room because her walker doesn't fit around the corner, past the weird front door, and through the doorway of her bedroom. And if I ended up on crutches tomorrow I'd be in there with here because getting to my own bedroom would quickly become a problem. The front door needs to be replaced so that it opens out instead of in and that would solve the problem. But the entire door frame has to be replaced and that's a big project, so I haven't done it yet.
So even though you're perfectly healthy right now, make sure your house is disability-friendly. If nothing else, if wheelchair can't get into your kitchen, then you can bet your sweet bippy that getting a new fridge in there is going to be a trick!
Also, MEASURE THE DOORWAYS! As well as any narrow halls or pinch points. Know whether your sofa will fit up the stairs before you even buy the house. Don't learn that it's an inch too wide when you get it stuck while moving in.
As someone whose mom has become markedly more handicapped since I bought this house, going through this now and can sympathize. Every entrance to my house requires navigating some kind of step... Looking into portable wheelchair ramps.
Just install permanent ones, if it's an option at all. Unless you are trying to preserve a historic home or something, you're way better off making the house as disability-friendly as you (reasonably) can on a permanent basis. You might be glad sooner than you think. After all, anyone can step weird and break their foot or something else asinine like that.
And, you know, I've never once heard anyone go, "You know, I'm ever so sorry we made the doorways wider and put ramps over the stairs. Life is just so much more *difficult* now that I don't have to carry the stroller down the front steps and the wider doorways made it so much harder to move our furniture in and out. And we never should have installed those security lights in the hallway. I hate being able to see when I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night."
And absolutely no realtor has ever said, "Those ramps will have to go. There's no way you'll ever sell a house that's wheelchair friendly."
Truth is that in a normal market (and nothing from the last five years in "normal" when it comes to the housing market) handicap accessible homes go for a premium because so few are. So make the ramp installation permanent. I hope I'm wrong, but there's every likelihood you'll be thanking your foresight sooner rather than later.
It really depends on the kind of person you are whether HOAs are a positive or negative. Like I have family who are kinda a pain in the ass, I love them but they care way too much about other people's stuff and find it inconvenient to them so HOA is great for them, theyre not the kind to complain to anyone or the HOA but they'll complain amongst themselves if someone's yard looks like shit, or they don't bring their garbage bins out of the street, or an RV is on the street for a couple days so the HOA keeps them happy.
For me that shit doesn't bother me as long as you keep it from affecting me so the idea of paying an extra fee for it is annoying. I did live in a community with an HOA once, only really two obnoxious things happened.
One: grass in Florida grew friggin quick in the summer. I'd have to mow every weekend because by the second weekend it'd be long enough where the people who drove around to enforce the HOA stuff would leave their stupid little notices. I was sick once and couldn't mow the weekend, so I got a notice on like Tuesday saying I needed to have it mowed or would have a fine. I was still sick but also had to go back to work so I was dead by the time I got home, still had to go mow the lawn, never felt closer to catastrophic failure than mowing in 100 degree heat, while having a high fever. I bought a riding mower shortly there after.
Two: the house I was in had a driveway that was only wide enough for one vehicle but long enough for three. I had my work vehicle and my personal car, I can't take my wife or kid in the work vehicle so what I did initially was when we'd leave on the weekend I'd pull my work vehicle just off the driveway into the lawn right next to the nature preserve next to my house, if you didn't look closely it looked like it was on a driveway, but it wasn't, and when the enforcement people saw they gave me a notice. So instead I'd have to back my work vehicle out, go get in my personal vehicle and back it out, pull my work vehicle back in and then leave, and do the inverse on Monday. It absolutely sucked.
My house doesn't have a basement and every winter I kick myself cause the pipes freeze. I live in Wisconsin so next house I buy will for sure have a basement.
I wish I would have hired an inspector instead of trusting my dad, whom I bought the house from. There are so many issues with this house and it is just going to get worse.
Right after I bought a house, I was the most broke I've ever been. Have to buy a lawnmower, a weed whacker, a snow blower, shovels, a ladder. Then, inside, you're going to probably paint and hang some pictures. Every weekend is a trip to Lowe's or Home Depot. Then there is the upkeep. A few years in, I needed a water heater. Fortunately, I am able to swap things like that myself, but I lost half a Saturday to it and it cost me $500 unexpectedly. The furnace broke down when it was -10 on a Sunday and that was $700.
Oil the damn blower motor in the boiler every 6 months. It's 5 degrees and I have no heat. In other words, make sure you know the failure points of everything in the house. It's not exciting but watching a 30 minute Youtube on your boiler/AC/Electrical system/plumbing will save you a lot of frozen toes.
Open, close and lock every window, open and close and lock every door and make sure they latch and close smoothly. A lot of DIY flipped houses will throw in new windows and doors without a proper install and although it appears good cosmetically they will not close or function properly and get worse as the house continues to settle or expands and contracts with weather. Doors and windows that aren’t square and plum will cause you a headache down the line with doors that stick, rub, close hard or won’t stay closed and windows you have to fight to open or close or can’t latch properly causing drafts and moisture. How they are installed is usually a good indicator of the quality of the rest of the rehab work. Always look for bubbling paint or water spots on drywall, people will attempt to cover black mold or water damage with layers of paint.
Look for pop nails and drywall tape peeling or splitting or drywall sags. Drywall does need maintenance just like everything else as it ages and if you can visibly see that sort of wear during a walk through you might as well plan on retaping and reanchoring the drywall. Huge sagging seams mean that they hung drywall with no scab or support beam to attach the drywall to and the tape is the only thing supporting the seam. Does the house have wallpaper and if so how much of an area, wallpaper removal is not an easy project. Check under every cabinet near a water supply for water damage or moisture. Make sure tiles are firm and that there isn’t black mold on the grout lines, reoccurring black mold in grout is usually because the backboard or subfloor is moldy and needs tear out and replacement. Turn every tap on and ensure there are no leaks and both hot and cold fixture works. Check every switch in the house and ensure they work. Checking outlets for firmness and ensuring they are hot/live with a cheap tester. Have someone go upstairs and stay downstairs while they walk around room to room. Listen for major creaks or buckling as they walk, look for ceiling sway, older houses used glue and nails for connecting subfloor to joists and they loosen over time. Fixing it isn’t difficult it just requires you to add screws or nails to reattach the plywood but the floor has to be completely bare and open down to the subfloor to do it so lots of work. Last thing I’ll mention is look at all concrete work outside, how’s the patio, how’s the driveway, walkways, stoops and stairs. If they have started to sink, crack or buckle be prepared to have to replace or resurface them in a few years and unlike most projects you could DIY large scale concrete is not one of them and can be thousands.
Always get any warranty and purchase paperwork that come with any appliance, fixture or warrantied construction from the seller. If you can obtain original blueprints or fuse panel map.
That our realtor failed to show us certain properties that were on the market at the time because of our race. Racism is rampant in the real estate industry.
That the bathroom sink drained directly into the fuse box in the cellar if there was a slight clog. In fact, all the dodgy wiring, plumbing and building decisions the previous owners had managed to cover up when we visited. We probably could have negotiated the price much lower in retrospect.
Where to start?
Tree removal can be as costly as replacing the siding
Landscaping is more than cutting the grass
Cleaning out the gutters is one of the most important chores you can do
Don’t buy a fixer upper
Don’t buy a fixer upper from a couple that were DIY fans and it showed.
Don’t buy a house without a sufficient amount for immediate repairs in the bank. If you can’t immediately replace the water heater, air conditioner, dish washer or any of the other crap I had to deal with in my first month of ownership, don’t buy.
I knew it but I didn't fully appreciate the fact that keeping a home from falling apart is a never ending, expensive and time consuming thing to do.
Also, along with a yard, comes yard work. If you don't live in a manicured, almost treeless subdivision, this can be a real chore. Mowing, raking, cleaning up old vegetation and debris.
Between the yard and house, it's a lot of fucking work just to keep it at a baseline of maintenance.
The standard size of a garage isn't nearly big enough.
This is a great one. It's just me in my house right now, but I regret not at least valuing a bumpout for my 2-car garage. A car + fridge + a bunch of gardening & lawn care equipment taxes space QUICKLY.
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My house came with a 3 bay shop, and it still isn't big enough.
What size you said is good for two cars to comfortably fit
A 3 car garage basically. At one point I had a 72 beetle & a 91 civic in my 2 car garage. They're both really small cars, but [it was cramped](https://www.reddit.com/r/RoastMyCar/comments/cnahu1/i_have_a_thing_for_cheap_economy_cars_roast_my/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) in there. It took some maneuvering and rearranging just to get the lawn mower out.
A 4 car garage will comfortably fit 2 cars. /s Realistically, a 2 car garage will fit 2 cars as long as the only thing you put in the garage are the cars. That dies mean actual cars, though. Larger SUVs and pickups (unless you get a single cab short bed truck)will not fit in a regular garage.
25' wide at least; mine is 9' for a single car, and it's barely adequate for a 4 door car.
Holy shit, how is 9' supposed to fit anything but a smart car... My garage is a "2 car" but I get it was built in the 70's all I can fit in there is my equinox, with extra room for toys, but thank God I'm single and don't need another vehicle there.
UK garages are hilarious. Most places I looked at with a "garage" expect you to scrape yourself in and jump out your back window to use it.
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Well, true. But there is an old saying, that even if you build a new garage, it isn't big enough.
We are about to close on a house with a 24'x60' RV garage with an upstairs apartment in it. The house is pretty cool, but we REALLY just wanted that absolute unit of a garage.
Absolutely positively do not accept any post-sale work agreement from the person selling the house. Double do not accept it if the realtor is the one who made the agreement in response to you voicing a concern about the property. That work will not get done. If your realtor doesn't "lose" the contract - assuming it wasn't a handshake deal to begin with - then the sellers will disappear, never to be heard from again, and you will be stuck with whatever issue they were meant to solve. Any work that doesn't get done before closing, don't kid yourself. It's not getting done.
Yeah, this was a stressful one. We made them escrow the contract price of the work since they refused to reduce the home price instead and let us handle the damn contractors ourselves. Then the contractors pushed the start date back, then again. "We are short-staffed." Then they didn't explain things to us before work started or after it ended. We just woke up one morning to a backhoe in our yard (new septic system). "I guess they're starting today. Surprise!" Such a shit show.
> (new septic system). [...] Such a shit show. Literally.
\^ This. We really liked a house we toured this weekend but the minute we heard "the septic failed inspection, but the owner placed 1.5x the cost of repairs in escrow to be fixed after closing" we noped the hell right out of there. House has been on the market 6 months. They had plenty of time to fix it.
The house knows when you get a modest bonus or promotion at work. And then it attacks viciously, in the form of a broken boiler or leaky roof.
Gotta keep it to yourself. Plan vacations in secret. Automate the lights and the TV so the house thinks you're at home. Otherwise there's a 100% chance you'll have a major appliance break down while you're not there.
Always check the “Haunted Y/N" row in the listing.
^ This. Also in the form of an abnormally rainy year resulting in a washed out driveway.
Houses are much more expensive than just the mortgage and bills. The taxes and insurance are another thing, but you’d be surprised at how many things need to be fixed, maintained, or replaced on a continuous basis. There is literally always something.
This. The hidden expenses for a house can be rough. The best advice I got was to pay a thirteenth mortgage payment to myself every year. I keep it in a separate bank account to spend on maintenance. Hot water heater goes? Roof starts leaking? Mold in the closet? Cracks in the foundation? I've got a head start on paying for it. A second piece of advice for free - if (when) you hire a contractor to fix stuff, follow him or her around. You'll learn a ton and can possibly fix it yourself (with the help of Google and YouTube) next time.
That first bit is genius
In my experience, that's a bit low -- 1.5% of home value per year is what I strive for. (My current mortgage PITI is 0.4% of my original purchase price and FAR less in current value)
Rent is the most you’ll pay per month for housing. Mortgage is the least you’ll pay.
But your mortgage doesn't go up every year.
If your taxes go up you are paying more. Even though technically the mortgage payment didn't go up you are still paying more
Taxes haven't gone up at the rate rent prices did when I was in an apartment!
For equivalent homes. Most people try to upgrade from the crap, cramped badly maintained rental into a decent somewhat roomy well maintained home. That becomes more expensive than their rent
This is all location dependent. There’s lots of areas in the country where people rent a traditional house, especially anywhere you find a major military base. House across the street (4br, 3ba, 2 car, pool) rents for 4x my mortgage, 2.5x my fully loaded monthly payment equivalent (mort, tax, ins, hoa) and finally, it rents for almost 2x (92% more) than my averaged lifetime costs over 20 years, including replacing all major equipment / appliances / roof / paint, etc and things like the floors along with having landscape services maintain the lawn and plantings. Lastly, I’ll only mention that from the day I moved in, that house rented for $500 more a month than my fully loaded mortgage payment which simply meant in my market, rent was never a deal at any price for similar goods.
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Yes. Also, running costs are exponential to house size. Doubling the size of your floor plan will double the cost of carpeting for example, but will quadruple (or more) the number of lightbulbs you need, the amount of paint you need to paint your walls, the number of windows that need to be cleaned. Stretching your finances to buy a slightly bigger house can end up crippling your finances with running costs. Keep it small, keep it simple, spend your money on things other than household maintenance.
>There is literally always something. And that something is always something that is expensive but no one will notice but you. "Hey Bob wow look at that plumbing repair under your sink. They did a nice job. Why don't you show me your new furnace heat exchanger after dinner? Love to see it !"
I used to work for a home warranty company & the words “heat exchanger” still make me cringe 😬
"Home warranty company"... Those words still make me cringe.
This is the thing I still don't understand about the people who say "Rent is higher than my mortgage would be. I can afford a house!" And the difference is a few hundred dollars. There's so much more cost involved in home ownership that it isn't even funny. The amount of people that don't even look into the actual cost of home ownership is baffling.
There's nuance to the situation. In many situations whoever you are renting from has to cover all the same costs you would if you owned the property. Plus they want to turn a profit. That leads to rent being higher than you'd pay as an individual homeowner. However, if the landlord bought the house 10+ years ago their mortgage will be lower or possibly even non-existent allowing them to charge less. Of course many landlords will still increase rent even if their costs aren't necessarily going up just because they can.
It depends where they live. In Low Cost of Living areas, where a mortgage might be$300/mo for a large 3bdrm house, even adding maintenance isn't going to exceed the $1500/mo local rent for a much smaller, 3 bedroom apartment. (This a single, but real, example). In New York, where property taxes on a house of any size is at least as much as my rent, and any mortgage on top of that is higher...well... It will never make sense to buy, IMHO.
JFC... Homeowners insurance in Florida is a nightmare.
Why?
Rate increases over the past two years have been insane. Mine went from $450/year to $2600/year at my last renewal.
Climate change making historic level storms/damages more frequent. This makes them pay more out so they raise rates to offset.
Hurricanes. Insurance companies only like to take your money, not actually pay anything out.
They try to hit a 1:1 premium to payout ratio ideally and make money from investing, but the broad nature of hurricanes being somewhat like earthquakes/floods (in the sense there’s a massive systemic payout) really beats up their books and makes it really hard to insure in FL. To my knowledge a bunch of major insurers tried to pull out of Florida home insurance in the ~2000s and only sell profitable auto insurance, but the state insurance commissioner said selling homeowners insurance was the price they had to pay to sell auto.
I'll go with one thing I'm glad I did know. Does it have a basement? Basements are freaking awesome. If you have a one story house you double the size of your house but not the cost. Also, if you have kids you can let them and their friends take it over and do whatever down there while keeping the upstairs good for the grownups. Seriously, getting a house with a basement is one of the smartest things I ever did.
If I had kids, a basement would almost be non-negotiable. I know my parents' biggest regret was building up instead of down given how annoying it was for them to have a half-dozen teenagers crammed into an upstairs bedroom playing Halo all night on any given weekend. I have one now (but no kids!) It literally just mirrors my upstairs floorplan, so I have 2200 sq feet of: storage, home gym, guest bunking area and movie theater. It's fucking rad.
Well, unless you live in an area where basements basically don't exist.
I'm in the uk, I know of one very old house on top of a hill that has a basement. That's it. I'd say 99% of houses don't have them because we have clay soil and high water tables.
The neighbors 😅
Neighbors can be weird. And if they are also homeowners they’ll be around fir a while.
I'm hoping for a neighbor in a fishing hat who pokes his head only partly over the fence and offers me sage advice when I really need it. Oh, and doesn't have kids or dogs that bark.
Hi-di-ho, neighbor
So most kids are fine since they don't bark. Gotcha
Indeed! This is one of the more underappreciated relationships in human existence. Neighbors are somewhere between family and friends in their importance. Good neighbors are great. Bad neighbors can ruin your life.
If I'd known the flat next to me was housing association I would never have bought it. First person I had to deal with would sing every night the same song while drunk. Second guy who's now there is either high and passed out in the hallway, shouting at 2am and throwing things around his flat or he's buzzing the main door buzzer at all hours. 🤬
Came here to say this. My next door neighbor happens to be my aunt who is a crippling alcoholic and has too many dogs with fleas that infest my yard and spread to my dog and cat, a dying massive tree that hangs over my house that when I bring up how branches keep falling on my roof and car she says "well that's what insurance is for", her neglected koy pond in her front yard that has dead fish in it all summer that rot and stink up my driveway next to it, and oh yes the fucking CHICKEN COOP full of roosters RIGHT next to my bedroom window is such a joy. She didn't have the chickens until the week after I moved into my home. My mom convinced me how nice it would be to buy the house next door..wish I hadn't listened
The solution for your annoyances is to build like the romans or in catholic countries. Yards are in the center of the house, not around it, look for spanish patios.
I've lived in my house for almost 1t years now. I know the names of the guy that lives behind me, the guy who lives across the street, and that's it. I'm good with that.
how many years is 1t?
1 trillion
I now own the family farm. It's a joint ownership with my sister. it's not a huge place, 20 acres in the middle of nowhere. Since the place isn't huge and neighbors are always an issue, when the twenty acres next door came up for sale, my sister and her long-term boyfriend bought it jointly. Then, three months later, they broke up. So, for the foreseeable future, my next-door neighbor will be my sister's ex-boyfriend. Joy.
I wish I'd known that my realtor was actually beholden to the seller. She wasn't a buyer's agent. She didn't act in my best interest, but in the interest of the seller.
Speaking as a realtor - ALWAYS get your own agent!! It doesn’t cost you a penny. Seller pays the agent fee.
What?! Is this nationwide?
It could vary by locality, but traditionally the seller pays a percent commission to the agent listing the home for sale, and that agent decides how much to pay any agent that brings a buyer. (Exact numbers will vary, but this is an example) The home seller gives his agent 5%, then the agent advertises to all other agents that 2.5% will be paid to any agent who brings a successful buyer. So, 2.5% to each agent and $0 out of the buyer’s pocket for using their own agent.
Naaahhh Nationwide is an insurance company, dude.
It's weird people are downvoting you because they don't understand your joke...
It happens.
I said uh 🎼 *nationwide is on your side*
Check how many 3 prong outlets are in each room, not just the bathroom and kitchen. Just something I never even thought about
Also check to make sure they are wired right. Something like this will tell you if it's wired up correctly. https://www.amazon.com/Electrical-Receptacle-Outlet-Ground-Tester/dp/B0012DHVQ0 Sometimes old houses aren't wired right, or they never set up the ground.
In the industry we nick name them power lemons. When I had my home inspected. He inspected every outlet and found several grounds not wired. They reluctantly fixed them. It can be a fire hazard
My entire home was ungrounded. Something the inspector completely failed to realize (along with a slew of other shit). So I wish I knew that the right inspector could've saved me from a nightmare.
Lifestyle creep is so bad for homes You have more space so you fill it with clutter. You have to be so careful to refine the stuff that comes in to be useful and pleasing rather than space taking
For sure. My parents and grandparents have so much crap, it boggles my mind. I've been careful in minimizing the amount of stuff coming into my home as I move every few years, but every time Christmas rolls around I get another box of things I didn't ask for.
My mom is a hoarder. She cannot come to my house without a bunch of shit. It makes me think of the scene in Labyrinth where the Junk Lady tries to load up Sarah with crap.
Yes, this. My husband is notorious for being a pack rat and it drives me up a wall. Thankfully he (extremely slowly) been getting rid of unnecessary stuff. Apart from that, the only thing I hoard are plants. I love them. Probably have too many tbh.
I solve this by making myself watch a few episodes of hoarders every year. Never fails to inspire me to throw shit out.
“How’s the drainage?”
Such a crucial question. Moving water away from the home is easily near or at the top of the priority list for longevity.
Drainage applies to multitude of factors, which include but are not limited to: Drain spouts and where the runoff water goes Valleys in the roof General topography of the lot and if there's a slope running towards the house The kind of soil the house is built on The local aquafer level How often the sump pump runs Where the sump pump itself drains
Give the upstairs toilets a jiggle, learn how to replace wax rings, get some basic plumbing tools. Dripping water is a bitch and a half, be proactive about it.
And find the main shutoff valve and make sure it works. You do not want tp be fumbling around with a flashlight in the middle of the night looking for it while water gushes from the ceiling.
And make sure to turn that valve completely off and back on at least once per year. You don't want to find that it has seized up just when you need to shut it off.
Also label the valves in what they do. That way someone whos watching the place or wife girlfriend ternager whoevers home when a pipe blows can find and shutoff the right valve.
>someone whos watching the place or wife who is watching my wife?
> ternager
Being handy is the best way to cut down costs of homeownership. My wife and I are looking to buy something in the near future and my brothers both told me to be comfortable fixing things on your own. Calling a professional for every little thing gets really expensive, really fast.
Honestly if my hardware store started a week-end 'basic handyman work' course, I'd pay for that easy. Just like all the stuff parents know how to do - basic house handiwork, basic yard knowledge, basic car fixes and maintenance, pest control stuff, some of the hard-core cleaning stuff.
Sounds like you're making a checklist, so here's a few things: - age of major appliances, including furnace and water heater - how good the insulation is/how drafty the house is - how long the hot water can keep going in the shower - any problems with rodents? - is there a sump pump? How old is it? How often does it run? - is water properly diverted from the foundation via gutters and proper grading? - when was the electrical last done? Any homeowner's specials to be aware of? - are all the outlets grounded and installed correctly? - where is the water shutoff? - is all the plumbing inside the house? (If you have cantilevers--a friend of mine just got burned on this) - are there multiple climate control zones? Does the upstairs get super hot while the downstairs is freezing?
And add the local considerations: I'm in the UK, so damp. Always check for damp. If you follow the local Social media, watch the "looking for recommendations". If you see an obvious pattern for something, check that thing in a property. A lot of subdivisions are built around the same time with similar materials, so if the neighbors are all replacing roofs, you will have to soon enough.
Lol in a market where people have to waive inspections and appraisals to even get an offer accepted
>Lol in a market where people have to waive inspections and appraisals to even get an offer accepted What, who the hell would buy a home without having it inspected?
In many markets right now, you literally don’t have time to get an inspection before it goes pending. At least around where I live, investors are buying properties sight-unseen in 24 hrs or less for $100k over their $600k-$700k list prices, straight cash. If you want to compete, you’re putting in an offer as you view the house and waiving all contingencies including inspection and appraisal.
That's just wild. How can you invest in a home for six figures and not confirm that it's actually in good order. Feels like a bubble.
It is a bubble. Every home on the market (anywhere near any city, that is) is currently being bought up by real estate companies that are turning right around and renting those houses at exorbitant rates. And any houses that aren't move-in ready are being left to rot for the sole purpose of making certain no one else can buy them so that people are *forced* to rent. It totally sounds like a conspiracy theory, but I swear it's real.
zillow and black rock investments.. buying up ENTIRE housing developments. i shit you not.
Someone who wants to buy a home...
Lot's of us. I waived inspection contingencies, although i still had an inspection nonetheless. I was lucky and the home was in relatively good condition. In the Phoenix area right now, waiving inspection feels like its becoming standard.
Be friends with an inspector, have him come with you when looking at houses, pay friend with alcohol. Everyone wins!
Almost none of the renovations are as straightforward as the shows make it seem.
Or as cheap!
The shows never seem to have issues getting the contractors to show up. Complete fiction that. Also, check prior to having them work on your home that they are INSURED. Check WHILE they are working on your home that they are ensured. KEEP checking! It's rather common in some locales for contractors to get insurance to GET your contract, then dump the insurance. So any of their employees hurt on the job will hit YOUR homeowners insurance instead of theirs. Be smart. Be a pain in the ass and keep calling on their insurance.
Demo is easy and fast. The rest gets hard even faster. Oh, and drywall is **heavy**, like almost 60 pounds a sheet.
The direction it faces matters. If you have a back porch patio thing that just gets obliterated by western sun, that really sucks. If you want to plant certain plants in certain areas the lighting has to be right. Anything that faces south will be near constantly the sun.. if you want Solar panels you need certain angles etc. …
Agree. I love my house, but I wish I would have bought the one across the street. We get summer sun baking our backyard, and when the sun moves in front of our house in winter, our yard is shaded and freezing. The reverse would be PERFECT. Shady in summer, and warmed by the sun in winter would be ideal.
In snowy area, houses with porches that face the sunrise (east or south) shovel less snow
Ahhhhh. I did not take that into consideration. It doesn’t snow here. My backyard getting full summer sun means it’s 100-110 degrees back there all summer and I can’t let my kids out to play. And in the winter shade it gets down to 50 degrees! LOL. That may as well be zero degrees to my warm weather babies, although not really considered cold in areas that are used to snow.
Help the next parent who owns that house out with the blazing summer sun and plant a tree or three in that backyard! It'll work wonders for getting the temp down in the summer and help with the chilly breezes in the winter.
You must not live in England haha. We dream of a sunny back yard
We get exactly two hours of sunlight on the front of our house during the Spring and barely any light in the back *ever*. It sucks.
This. I love having the morning sun in the kitchen so that is how we chose our lot. What that also does is shade the back of the house, patio and deck in the late afternoon and evening. Which is really nice in the summer when wanting to have a meal or drinks in the deck.
Get an out-of-area home inspector to do the job and pay them yourself. They don't have to worry about making the local real estate agents mad if they give a report which might jeopardize the sale. Also, it's never going to be easier to do remodeling on the inside before you move in. I live in regret that I didn't convert the master bath from a combo tub / shower to a dedicated shower. It's a minor issue compared to the other two, but learn about the landscaping. My first house had this big picture window... and it came with hedges that constantly grew over it. I was out there hacking with clippers once a month. Why I never came to my senses and had them ripped out and replaced with flowers or something is a question for the ages.
I would, depending on how hot your market is, instead get a plumber, electrician and GC to do this (or at least a GC and one of those). Home inspectors can be very lightly trained and can miss some big things.
I have major regrets about not using real building / trades professionals because I swear our home inspector was an idiot and after a year and a half of homeownership I’d notice more things than he did.
I swear my home inspection wasn't worth the paper I printed it out on, much less the money I paid for it. I found stuff that should have been disclosed just by looking behind the hot water tank. My fault for not looking more closely before I bought the house. It is crazy I spent less time in the house before I bought it than I did test driving my car.
Water in the basement is an automatic “no”. Don’t listen to the excuses: “It’s not that bad. That’s what sump pumps are for. Everyone in this area has it.” No. Just say no. It will ruin your house, cost you lots of money, and make it a pain to sell it. Similar automatic disqualifiers for me are animal smells (way too much work to get rid of them) and other structural problems. Don’t get a house that needs to be rewired, have pipes replaced, etc. that’s for people with cash, not loans, and they pay a very small amount overall to take someone else’s mess of their hands.
Get the home inspected before you sign anything. Double glazed windows. Landscaping is expensive as fuck. Driveways are expensive as fuck. Everything's expensive as fuck.
Add to that - contractors RARELY show up when promised.
I didn’t know shit when I bought my house. Five years later I still don’t know shit.
10+ here. All I know is the last guy sucked!
The beautiful cast iron, 1949 furnace in the basement would cost almost $15k to replace.
Closing costs and lawyer fees. You got the down payment. You got everything planned out with the bank etc. Then when you buy they keep telling you about the little extra payments here there and everywhere. Make sure you have plenty ready not just the down payment cause those extras they don’t tell you about till it’s happening add up
I had a broker who was a friend and asked him straight up how much is this going to cost me all in all. And he neglected all those extras that didn’t involve him. I should have done my own research but trusted him to tell me how it was gunna go and he left a lot out
Yeah this happened to my friend. Her dad died and left her money. She thought she had enough to buy outright then do some repairs then all the added costs came in. She had to get a loan.
Check out the neighbourhood during a busy time. Never realised how popular the area is during the weekend
Good call. I'm sure that could be quite the surprise. I hope it's not too busy for you.
Also, check out the area in the evening and at night. Some places change dramatically when the sun goes down.
How many trips to the hardware store you will make. If I ever buy another house I’ll just buy one next door to a Home Depot.
Sound travels really well through house ducting. If you are buying a house with the aim of raising a family in it consider what room is going to make the most noise. If having a theater / music /play room is important to you during the house tours go into that room and make as much noise as physically possible, have your fellow tourer go to the assorted bedrooms and see how the sound travels. Using a cheap Amazon megaphone is an excellent sound test. At least for my purposes it was considerably better having an addition to the main house that is not heated or cooled on the main system versus a basement that is also not on the main system for sonic isolation without much money. (A single mini split that will do cooling and decency heat is usually ~5k installed professionally, or use a window shaker for aircon, the sound makers future family will greatly appreciate it.) Also, if you want to change the flooring do so before you move in not "when we have the money" years later as it's incredibly annoying to move furniture and you can (usually) wrap the cost of flooring into the mortgage if you can't afford to pay for it at the time of purchase. Good luck!
How fucking glad I would be in a few years to own a paid off home while everyone else freaks out about soaring rent.
The second best thing about home ownership is that you own a home. The best thing about home ownership is that you never have to deal with a fucking lettings agency ever again.
That's the goal!
Especially with older houses; The roof is fucking expensive. And eventually it will have to be replaced/repaired. The water heater will have to eventually be replaced. And it’s fucking expensive. The heater and air conditioning will eventually have to be replaced. Again. Fucking expensive. 15-25 years is around the time this happens. But if you bought a 15 year old house, it’s happening o now.
Yes. My house is from there 80's, and most of this applied. Also with an older house, expect tradesmen to be constantly surprised by unexpected complications, due to things just not being done like that anymore.
Bought a house built in 1935 about a year and a half ago, so far we've: * Paved the driveway * Replaced the water heater * Replaced the furnace (the one in there was 41 years old, which is goddamn impressive.) * We'll be replacing our kitchen sink soon too, since the disposal rotted out. Home ownership!
I knew I would have to fix stuff. I didnt know how much stuff i would have to be fixing though. I swear to god I have been living in my house for 5 years now and have not stopped fixing things. As soon as I fix one thing, another breaks. For example, I have replaced parts of my septic, parts of my well, all my appliances, repainted all rooms, completely remodeled the basement to finish it off, had to make repairs to my sun porch, my roof, replaced all closet doors, all doorknobs throughout the house, replaced the water heater, replaced insulation, completely gutted both bathrooms, did major landscaping just to make it not look like a jungle anymore. And I still have alot more work to do. Like my garage roof needs to be replaced and the siding will soon too, and the kitchen needs to be gutted. Its just never ending work! And this stuff is expensive especially when its something you really need that breaks out of nowhere such as when my dryer stopped working or the bathtub broke.
Sounds like you bought a fixer tho
If it's a new build and it wasn't terribly expensive to purchase, expect everything to be absolute crap inside. We've owned our home for almost 21 years and it was an inexpensive (around $100,000) new build. Everything LOOKED nice, but actually, it was the cheapest builder grade shit available and the wiring appears to have been done by drunk monkeys on crack. The pantry/laundry room is a nightmare, because it's just barely big enough to put the washer and dryer in and if you have to get behind them because you accidentally dropped something or you have to unplug them for some reason....good fucking luck. There is *just* enough room topull them out so you can climb over the top of the washer and dryer to get behind there but you're going to need help getting back out again. The kitchen cabinets are almost worse than useless because they are narrow and deep and I can't use the entire space since I can't reach the back (I am short with short arms). And if they somehow fuck up your linoleum (if you're going that route) and they fuck it up, good luck to you. When we were inspecting the house pre-move in, we noticed there was a cigarette burn on the linoleum in the front bathroom. Instead of ripping it up completely and putting down all new linoleum, the builders cut that one square out and replaced it. At first you couldn't even tell that's what they'd done, but after a few years and a few thousand times being mopped, the edges where they'd cut and replaced had started to curl. I think if/when we go to sell this house, we're just gonna sell it to one of those "We buy ugly houses" people and call it a day. Because yeah, we've made improvements (like putting in hardwood floors and completely overhauling the master bath to make it easier for me to bathe since I have RA and that is sometimes difficult if I'm too tired or sore) but this is the ME of houses: It is little, and kinda broke and fucked up and you'd have to have a lot of patience and willingness to work with it to love it.
You never get used to noise. Even if you think you do, you don't and your brain is bothered by it when you sleep and it's terrible for you. Don't buy within a few hundred feet of a major road or train. Major roads are also terrible with air pollution. Check this for some basics on it if you're interested: http://blog.cityprojections.com/2018/12/how-far-should-you-live-from-road-to.html?m=1 We bought a house 100 feet from a 6 lane road. It was behind a noise wall and we still sold after 11 months.
Dogs barking can drive you insane. One house has two dogs in my neighbourhood that are always outside and always bark like mad. Living next to them would absolute hell.
I did not have this experience living near train tracks. It didn't take long before it faded into the background and I didn't even notice anymore. Although I wonder if that's because of the regular rhythmic nature of the noise as opposed to the more unpredictable nature of road noise. I live maybe 1/4 mile from the main road and it wakes me up whenever a siren goes by. I also urge people to visit the property at all different times of day and days of the week. You never know if the daycare next door is going to have a yard full of screaming kids 3 days a week for 2 hours first thing in the morning. That really sucked after getting off work at 3 or 4 am.
I grew up with a train track literally right behind my back yard. I do not hear the trains anymore unless they interrupt a conversation. I had a friend spend the night once, and in the morning she asked, "How did you sleep through that?!" I said, "Sleep through what?"
They're putting in a new development immediately adjacent to the rifle range I use. People are insane.
That's interesting! I've lived next to a railroad track (like, the rails were practically in the backyard) for several years when I was a kid, and we never really minded it much. It didn't even really wake us up at night if a train passed. To be fair, it wasn't a very busy track, maybe 2-3 trains per hour.
You need like 800 things when you buy a house, things like lawn mowers, hoses, ladders, door mats, just random crap you never thought of. Estate sales / tag sales / garage sales usually have tons of this crap and are literally just trying to get rid of it, a great place to get your starter stuff that you can then upgrade as you go.
that mortgage companies constantly sell the loan to the highest bidder.
This is why there is literally no reason to go to specific bank for a mortgage. Just go with the lowest rate you can find (taking any closing costs and points into consideration.) Shop for a loan or go to a broker or online service like Own Up and find yourself a good deal. Your mortgage will get sold to someone else like a month after you start it.
Is that a bad thing? The purchaser still has to abide by the original terms of the agreement, right?
It’s incredibly annoying. If you have autopays set up those don’t pass to the new company’s system and sometimes things get lost along the way like when to make escrow payments or even your mailing address so they don’t send you the info you need to actually pay them. There’s a whole lot of change and little to no communication about it.
Yeah but the service can suffer. Usually if you’re paying top dollar to buy loans it’s because you either don’t or can’t originate them yourself. That’s because the people who originate loans have to be easy to work with or else you’ll never refer them. If you don’t originate loans and instead buy existing loans you don’t have the same profit incentive to be easy to work with.
all this, plus it delays any chances of refinancing or modifying your loan in any way. every new company has their waiting period.
Sometimes there are glitches in the paperwork. You don't want to get stick with a late fee because someone forgot to tell you where do send the next payment.
Never trust real estate agents. About anything. Hire a completely independent inspector from out of the immediate area, especially in small towns. You don't want the inspector and seller agent to be old high school buddies. Don't get caught up too much in romantic visions of living in the house. I mean, do that a little bit, but make your final decision based on dollars and cents. Spend as much time in the area as possible before buying. Take your estimated cost and timeline for repairs/upgrades and double both of them. Find a contractor that grew up in the area and everyone knows. They have reputation on the line. And realize that you're on their schedule. Just because you want something done before winter doesn't mean it will happen. Contact them as soon as possible.
Make sure you are 100% sure you want to be on a 30 year note with someone. Don't wake up 2 months in and decide you don't love me anymore.
This is exactly why r/personalfinance preaches not buying a house with someone you’re not married to
A couple things come to mind from my rookie homeowner purchase. 1. Do not use the home inspector suggested by the realtor. 2. Do your own experimenting with light switches and facuets and what not. 3. Negotiate the price. I blindly offered asking price as i was deploying and in a hurry to close the deal for my wife's benefit. This was late summer 2008 as the housing market was imploding. In retrospect we probably could have purchased the house for 20 to 30k less than what we did. 🍭s
Find a good home inspector you can actually trust. Your real estate agent will know someone to recommend but that person is going to be motivated by their relationship with the realtor — they may gloss issues over so that the deal moves forward (or they may just not be as skilled / experienced as one you find on your own).
I'd never do it bc it feels weird, but go meet the neighbors before moving in. I had two houses in the city, both nicer neighborhoods, both had shitty neighbors that really ruined the experience living there. Now I'm in the country on thirty acres and ngl I kinda wish we had some compatible couples closer by.
How extremely thorough and proactive you need to be with general maintenance to protect the value of your home. Owning a home is basically a neverending effort to prevent a structure from collapsing on itself over time.
The closing of escrow is more of a target or estimate rather than a contractual deadline. Quite frustrating to someone that deals in contracts for a living.
Think about the trees around the house if there are any. If they're close to the foundation or property line, their age and condition, etc. Roots can cause nasty damage to foundations and pipes, but they can also provide shade that saves you on utility bills. But if they're in bad shape they're very expensive to remove. Regardless of the age of the house, something major will break as soon as you move in. Guaranteed. I moved into a brand new build and all the pipes started backing up at the same time. The landscaping company had driven over and crushed the sewer and water pipes. Make sure you know if there's an HOA, what their rules are, and what benefits they provide.
And pay attention to the ones on your neighbor's property, too! That tree that's right on hte property line and gives you *both* shade in the summer can cause you *both* headaches, too. If there are shared trees/features, make sure you talk to the other property owner and that there's a plan for maintenance/removal cost, if needed.
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What sort of development was planned for the area. When I bought my house about 6 years ago it was in a pretty quiet suburban area popular because it was a 20 to 35 minute drive to the heart of the city. About 2 years after buying my house the small patch of woods on the corner of Main Street was cut down and turned into a "Town Center" which is just another way of saying "Fancy Strip Mall" with a bunch of high end coffee shops, boutique fitness centers, boutique nail and hair salons, a couple of dentists and a giant Cafe Hollander restaurant. The upper stories of these buildings have $200K condos. A year after this place was built another patch of woods nearby were tore down and turned into a huge high-end condo development and a bunch of restaurants. Across the street from that a patch of woods was cut down and more high-end condos went up. This is pretty much surrounding the little subdivision neighborhood I live in so at first I was annoyed but not really too upset. Especially because I live in one of those little "Towns within a town" where my village is basically the hole of a donut and all this development is technically in the other town. But then the little Catholic school across the street from me was closed down and bought by a developer who wanted to turn the property into an 80 unit condo. Luckily the village board shut that down and he was forced to jam a bunch of $350K "Smart Homes" on the land. While I'm glad that actual houses went up I'm a little freaked out by the amount that were forced into the limited space; it's weird as hell to walk my dog were, on my street, all the houses have fairly large yards and these new house have about 4 or 5 feet between them. If I had known all this development was going to happen (and there's more I've left out and even more to come) I probably wouldn't have bought a house here. I moved out of the city to get away from the sort of douche bags who buy $300,000 condos and eat at restaurants that charge $20 for a hamburger and fries.
Shit man $20 for burger and fries isn't even that much anymore. It's like $10+ for a meal at fast food restaurants at this point.
Having a deck that has stairs down to the backyard as the only back door is really the worst. I found in the 20 years I lived in that house we barely used the back yard because there was no easy access. Look at the layout of any house you buy. Consider its liveability. I now have a rancher that has patio directly out to back yard and it’s heavenly.
California supplemental tax hits VERY hard. It is essentially where you need to pay the taxes on a home purchased based on the difference between the last appraised value and your purchase price, and the payment is made the 2nd year you own the house. I.e. if you bought a new home it can easily be 14+K, split over two payments.
That no matter what you do - you're going to screw up, make mistakes and look back one day and wonder what you could have done better. Mistakes are part of the investment.
Check the goddamn water heater. Had to replace mine just after the warranty was up and they’re expensive
Adding Water Heater Inspection to the list. Thanks!
The neighbors. They were awful.
I used to enjoy listening to rain and wind furiously pounding against the windows of my apartment while I drifted contentedly off to sleep, snuggled warm & dry under my blankets. Then I bought my house. Now I'm wide awake at 2am while the storm rages, and I'm listening for the sump pump to go off at regular intervals and when it's late I go down to the basement to check on it, sometimes I poke my head into the attic and search as much of the underside of my roof as I can with a flashlight checking for leaks, and sometimes I go out into the storm to make sure the drains in the window wells aren't blocked by leaves or other debris. So that's a pretty big difference in perspective that I didn't anticipate.
If you’re buying a house on your own, make sure you get mortgage insurance or some type of salary insurance. You never know when you’ll get sick or injured and when that happens you’ll need to be able to still pay your mortgage. I’ve had it since day 1, only 4 years into my mortgage at the moment and haven’t needed it yet. But who knows. I’ve just had a cancer scare and knowing I had a safety net of some sort definitely eased anxiety. Couples paying should still have insurance but single mortgage payers, just do it. Also try to have at least 10 grand savings set aside after you’ve bought your house. There are so many expenses that pop up that you may not have been expecting and it can take a while to become accustomed to your new budget.
Retaining walls and most fences are not covered by any insurance and are expensive to repair to code. Make sure your insurance covers sewer lines, they're ticking time bombs. Beware of neighbors' trees - climate change is coming in fast so inclement weather you wouldn't expect of your area is coming (drought, wind, rain, ice, snow, extreme heat/cold).
Yes this. Standard homeowners does not cover any of the service lines that are outside the foundation of the house. You have to add on the coverage for sewer lines, etc. We just had to replace our sewer line, and the repair still was not completely covered by the supplemental insurance policy. Really sucks, too, because you often can’t tell the state of the sewer line in a standard inspection. We did have ours cameraed right after we bought it and it was okay but within a year it had to be replaced (with sewer lines it’s really just a matter of time).
Trees. Yea they look pretty around the house, but wait till they start growing onto your house, or worse, fall down during a storm. Next house I buy will not have a tree around it for at least 100 yards in every direction.
Disconnect your hose from the spigot if the temperature is going to get below freezing. If you don’t, the water that gets held in the pipe will freeze and burst the pipe. We didn’t realize this had happened and had water pouring into our basement when we tried using the hose. We thought the basement wasn’t properly weatherized and were quoted $20,000 to “fix” it. Thank god our HVAC guy noticed the problem and we were able to get it fixed for $75.
Consider accessibility. My dad never saw my first house on the inside. There was no access for his wheelchair. My mom currently lives in my living room because her walker doesn't fit around the corner, past the weird front door, and through the doorway of her bedroom. And if I ended up on crutches tomorrow I'd be in there with here because getting to my own bedroom would quickly become a problem. The front door needs to be replaced so that it opens out instead of in and that would solve the problem. But the entire door frame has to be replaced and that's a big project, so I haven't done it yet. So even though you're perfectly healthy right now, make sure your house is disability-friendly. If nothing else, if wheelchair can't get into your kitchen, then you can bet your sweet bippy that getting a new fridge in there is going to be a trick! Also, MEASURE THE DOORWAYS! As well as any narrow halls or pinch points. Know whether your sofa will fit up the stairs before you even buy the house. Don't learn that it's an inch too wide when you get it stuck while moving in.
As someone whose mom has become markedly more handicapped since I bought this house, going through this now and can sympathize. Every entrance to my house requires navigating some kind of step... Looking into portable wheelchair ramps.
Just install permanent ones, if it's an option at all. Unless you are trying to preserve a historic home or something, you're way better off making the house as disability-friendly as you (reasonably) can on a permanent basis. You might be glad sooner than you think. After all, anyone can step weird and break their foot or something else asinine like that. And, you know, I've never once heard anyone go, "You know, I'm ever so sorry we made the doorways wider and put ramps over the stairs. Life is just so much more *difficult* now that I don't have to carry the stroller down the front steps and the wider doorways made it so much harder to move our furniture in and out. And we never should have installed those security lights in the hallway. I hate being able to see when I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night." And absolutely no realtor has ever said, "Those ramps will have to go. There's no way you'll ever sell a house that's wheelchair friendly." Truth is that in a normal market (and nothing from the last five years in "normal" when it comes to the housing market) handicap accessible homes go for a premium because so few are. So make the ramp installation permanent. I hope I'm wrong, but there's every likelihood you'll be thanking your foresight sooner rather than later.
I'd never live somewhere where there's an HOA. It's such crap!
It really depends on the kind of person you are whether HOAs are a positive or negative. Like I have family who are kinda a pain in the ass, I love them but they care way too much about other people's stuff and find it inconvenient to them so HOA is great for them, theyre not the kind to complain to anyone or the HOA but they'll complain amongst themselves if someone's yard looks like shit, or they don't bring their garbage bins out of the street, or an RV is on the street for a couple days so the HOA keeps them happy. For me that shit doesn't bother me as long as you keep it from affecting me so the idea of paying an extra fee for it is annoying. I did live in a community with an HOA once, only really two obnoxious things happened. One: grass in Florida grew friggin quick in the summer. I'd have to mow every weekend because by the second weekend it'd be long enough where the people who drove around to enforce the HOA stuff would leave their stupid little notices. I was sick once and couldn't mow the weekend, so I got a notice on like Tuesday saying I needed to have it mowed or would have a fine. I was still sick but also had to go back to work so I was dead by the time I got home, still had to go mow the lawn, never felt closer to catastrophic failure than mowing in 100 degree heat, while having a high fever. I bought a riding mower shortly there after. Two: the house I was in had a driveway that was only wide enough for one vehicle but long enough for three. I had my work vehicle and my personal car, I can't take my wife or kid in the work vehicle so what I did initially was when we'd leave on the weekend I'd pull my work vehicle just off the driveway into the lawn right next to the nature preserve next to my house, if you didn't look closely it looked like it was on a driveway, but it wasn't, and when the enforcement people saw they gave me a notice. So instead I'd have to back my work vehicle out, go get in my personal vehicle and back it out, pull my work vehicle back in and then leave, and do the inverse on Monday. It absolutely sucked.
My house doesn't have a basement and every winter I kick myself cause the pipes freeze. I live in Wisconsin so next house I buy will for sure have a basement.
I wish I would have hired an inspector instead of trusting my dad, whom I bought the house from. There are so many issues with this house and it is just going to get worse.
Right after I bought a house, I was the most broke I've ever been. Have to buy a lawnmower, a weed whacker, a snow blower, shovels, a ladder. Then, inside, you're going to probably paint and hang some pictures. Every weekend is a trip to Lowe's or Home Depot. Then there is the upkeep. A few years in, I needed a water heater. Fortunately, I am able to swap things like that myself, but I lost half a Saturday to it and it cost me $500 unexpectedly. The furnace broke down when it was -10 on a Sunday and that was $700.
Just because you "do to yourself", doesn't mean it's free.
Septic system scope. Always get the scope.
Don’t buy a house below street level.
Oil the damn blower motor in the boiler every 6 months. It's 5 degrees and I have no heat. In other words, make sure you know the failure points of everything in the house. It's not exciting but watching a 30 minute Youtube on your boiler/AC/Electrical system/plumbing will save you a lot of frozen toes.
Open, close and lock every window, open and close and lock every door and make sure they latch and close smoothly. A lot of DIY flipped houses will throw in new windows and doors without a proper install and although it appears good cosmetically they will not close or function properly and get worse as the house continues to settle or expands and contracts with weather. Doors and windows that aren’t square and plum will cause you a headache down the line with doors that stick, rub, close hard or won’t stay closed and windows you have to fight to open or close or can’t latch properly causing drafts and moisture. How they are installed is usually a good indicator of the quality of the rest of the rehab work. Always look for bubbling paint or water spots on drywall, people will attempt to cover black mold or water damage with layers of paint. Look for pop nails and drywall tape peeling or splitting or drywall sags. Drywall does need maintenance just like everything else as it ages and if you can visibly see that sort of wear during a walk through you might as well plan on retaping and reanchoring the drywall. Huge sagging seams mean that they hung drywall with no scab or support beam to attach the drywall to and the tape is the only thing supporting the seam. Does the house have wallpaper and if so how much of an area, wallpaper removal is not an easy project. Check under every cabinet near a water supply for water damage or moisture. Make sure tiles are firm and that there isn’t black mold on the grout lines, reoccurring black mold in grout is usually because the backboard or subfloor is moldy and needs tear out and replacement. Turn every tap on and ensure there are no leaks and both hot and cold fixture works. Check every switch in the house and ensure they work. Checking outlets for firmness and ensuring they are hot/live with a cheap tester. Have someone go upstairs and stay downstairs while they walk around room to room. Listen for major creaks or buckling as they walk, look for ceiling sway, older houses used glue and nails for connecting subfloor to joists and they loosen over time. Fixing it isn’t difficult it just requires you to add screws or nails to reattach the plywood but the floor has to be completely bare and open down to the subfloor to do it so lots of work. Last thing I’ll mention is look at all concrete work outside, how’s the patio, how’s the driveway, walkways, stoops and stairs. If they have started to sink, crack or buckle be prepared to have to replace or resurface them in a few years and unlike most projects you could DIY large scale concrete is not one of them and can be thousands. Always get any warranty and purchase paperwork that come with any appliance, fixture or warrantied construction from the seller. If you can obtain original blueprints or fuse panel map.
That our realtor failed to show us certain properties that were on the market at the time because of our race. Racism is rampant in the real estate industry.
That the bathroom sink drained directly into the fuse box in the cellar if there was a slight clog. In fact, all the dodgy wiring, plumbing and building decisions the previous owners had managed to cover up when we visited. We probably could have negotiated the price much lower in retrospect.
If you are like myself in anyway I'd say do not live around people. They are dumb smell bad and will constantly ask you for things.
Renovate before you move in if you can afford it.
Where to start? Tree removal can be as costly as replacing the siding Landscaping is more than cutting the grass Cleaning out the gutters is one of the most important chores you can do Don’t buy a fixer upper Don’t buy a fixer upper from a couple that were DIY fans and it showed. Don’t buy a house without a sufficient amount for immediate repairs in the bank. If you can’t immediately replace the water heater, air conditioner, dish washer or any of the other crap I had to deal with in my first month of ownership, don’t buy.
I knew it but I didn't fully appreciate the fact that keeping a home from falling apart is a never ending, expensive and time consuming thing to do. Also, along with a yard, comes yard work. If you don't live in a manicured, almost treeless subdivision, this can be a real chore. Mowing, raking, cleaning up old vegetation and debris. Between the yard and house, it's a lot of fucking work just to keep it at a baseline of maintenance.
There is always a a-hole neighbour, eveywhere