5 things to look out for when buying a home

When we are purchasing our future home, we always hope that it will be perfect in every single way. We want to find a bathroom just looks like that Pinterest picture, a master suite gives you the feels of being in a five star hotel, or wide white oak hard wood flooring throughout. But in reality, we have toured dozens of homes and they are far away from what we have imagined. Then we compromise to give up things that matter less to us. I want to discuss with you about some essential things that you may not want to overlook during your purchasing.

1. The layout.

   Sometime when we enter a home, the place feels bigger than what the square footage on paper suggests. This is how efficient layout works, meaning that you can enjoy bigger living rooms and bedrooms, while limiting the size of bathrooms or foyer. Feeling spacious can be relatively important in urban areas when the size is scarcity. Finding your own favorite layout is essential, because changing the layout could be very expensive especially when it involves in plumbing changes and electric rewiring, even when you are permitted to do so.

2. Ceiling height

   High ceiling makes the space feel more spacious than it originally is. It does not only make the place more airy but also helps with crating vertical storage space. One of the main reasons that penthouses are desirable is because the ceiling is usually higher than the rest floors. It can be crucial that your future home has the ceiling height that you desire, since it is the feature of a house that’s most impossible to adjust.

3. Signs of water damage

   Water damage can be hard and expensive to repair. Among all the home contractors, plumbers cost the most, sometimes even above $250 per hour. Water damage requires not only fixing the problem itself, also detects the problems of breaking the tiles and opening the walls. Once the fixing is done, we need to put the tiles back if we could find the same tiles. In a less fortunate situation, the original tiles are out of production, then we have to change the whole tiling work. It is quite common that the retail shops like Home Depot change their products every few years. What is worse, if the water damage is not new, there may be mold growing. That is another environmental headache to deal with (I will talk about environmental problems in another post).

4. Sound insulation

   When we tour a home, we don’t spend much time inside the unit. The sound coming from outside of unit can be easily neglected by us. It is a common problem that new owners discover the noises months after moving in. Not only the outside noise can be quite annoying, insulation between the floors is also important. When there isn’t sufficient insulation between the floors, you would know the vacuuming schedule of your upstair neighbor very soon. Insulation between the walls is also important. Personally speaking, occasionally I hear my neighbor’s dog bark. Luckily I live in a building having very good division, otherwise I won’t be able to sleep well with all the noise at night.

5. Windows

Brand new windows often are bragged to be one of the selling points. But new windows don’t necessarily mean good quality windows. Good windows minimize the noise from outside and prevent air from coming through which can save some energy bills. Changing the windows could get complicated. When we purchase in a condo building, the exterior may be treated as common elements. You may not be allowed to change windows on your own, or you have to follow very strict process. Window prices vary a lot, ranging from $200 basic vinyl windows to a few thousands thermal Europe windows. The cost could be up to tens of thousands. 

I am Diana Tian. If you wanted to find more about things to look out for when purchasing a home, contact me.