Where I live, I would look what Internet connection speed is available at this address. A very slow connection with no possibility to upgrade can be a pain in the ass imo
this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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Piggy-backing on that, check who your ISPs are at that address. I didn't and then discovered Comcast had a monopoly on my area :(
We refused to look at any lot (we built) that didn’t have access to fiber. Best decision ever.
My dumb pro tip for buying a house: go and scope out the area at different times of the day before you put in an offer. Example, go to the neighborhood when you would leave for work and get home from work and see how the traffic is. Also go in the evening. Just visiting the house once in the middle of the day will not really tell you if the neighborhood is a good fit for you.
Also friday/Saturday night if you have the time. I swung by on July 4th so see what the neighborhood was like. A couple of small get togethers happening but nothing too crazy. Figured if it wasn't too bad on a national holiday it wouldn't get too crazy normally.
Walking distance to things like a grocery store or heck, just a short five minute drive to something would be good. Too many housing subdivisions are a thirty minute drive to even a gas station. It makes me wonder what people are thinking in building a housing community in the middle of nowhere. In the USA walkability is under rated.
Walkability is amazing
Being priced out of suburbia hell ended up being a good thing for me. I would've loved to have a garage and more privacy, but found those were decent trade-offs for the convenience of living in the city. There are 2 major shopping centers that I can drive to in 30 seconds or walk to in about 10 minutes.
Town ordinances. Some places are so strict that it's dumb. It took me quite a while to find a town that allows people to own ducks. There are ordinances in my town against specific types of flowers(that aren't even invasive) and you'll get fined if you put out more than 6 bags of trash on trash day. And God forbid you regravel your driveway without a permit.
If you live in a northern clime, having your house and your driveway facing south is nice in the winter.
My house faces north and my neighbors across the street always have a nice clean and dry driveway, where mine is packed with snow and ice.
As someone who's had both, it's not as bad as I thought it would be. You have to keep on top of it. Don't let snow sit for a few days. And get a good floor scraper to break up ice.
A positive to having a north facing house: my garage stays cooler in the summer.
Especially if it is an older home, is there space in the breaker box for additional circuits.
Our feed is under ground so you should also check the size of the conduit running to the breaker box as that dictates the maximum size wire (and thus capacity) you can run into it. The box at our house had a few extra circuits but is limited to 100A service by the conduit/wire size from the main feed.
Neighbors that mind their own business. If a neighbor tries to chat me up while I'm looking at a home I'm out, I had one terrible fucking experience with a guy trying to insert himself into mine and my wife's lives.
Yeah bad neighbors can be hell. I think the best way to handle that if possible is to have a good buffer zone around your house. Otherwise a house can have great neighbors but they might move or die.
I will only buy a house East of my office. That way I'm driving away from sunrise and sunset.
Dogs. I'm not an anti dog person, our most recent family dog passed away 5yrs ago and when i left for work, she would howl indoors loud enough for the neighbors to hear. 5 yrs later, i'm getting my due payback. The new neighbors on both sides of me have 3 dogs each that will run to the fence and bark when I go out back and also howl when their owners are away. Several houses down there is a family with a female pitbull that shrieks when she is left in their back yard. a really sweet dog, but has anxiety issues. Normally not an issue, unless it's the summer and all your windows are open.
Dogs and neighbors come and go, though
Having wired Ethernet.
Exactly. Makes placement of access points so much easier later on. Also not relying on bad wifi for your computer.
Radiant floor heating, especially in the bathroom.
Also a heated towel rack is really nice in the winter. I happen to have a baseboard heater right below a regular towel rack, that works the same and heats the room as well.
My notes:
-Face west for sunset view. Or east for sunrise view. -If house has a mailbox and road is busy, make sure mailbox is on house side of the road. -Enough land to keep me away from neighbors.
Next time I buy a house I'll definitely pay more attention to the direction the "main" side faces. Our current place faces north (gets the least sun here in the northern hemisphere). The deck and concrete gets covered in moss/mold and in the winter it's hard to find a spot to sit outside and soak up the sun.
Similarly in CO you learn north facing houses get the least exposure to the sun in the winter so when it snows your driveway never melts.
Single-story. I've witnessed/lived through too many expensive and stressful upstairs bathroom and washing machine leaks. No stairs is a plus, too.
Ceiling vents! If you have pets, it keeps the tumbleweeds to a minimum. In the bathroom, it also keeps you from having that one vent that's always by the toilet. You know, the one that's always freezing you to death while doing your business.
Not really a "feature" per se, but you should ALWAYS check out the attic, just to get a general idea of what is up there. Make sure there are no animal nests, insulation is good, no holes or leaks, etc etc.
Drive the neighborhoods you like after it rains and see if the streets flood. Especially if there’s retention ponds nearby. I found out the hard way 20 years ago. Luckily it was an apartment and we could leave when the lease was up. AFTER the car was caught in 3 feet of water. 🤬
If you're in the south or a warm climate - a whole house fan. You don't typically find these in newer construction anymore but they can really save you a bundle on cooling costs.
Is this different than the fan built into the air handling unit or furnace?
Yes. The whole house fan blows air outdoors. Where I live in the spring and fall it's hot during the day but cool at night. When I get home from work the inside is usually hotter than the outside. Open some windows and turn on the whole house fan and blast the hot air out. If I want it cooler than that I can then close the windows and turn on the air conditioning, but it saves a fortune knocking it down from like 80° to 75° for a penny.
Ah, got it. That probably wouldn't be ideal in humid areas right? Our AC basically functions partially/mostly like a dehumidifier durring the summer months. Without it, the humidity in the house is unbearable.
If you can, try to visit the house when it's raining. Make sure the roof is leak-proof and the basement (if there is one) is dry.
Measure Ghetto by looking at the distance to the nearest predatory loan agency aka Payday or title loans. Drug test the vents. If you do and get a positive for marajuana, it really scares the sellers. Look at the roof for shiners. Shiners are exposed nails that should be properly repaired (not covered with caulk that will last maybe 2 years.)
I've got a vent pipe boot with exposed nails, I put silicone caulk on them but what is the proper repair?
The proper repair is to replace the damaged shingle and anchor (nail) under a undamaged shingle. Shingles have a warrantee of ~15 years when installed like this. Silicon or tar daubs do not have any warrantee, and probably last 1-3 years.
In your case, I think that you may want to buy some spare shingles and take one and cut it to be able to be anchored under the undamaged shingles above the vent and cover the vent pipe nails while having room for the vent pipe. Sorry I can't be more help without pictures.
Edit: I went on a tangent below:
There are a couple spots (like when the roof starts from a wall) where there should be undamaged flashing from the wall that covers the first set of nails.
A quick and dirty trick is to cover the shiner with black silicon and then sprinkle the shingle grit that collects in the gutters on the silicon (so it doesn't decay in the sun, and the repair looks like the rest of the roof).
A less quick and dirtier, but longer lasting fix is to get some roofer fabric and roofer cement, and anchor the fabric under an undamaged single then spread the cement below and above the fabric. It doesn't look great but it will stop leaks from much larger roof cracks (damaged nail base) for a couple years.
Source: YouTube and buying a brand new build house with a bunch of cracked clear silicon repairs to shiners within the first 2 years.
How do you drug test vents?
There is a "field test kit" briefcase thing that has swabs that if I remember correctly are paper with a little adhesive. After wiping around in the vent (behind the grate) you can lay it on a paper towel and spray with the field test kit spray. In less than 10 mins it will change colors according to the present drugs on the swab that the spray is rated for.
Source: my memory from me doing it ~6 years ago.
And you would do this to scare the seller into lowering the price or?!?
Well, I didn't want a meth lab requiring me to replace all the drywall. Having the seller get scared when their sweet tenant left marijuana residue everywhere was a side effect that allowed better negotiation. Shrug, I was just doing due diligence, and the seller (via the tenant) left a few things I didn't actually realize were problems until later: a section of uninsulated attic that was unclear without actually crawling in it (my inspector didn't do it), a 240 volt oven whose breaker melted and was only supplying 106 volts, and dog pee infested 2nd story subfloor needing carpet to be ripped up and the floor sealed with paint. Also within 1 year of purchase I had both the shower tub crack and leak into the walls which was both an insurance call and a "restoration company" call, and not 6 months later, a sewer pipe for a sink broke inside the wall. I then said let's sell this place. So shrug, negotiations only go as far as the info you know.
Roof, chimney, and foundation walls
Besides onvious structural stuff I'd look at what kind of neighbors are around. I don't wanna live next to a pos.
Utility sink
Attic/crawlspace access for wiring, we live in a time where Ethernet all over is super important in the long term and taking devices off the wifi speeds up the wifi-only clients. Also, check available breaker space as a lot of electric retrofitting is on the horizon and easy rewiring access may be a boon, especially when you might swap gas appliances to electric in the coming decade.
As someone who's slightly on the taller side (5' 11" 1.8M), I stepped into the shower to make sure the shower head was at least at the top of my head. There were a few that were at about chest level so even with an extended shower head it wouldn't go over my head and showering would have been always annoying.
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