Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Things to Look for When Buying a House

As a note: This is not intended to replace a good home inspection. Its intended to be something you can use when looking at the house for the first time. This will help you not fall in love with a house only to find out after great expense that it has huge issues.

Layout:
  • Be wary of staging (the furniture/decorations that are in the house when you see it). Often times smaller stuff will be used to make rooms look bigger than they are. Take a tape measure, and have a list of the sizes of the stuff you own just so you can visualize yourself.
  • Pay attention to ports, outlets, thermostats, windows etc. If putting your bed in the corner will cover the thermostat you will be annoyed, or if there are no outlets in the corner where you want to put the TV you will end up with cables all over the floor. etc.
  • Pay attention to what is behind or around the room you are looking at. If its over the garage you will hear the garage door opener and it will be loud. If its near the kitchen it will smell like food, and be hot in the summer when cooking.
  • Dual zone AC? This is important if its two story since the upstairs will be hot without it (heat rises.) Look for thermostats. Ideally there is 1 or more per level.
  • Rooms on the front of the house will hear street noise (cars going by, children playing, etc). Which rooms face the front?
  • Extensions. If a part of the house looks like it doesn't “belong”, i.e. the doorway in could have been a wall and the whole extra part could have not existed then be careful. Often times extensions can “corrupt” the construction of the original house. For example, they can screw up drainage, cause leaks in the seams with the roof, or generally just weaker construction. Make sure you look up who built the house, and who did the extension, and also verify that the work was permitted and done to code by contacting the city or county code division.
  • Converted garage? If there is a front room that seems like it is right where the garage should have been it might be a converted room. These are often drafty rooms that have really hard floors and can be strangely noisy due to the household equipment like water heaters or furnaces hidden in them.
  • House backs up to a business? You are going to hear cars coming and going as well as trucks loading and unloading.
  • West facing rooms will get lots of light at sunrise, bad for bedrooms, good for breakfast nooks. Rooms that face west will get lots of light at sunset, bad if a TV will be anywhere near this situation when you come home from work. North facing rooms will get no direct sunlight at all so they will be cold in winter, but South facing rooms will get full sun in summer which will make them hot.
Electrical:
  • Smoke detectors? They are required, but newer houses wire them in so that they all go off during a fire. This is ideal as it means less battery replacements and better alerting. If you test one do they all go off? Houses older than the 90’s will not have this feature.
  • GFP in bathrooms, near sinks? This is a sign of modern electrical wiring. Note that in some houses the ground fault system may also be in the circuit breaker panel. Look for breakers with a “reset” button on them.
  • 2 prong outlets? This is a sign of old wiring which can cause problems and make it hard to plug various things in.
  • Circuit breaker’s properly labeled? This will just save you time when you need to power things down and generally indicates that the previous owner maintained things.
  • Is the house wired for ceiling fans? If there are two switches and one does nothing while the other turns on a overhead light the house might already be wired for ceiling fans and one has just not been installed yet.
  • Check the breaker panel. Is there room for expansion? This can be good if you plan on adding anything over time (electric car port for example). Not a deal breaker but additions can get expensive.
  • If any wall outlets move when trying to plug anything in then they are improperly and could be a few hundred dollars to have an electrician fix. They might also pose a fire risk.
Appliances:
  • Be wary of older appliances. Even if they work now they will break and when they do they will be expensive. Appliances over 10 years will likely need replaced soon so this needs to be factored into the cost.
  • If there are high end appliances make sure to ask if they are staying. Home owners love to show a house with a nest thermostat, nice water softener, etc only to replace them with lower end models when they actually move out.
Siding:
  • Wood, Vinyl, Metal? These will last varying amounts of time before being replaced. Wood needs painted and maintained every 5-10 years. Vinyl doesn't need painted (and can't be) but lasts much longer, 30 years is common. Metal lasts even longer, and typically doesn't need painted either.
  • Rot, paint chipping, etc? This can be a sign of things happening behind the siding.

Roofing:
  • If you can see tar under shingles then a repair has been made. If done badly these can leak and cause issues.
  • If singles are bowed, pulled up, falling off, etc then this is not good either. This may be a sign that the roof will need replaced right away which can be expensive.
  • If you see small round sections on the shingles this could be bails under the shingle popping out. This can indicate leaking and rotting in the rafters which is bad and expensive to fix.
  • Look around the neighborhood. Most houses will have been built about the same time and if some appear to have newer roofs then its a sign that the house you are looking at might need replacing soon as well.
  • Check the gutters. Are they clean? If not it might be a sign of improper maintenance from the current owner.
Water:
  • Low pressure at a sink, or shower? Check all the sinks.
  • Try filling sinks by putting a couple of inches of water in them and then letting them drain. If they don’t drain quickly its a sign of blockages that can range in complexity to fix. Also once drained they should be able to drain as fast as the water comes in. If not they might have a blockage.
  • Hot water tank, capacity, fill rate? Small tanks or low BTU means that you will run out of hot water frequently. This is annoying.
  • Soft water? Take a small bottle, fill it with 1-2 cups of water and then put 4 drops of dish soap in it. Shake 4-5 times. If the soap foams up a few inches then the water softener is working. If it doesn’t foam up much (like less than 1”) then the softener could be failing or you will need to buy a softener. This can be a few hundred dollars and often is overlooked by home inspectors.
  • Alternatively to the water softener, check to see if the house has a whole house filter installed. Ask the current owner how often it needs replaced and check how much the replacement costs are. They can add up quite fast.
  • City water or Well? Check the price for city water, its usually more expensive than you expect. For wells, ensure that there is a bladder (big tank) which is what is used to hold pressure. In either case check that the sinks are not pushing air out anywhere.. This means that there is a leak somewhere which will be expensive to fix.
  • Also, if the house has well water check to see how fast the water is replenished. Run a sink until the well turns on (usually indicated by a large click as the relay changes state) then turn off the sink and see how long before your hear another click. The longer it takes the slower the tank file. This can also be acomplished by asking the home owner for well GPM. Low numbers (1-2 GPM mean you might run low on water with company over)
  • See if you can find out what type of pipes where used to supply water to the house. Post 1980 should be safe, but before that they may have used pipes with lead in them. Replacing these can be very expensive so its best to know, and if needed you can take a water sample to a testing facility to test for lead contamination. 
  • Sewer pipes can be the same. Older houses can have cast iron piping that will need to be replaced. This can be very expensive. Its also possible for a house to have clay pipes which can be destroyed by trees nearby the pipes. For an older house it can be worth getting the sewer lines scoped to check for roots.
  • Exterior spigots, do they drip at all? If so that can freeze and cause major issues.
  • If the house has a septic system then make sure you check out the leach field. If its wet or swampy and the weather can not be the source the run away. This can be tens of thousands of dollars to fix.
  • If the house has a thermostatic valve in the shower that keeps the temperature constant then turn it on, let it get to a set temperature, then flush the toilet to see if the temperature changes wildly. If so the value might not be working fully and these can be several hundred dollars to fix.
  • Check the drain pans under the water heater, AC units, etc. If there is water leaking this can get expensive to repair.