If you’re going to purchase a home, maybe you can learn from some mistakes I have made. This is an ongoing list. More things will be added as I remember them or as they come up. It was last updated on March 1st 2005.

1. Realtors are not your friends.
This might piss a few people off. Especially Realtors (hi guys). However, it needs to be said. I don’t care how nice they seem, how many times they offer to drive you around and look at homes, take you to lunch, send you gifts, cards, etc. Their main purpose is to sell houses. Unless you’ve got a special “buyer’s Realtor” that you hire, the ones at the local offices work for the sellers. Even if the seller is represented by one person and another person represents you. They both ultimately get paid by the sellers. It is in their best interest to sell the home for the sellers so the sellers can give them their cut of the loot. I’m not going to trash the Realtor we used, since she was ok. However, there are a few things I wished she mentioned or didn’t leave out. I’ll probably never know if she just didn’t know, or if it was done on purpose.

2. Ask for utility bills.
This one probably wouldn’t have done us any good since the sellers used this place as a rental and apparently never lived here. Looking at bills is a good way to estimate what your general costs of electricity, gas, water, etc would be if you made the purchase. If the sellers try to say they don’t have them, kindly inform them that they can call the local utilities and get copies of old bills or maybe even a yearly summary. High heating bills are a pretty good sign of little to no insulation or a bad heating system. This will suck if you live in an area that gets cold during the winter.

3. Bring marbles (or a level).
If you’re buying an older home (like one built in, oh lets say 1850), chances are it’s got some lopsided floors that you might not notice right away. This is apparently caused by settling over the years. This place has a few of those that need to be fixed. I actually read in a book how “part of the charm of old homes is that there isn’t a level floor in them”. “Charm” my ass. It’s annoying, trust me. It’s probably also very costly to correct. Anyway, putting a marble or a ball in the center of rooms and seeing if it moves can give you an idea if a floor isn’t even. Of course a good long level will accomplish the same. Most good home inspectors should test for uneven floors, but check in case they don’t. Speaking of home inspectors……

4. Not all Home Inspectors know what they’re doing.
It’s a good idea to hire one of these people before you buy a place. They usually charge a couple hundred bucks, but it’s money well spent. That said, the guy we hired was a dumbass. He missed a lot of stuff, played down any potential problems as “normal for an old home”. Looking back, I wondered if he actually knew the sellers or something. Anyway, if I had it to do over again, I’d ask around more, look at more inspectors and ask for references, etc. The guy we got (after the Realtor tried to convince us how inspectors are “thorough”, like it was a bad thing or a big hassle - scroll up and see tip #1 again) missed a lot of stuff in his report. The main things being the false wall in the basement that was hiding potentially serious foundation problems, and the fact that the place basically has worn out and/or no insulation. We did get a few grand shaved off the asking price, but it probably should have been a lot more.

5. Flood zones
If the place you’re looking to purchase is anywhere near a river, stream, creek, pond, whatever, find out if it’s on the FEMA flood hazard maps. If it is, then you’ll probably have to pay extra for flood insurance. We got hit with this as a last minute surprise. The sellers swore up and down that they never had to pay flood insurance. The Realtors said things like “I live right up the street and don’t have to pay it”. Well thanks, that makes me feel a lot better for having to fork over an extra $400 a year for flood insurance, on top of the $450 for regular insurance. You can find out if crooks in the government (who probably never ever stepped foot in your area) consider the property a flood risk because of aerial maps that show water nearby due to some law or whatever that started in 1994. Even if the body of water is blocks away you should still check. This house is on a hill where any water clearly flows down the street and becomes someone else’s problem, but they still say this property is at risk. Go figure. Flood maps can apparently be found at local libraries or you can order them for some money. Or you can do what I did and just type in the address at the FEMA Flood Hazard Mapping site and find out instantly (and for free) if it’s a flood risk. I typed in a few addresses of surrounding properties and for some reason they weren’t in the flood zone even though they are literally a 90 second walk away. If you get hit with this, you can apparently also dispute it. The Realtors and brokers tried to do that with info they got from the city showing that there hasn’t been a flood around here for as long as they could remember. They didn’t have any luck and gave up after a couple weeks. The bank pretty much insisted that flood insurance be purchased for the loan to go through. Asshats.

That’s all. For now….

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 22nd, 2005 at 1:53 pm and is filed under Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.