Jan 04 2009
What to look for in buying a house? - #2
When buying a house, many people look at different things. The most common parts of a house that people look at when they tour a house are the finishes, the carpet, the kitchen, the appliances, the layout, and how it’s currently staged. As anyone who’s watched HGTV, you know that staging plays a big role in how a home is presented and how fast it can “hook” a buyer. Since it’s a buyers market right now, with many more short sales and bank owned homes on the market, not many homes are being staged. Most bank owned homes are in disrepair, many having been cleaned out by the previous owner who more then likely has been evicted from the house. So if a house isn’t staged, what’s left to “hook” a buyer? A lot of bank owned houses tend to scare many home buyers away - especially if they aren’t interested in doing a lot of fixing or remodeling. But the best deals out there are the bank owned houses and if you can get past the old countertops and bad carpet, you might just find a diamond in the rough. So what should you look at? Here are a few things to keep in mind when walking through a house.
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Location - you’ve all heard this before - Location, Location, Location. You can’t change the houses location unless you buy another piece of property somewhere and then decide to move the house to that new lot (which won’t be cheap!) Concentrate on the area you want to live in. Drive around the neighborhood at different times during the day and week. See what it’s like going to work in the morning from their and coming home at night. Check out the neighborhood during the weekends and if you can during the holidays - halloween, christmas, etc. See if this is a place you can feel comfortable in during all seasons of the year not just the day that you look at it.
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Size of Lot - land will always be in limited supply and unless you can buy your neighbor’s house, the extra piece of land will be hard to come by.
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Location of house on the lot - it’s not cheap to move a house and if the house you are looking at is too far towards the back, as many older homes are, and you don’t want a huge front yard, then a house with a big front yard probably isn’t for you; unless you plan on adding on towards the front of the house and the city/county codes and ordinances will allow for it.
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Layout of rooms - especially the public versus private spaces. Many older homes didn’t have the open concept floor plan that many people like today. Look to see if the rooms have a good separation, if the bedrooms are all on one side and the public spaces (kitchen, living room, family room) are on the other side. Try to imagine how you could open up the rooms while still keeping a nice separation between the public and the private.
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Character / Style of the house - unless you plan on total demolishing the house, you have to like how it looks on the outside. Even if you plan on remodeling later or adding on, you should keep in the style of the original house. Curb appeal is important but the house may not have it at the time when you walk thru especially if it’s been neglected. Drive around and see other homes in the neighborhood that look similar and see what other people have done. You want to keep in the style of the house and also the neighborhood.
Many bank owned homes may not have the curb appeal or be staged to “hook” you as the buyer when you walk thru the house. What you need to look at is the Potential of the house. Imagine what it can be once you get thru with it. Fixers can be expensive. You can end up spending a lot of money trying to fix the house as opposed to just buying something that is already done. But you get the satisfaction of fixing it to meet your needs and your liking instead of living with something someone else has done and wishing they had done it differently. The beauty with bank owned homes is the price tag usually will allow you to do the fixes without feeling like your putting more money into it then you should have. And remember while your fixing it up, you can also make it more of a green house then it was before which will help you save money and add value to your house later should you decide to sell it.
