Practical Home Shopping

The last thing you want to do when home shopping is regret your purchase. We’ll give you some items to watch out for when home shopping so you love your home a month, six months, a year and more later!

We’ve all done it: purchased something when excited about its features without stopping to think about the consequences. This is not a big deal when buying a toaster or a blender, but can be a very big deal with buying a house. Perhaps you didn’t think you needed a bathroom on every floor, but now you’re regretting it every time you have to walk (or run) up or downstairs to go to the bathroom. Or maybe a laundry chute seemed really fun and easy, but you didn’t consider having to bring the clean laundry back upstairs. A recent Realty Times article discusses several things to keep in mind when searching for your dream home.

Furniture
Whether you’re moving from a house to another house or from an apartment to a house, you will probably want to bring most of your furniture and other large items, like TVs, pianos or mattresses with you. No matter how enamored you are with a house and how much you think your big-screen TV will fit in that space when you eyeball it, you may be sorry if you don’t pull out the tape measure. Always measure spaces you intend for your large furniture, such as couches, beds, TVs, dining tables, credenzas and bookshelves. If they don’t fit, you have to decide whether you can live without the sofa or the house.

Inherited Items
It may sound fantastic that the current owner of a house for sale is also throwing in the hot tub. But once you sign on the dotted line, that hot tub is yours, and so are all of its potential problems. Maybe it’s a perfectly good hot tub (or pool table, patio furniture, freezer, refrigerator, etc.) and the previous owner just couldn’t make it work in their new home or didn’t want to take it with them. Or, maybe the item in question has serious (or even mild) problems, and the owner wanted to get rid of them. Maybe the hot tub leaks or doesn’t heat the water, or maybe the pool table is slanted or the patio furniture is on its last legs. Take a careful look at items you are inheriting from the last owner to make sure that you want them to become your problem.

Inherited Items, II
So you’ve decided that the hot tub seems to be in good shape and that you wouldn’t mind keeping it. What if it breaks? Can you afford to maintain it? Find out before you agree to take an item how much the owners had to pay annually to maintain the item and then decide if you are comfortable with paying the same or a bit more (since an item is bound to need more maintenance as it ages and it’s possible that the previous owners may sugar-coat the actual cost).

Wiring
In today’s high-speed age, it is increasingly important to look at the coaxial connections of a home you’re thinking of buying. This is especially important if you do a lot of work from home or are considering working from home full-time. Is the house already wired or can it be easily wired for digital cable, satellite, or broadband?

Conveniences
We all fantasize about “getting away from it all.” And it may seem idyllic to purchase a home tucked away in the woods, away from the main road. But what happens if you need a carton of milk or some gas? Is it a five- or 10-minute trip? Or a half-hour excursion? If you are thinking of purchasing in a new development, consider what is being planned nearby. Maybe there isn’t a Safeway or King Soopers right now, but there will be next year. Another aspect to consider is the cost of gas from leaving your home, getting where you need to go and returning. If it takes you 20 minutes to get pretty much anywhere, you will end up buying a lot of gas, as well as spending a lot of time in the car.

Noise
Sure, it’s great to live near to a main freeway, but you don’t want to live too near, unless you need the sound of traffic to fall asleep. Also, are there train tracks nearby? If so, can you hear every train rumble by? Also, is the home near an airport? If so, do planes fly overhead, and if so, how often and how low? Visit a potential home during different times of the day – morning, midday and evening – to get an accurate idea of noise levels. Maybe planes for the nearby airport are silent after 10 a.m. but are practically landing in your front lawn until then.

The HOA
Homeowners associations are more important than you might think. They not only are responsible for maintaining the neighborhood, but also for any “rules” of the community. Ask for homeowners association bylaws, meeting minutes, newsletters and any other available documents and review them thoroughly. Some HOAs, for instance, don’t allow commercial vehicles to be parked in driveways, on the street or in visitors’ parking. If you have a commercial vehicle you can’t fit in your garage, this might be a problem, and you will want to know about it ahead of time.

Understandably, many home buyers find themselves with stars in their eyes when shopping for homes. It truly pays, however, to work on grounding yourself and paying close attention to the details and to implications of a particular home. Think about its features, location and neighborhood and how you will feel about those things in six months or a year.

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