Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
So true! I added a few items on our check list. We hope to purchase a home in the next few months, although every time we get close to making an offer, something seems to happen (or it's just us getting cold feet ).
Wouldn't this be possible with an infrared home inspection? I know they can be costly, but I wouldn't dare buying a house without having one done.
Edit: I am reading now that there are some limitations, as for instance the thermal camera not being able to detect old leaks. I guess we would have to wait for a rainy day to be able to detect a roof leak .
I have often said to my husband that if we were looking at a house, I would wait until it rained hard and then go look at it again, especially the basement! In very heavy or prolonged rains, our basement takes on water. Not a lot, but enough that I have spent enough nights up all night ShopVaccing (think Hurricane Irene, Hurricane Sandy, lots of unnamed nor'easters, etc.). No floating litter box, like another poster experienced but enough water enough times that negotiating the price down to afford a sump pump would have been a good idea. On 2 occasions, the entire basement was filled with a couple of inches. Again, not a disaster, but I am getting OLD to be dealing with that!
My neighbor 4 houses down didn't have their back yard filled-in well when the house was built. When we get heavy rains, he literally gets a gigantic lake in his back yard (it takes up most of the yard)! Then I get to enjoy the sounds of frogs when I walk by. But who would want that in their back yard, especially the mosquitoes, too?
I have often said to my husband that if we were looking at a house, I would wait until it rained hard and then go look at it again, especially the basement!
We did that with the house we just bought. It rained for days not too long ago, with flood warnings all over the place, and the basement was still bone dry. We were still in our inspection contingency period, so we could have backed out of the deal at that time. There's a sump pump and a backup, but our inspector said it was "bone dry" down there. That was at least concerting because it's a 50 year old house. In our last house, we only got a little patch of water once, but our sump pump always worked liked crazy, and one time our backup sump pump saved the basement when power went out during a horrendous rainstorm. I highly recommend those backup sump pumps!!
The owners of the house we just bought lived in it for 40+years, and recently died, and ownership went to their heirs who immediately sold it. It was good to know that they liked it enough to stay there so long. I hope when we move in officially, we don't have some of these nightmares, but if we do, I'll report back to this thread. I'm sure remodeling will open a can of worms, as they usually do.
That being said, we had a great inspector, and for now, we know what we have to fix.
Last time I owned a home should have been great. It seemed like a dream house. It was in a beautiful neighborhood, I was next to upscale neighbors, it had all the modern appliances and it was found after months of looking.
On the first night I did not sleep a wink because of all the noises. Barking dogs we never saw or heard in our many visits to the house; bangs and creaks from the heat, a neighbor who roared his motorcycle outside my window late at night and a train that came by five times during the night.
I was forced to sleep with ear plugs and a loud fan for the next two years until we could sell it!
How could we be so ignorant and not check these things out in advance and talk to the neighbors and have the heating system checked?
How about you, were you satisfied with your home the days after you moved in?
When choosing a home to buy, it's important to investigate the neighborhood during the day AND at night. Many people fail to check out the neighborhood at night, and a lot of neighborhoods are deceptively calm and quiet during the day, but become rather scary and ominous after dark. Did you check out the neighborhood at night, especially on the weekend, OP? You can avoid a lot of nasty surprises by doing this.
When we first married, we bought a brand new two-story townhome. After closing (Jan), my wife went on a weekend business trip and I had to move all of our stuff in so we'd be all set by the time she got back.
We (friends) were almost done moving stuff in when someone noticed a wet spot in the living room carpet. Not thinking much of it, we kept going. Then the wet spot got bigger and wetter. Looked up and the drywall was sagging about 4-6" and there was water seeping through it!
Well, it turns out that the builder cut the feed line for the upstairs bath toilet incorrectly and water ran down onto the top of the living room ceiling.
We had to cutoff the water for the weekend and then remove all the furnishings from the LR until it could be fixed. Not what we were expecting to move into, but thankfully the ceiling never collapsed from the water.
We did that with the house we just bought. It rained for days not too long ago, with flood warnings all over the place, and the basement was still bone dry. We were still in our inspection contingency period, so we could have backed out of the deal at that time.
Do you people hire an inspector before purchasing these houses?
We did and our house was new construction. A couple of years after buying it our A/C went out in 105 degree weather. We ended up having a HVAC tech inspect our unit and he noticed there was rust in the collection pan. The rust was due to the unit being installed backwards. We looked back to the home inspection's report and there was a picture of the rusty pan. I get the home inspector wouldn't know the unit was installed wrong but they should've raised a concerned about rust in a brand new A/C unit.
Next house we will pay for an HVAC tech to do an inspection in addition to the regular home inspector.
I bought a condo at the end of September (haven't moved in yet, though). I knew it needed a few minor fixes, but didn't think much of it. Went in the condo over the weekend to write a check to my contractor and to see how the (more extensive than I'd originally anticipated) renovation was coming along, and saw thin white streaks running down the windows and sliding glass doors in the living room. Apparently the sealant that holds the thermopane glass in place inside the aluminum frame is failing. Looks like I may need to replace all the glass in the windows and the sliding glass doors. Yikes! I certainly hadn't budgeted for that! Of course there was no sign of any window trouble when I closed on the property...
I've decided that owning a house always means owning trouble. The surprise is finding exactly what sort of trouble your particular place has decided to dish out!
A similar thing happened to me a few months ago when I bought a condo. I was having new floors put in. The contractors were tearing up the old carpet in front of the patio door when I heard them say to each other: "Look at this, it's wet." "Yup, that's wet. Real wet. Soggy." My heart absolutely sank. Turned out the sliding patio door was leaking in under the carpet to the plywood subflooring.
Several weeks & a couple thousand dollars later I had a new patio door & the new flooring finally got finished. It's cork. I like it but it gives off a weird smell. Not totally offensive but not really pleasant either. It's just a very odd smell, unlike anything I've ever smelled before. Hopefully it'll go away eventually.
I've also discovered that I hate the shower. There's no way to control the water pressure. You can only control the temperature. Another thing I don't like is the dryer. It has a VERY loud buzzer & there doesn't seem to be a way to disable it.
Ok, so the shower thing & the dryer thing are trivial. I can get a new shower faucet & new dryer if need be .
Last time I owned a home should have been great. It seemed like a dream house. It was in a beautiful neighborhood, I was next to upscale neighbors, it had all the modern appliances and it was found after months of looking.
On the first night I did not sleep a wink because of all the noises. Barking dogs we never saw or heard in our many visits to the house; bangs and creaks from the heat, a neighbor who roared his motorcycle outside my window late at night and a train that came by five times during the night.
I was forced to sleep with ear plugs and a loud fan for the next two years until we could sell it!
How could we be so ignorant and not check these things out in advance and talk to the neighbors and have the heating system checked?
How about you, were you satisfied with your home the days after you moved in?
1. I think you can only really check the heating system when it's chilly. Just like you can only check the a/c when it's warm. But the inspector should've turned it on to make sure it worked. Don't know why it would creak.
2. Before I bought my current house, I drove by one evening to see what it was like at night. The neighbor single guy was outside with friends, so it was a bit noisier than I'd like. But not bad. And he had dogs, I late learned, but not barkers too much.
3. Train. You should've spotted the train tracks beforehand when scoping out the neighborhood. If I would've bought by train tracks, I'd assume the train would come by at who knows what time.
You seem like you might be sensitive to sounds, so should take care about that when buying a new home. I am not particularly sensitive to sound. I'm the sort who will go and sleep at the other end of the house or with ear plugs, if necessary. Not that a loud party doesn't irritate me. It does. But I deal with it, since it's only temporary.
Dogs barking can be reported as a noise nuisance, if it's bad enough.
Motorcycle would bother me because they are so darn loud. That sound irritates me. But you know, even if there's no motorcycle next door when you buy, nothing says a neighbor won't buy one later. That's part of living next to other people.
we lived in a house for nearly 15 years and raised 3 children there before we realized it was getting too expensive to stay there much longer. After we moved to a new neighborhood in another state, my wife confessed that the neighborhood was haunted. Not so much our house, but the area surrounding our house. She didn't mind it but after she told the rest of the family about it, we kinda understood why we were always so umcomfortable to be outside at night.
Outside in the new house is so much more pleasant.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
).
.
but enough water enough times that negotiating the price down to afford a sump pump would have been a good idea. On 2 occasions, the entire basement was filled with a couple of inches. Again, not a disaster, but I am getting OLD to be dealing with that!
