What goes well with a cup of coffee? Another cup of coffee.
Happy Monday Everyone! I hope everyone had an enjoyable weekend! While I'm sure everyone's weekend was filled with Superbowl get together's, chips & dips, chili & beer, we took another step forward in the process of purchasing our first home. Our inspection took place on Friday! We had honestly been dreading this step, as I hear most people do, because we are looking into buying an older home. You just never really know what kind of bones and innards a house really has, and I read horror story after horror story regarding inspections of older homes.
Luckily for us, our inspection really went rather well. Except for our roof. Apparently in our area, you can have cedar shake for the roofing material and it's considered up to code, but most insurance companies wont cover it because it is a fire hazard. Our lovely little home appears to have had cedar shake, and then instead of replacing it, they just covered it up with standard shingles. Much to the home owners disbelief, she states she never knew this. Even though she is a real estate agent herself. Sound fishy? Either way, we are going to request that they replace the entire roof before we move in, and keep out fingers crossed they are willing to agree to terms. However, if you're like me, I had no idea a roofing job of this nature was so expensive! We've seen quotes for 10-20k!! Fingers crossed it all goes through!
We did take the time to research how involved and what questions we needed to know when going through the inspection process. I thought it might be helpful to pass along these tips! So here are our
top 5.
1: Invest in a quality inspecting company
In older homes, you can have a million little issues that add up to a million dollars if you're not careful. Owners of these homes usually try to dress up the home with newer paint colors, cabinets, and spacious room remodeling. What they dont do, is update the home's guts. We looked at so many homes that were just beautiful to walk through, and come inspection time, they were all a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. Invest in your financial future by getting a high quality inspector to tell you what you're really getting yourself into before it's too late. Also I would recommend it be an unbiased independent inspecting group. Some groups are associated with various construction companies and will tilt an inspection one way or another to try to get their sister company a business opportunity or new referral.
2: Put a call into your tentative homeowner's insurance agent for a quote
Someone recommended this to us when we first started looking at homes, and I found it to be a very informative idea. Not only will this help you to accurately budget for your new lifestyle as a home owner, but it will alert you for components of the house that you may be unaware of. Like our issue with the cedar roof, had our insurance agent not asked us about that component, we wouldn't have known how important it was to have the current owner replace it.
3: Know your neighborhood
Location, location, location. I can not stress this enough. You may find the most beautiful, affordable home on the block, move in and realize "oh my gosh... I'm now going to have to drive 20 minutes to the nearest grocery store". Maybe you're ok with this, and maybe you're actually not. Research your surroundings! When you finally zero in on a home that seems to meet your needs, really stop and evaluate what that means your lifestyle will then look like. Do you have kids? Check out the school districts, the bus routes, the traffic at different times of the day. Are you an active person? How close is the nearest gym, can you afford it, are their running trails nearby, do you feel safe being outdoors alone. Are you social? How close will this put me to friends and family, how often do I really go out for entertainment, are these entertainment staples near me. This key questions will help you to see if you could actually see yourself living in the home.
4: Know your home's groundbreaking era
In older homes, you'll start to notice constructually evident time periods. For example, most homes build in the early to mid 1900's used asbestos, which is now not allowed in building new homes, comes with it's own health risks in current homes, and is incredibly expensive to have removed. The electrical components are also a key factor that highly change from decade to decade. Knowing what era your home is built in, will give you key points to ask the current owner or your inspector, and give you an idea what may need replacing in the long run.
5: Know the age of all of your's appliances and key upkeep components
This should include knowing the age of your roof, heating/cooling system, water heater, dishwasher, oven, fridge, gutters, and any major repairs they've had to make. If you're not careful, you could end up with several very expensive appliances going out all in the first month of moving into the home, and then you're scrambling for finances to cover them. Your inspector will be able to more accurately tell you the quality, but educate yourself on time tables.
There's never a 100% method to the madness of buying a home, but hopefully you found these tips useful in your home search. Comment your useful tips below!
Check back every few days for updates on our adventures!
