Things to Consider When Buying a Home
Updated on 2023-03-10
Contents
- 01 – Introduction
- 02 – Don’t Be in a Hurry to Purchase
- 03 – Is There an Airport Nearby?
- 04 – Is There Street Parking in Front of the Home?
- 05 – Is There Multi-Family Housing Nearby?
- 06 – Are You Considering a Cul-De-Sac or Dead-End Location?
- 07 – Long Driveways…
- 08 – Cathedral Ceilings Look Nice, But…
- 09 – Bay Windows Provide Extra Space, But…
- 10 – Bigger Homes Require More HVAC Equipment
- 11 – Don’t Completely Trust Building Codes
- 12 – How Do You Feel About Being Told What You Can and Cannot Do with Your Home?
- 13 – Expect Problems And/Or Inferior Workmanship
- 14 – Undeveloped Areas Near or Around the Home?
- 15 – Higher-Priced Neighborhoods Do Not Necessarily Mean Nicer or More Thoughtful People
01 – Introduction
In this post, I want to share some things I’ve learned from buying two homes. Any home purchase will probably be the most expensive purchase you will ever make and you definitely don’t want to have buyer’s remorse. Hint: I have buyer’s remorse. I realize that everyone is different and what bother’s some, may not bother others. I’m not even going to discuss the subject of conflicts with neighbors.
02 – Don’t Be in a Hurry to Purchase
My wife and I purchased a town home for our first home purchase. Prior to that, we lived in an apartment, so we had no experience with managing the sale of an existing home and the purchase of the next one. We were juggling getting our town home ready for sale and looking for our next home. I quickly grew tired of looking for our next home and settled on our current home, even though I immediately noted traffic noise during evening rush hour as something that was undesirable. I even initially said no about purchasing our current home, but after thinking it over, I changed my mind. I wanted to get the purchase process over and concentrate on getting our town home ready for sale. That turned out to be a mistake. There turned out to be other undesirables about our current home that are detailed below.
03 – Is There an Airport Nearby?
My wife and I bought our single family home not far from our previous town home and I knew that an airport was close by (about ten miles), but for whatever reason I didn’t even think about the airport when we decided to purchase our current single family home. At the time we bought our single family home, one of the runways at the airport was shut down for lengthening, so planes weren’t an issue initially. Once the runway re-opened, the planes started landing and getting on my nerves. Our home is very close to one of the main landing routes for commercial passenger planes. The planes are so loud sometimes that having a conversation on the phone can be problematic.
04 – Is There Street Parking in Front of the Home?
If the street or road is a public road, in general anyone can park there and there’s not much you can do or say about it. One of our neighbors constantly has visitors and they park in front of our house. There have also been a few incidents where our neighbor’s visitors have parked in a manner where they were blocking access to our driveway. Sometimes I wonder if the visitors ever stay at their own home.
We also have neighbors who own multiple vehicles. Sometimes they park in front of our home. Another parking pet peeve is discussed in the next consideration.
05 – Is There Multi-Family Housing Nearby?
Think condominiums, apartment complexes, or town home developments; all those types of developments are notorious for not having enough parking for the number of vehicles that residents have, even before mentioning their visitors. So, the residents and their visitors end up looking for parking in other areas.
We have a large town home development across the street behind our property and residents and visitors of that community end up parking in our neighborhood, in another single family home neighborhood just up the street from us, and along quite a length of the road behind our home. I can’t tell you how frustrated and angry this makes me and there is nothing you can legally do about it. We paid quite a bit of money for our single family home only to have the privilege of residents and visitors from another community parking in our community, sometimes 3 or 4 vehicles parked in front of our house. G-r-r-r-r!!
The COVID madness gave us a nice reprieve, but the parking issue reared its ugly head again beginning in August 2022.
06 – Are You Considering a Cul-De-Sac or Dead-End Location?
You might think a cul-de-sac or dead-end would be quiet and they can be, but cu-de-sac’s and dead-end’s can also turn into playgrounds. Are you okay with people coming onto your property to retrieve balls? We don’t live on a cul-de-sac or dead-end, but we have a few in our neighborhood and I’m so glad we didn’t purchase a home in one of those types of locations.
07 – Long Driveways…
I suppose a long driveway can be useful in some circumstances. If your home sits far back from the road, then a long driveway is necessary. A long driveway also provides more off-street parking. However, a long driveway costs more to maintain. Sealcoating a long driveway is more expensive than a shorter driveway. A long driveway is more costly to repave if you have an asphalt driveway. A long driveway takes more work to clear snow, although that can be mitigated by use of a proper snow blower. A long driveway is more work when you cut the grass because you have more area to clean up afterwards. A long driveway is also more work in the fall because there is more area to clear of leaves.
08 – Cathedral Ceilings Look Nice, But…
My wife and I went to a house warming for her supervisor when we lived in an apartment. The house had really high cathedral ceilings and I remember telling my wife I wouldn’t want a home like that because it would be a nightmare for maintenance. So what did we do? We bought a home with cathedral ceilings in the family room, the master bedroom, and the master bathroom! Cathedral ceilings might appear to be nice and make space more roomy, but they can be a pain when it comes to maintenance.
There’s a smoke detector in our master bedroom, which is one of two rooms in our home with cathedral ceilings. In the past, I was able to use a telescoping ladder to get to the detector to replace the battery. However, with my recent spine issues, there’s no way I’m going to climb up a ladder, straddle the ladder and the top of a set of closets, to change a battery in a smoke detector. I am hoping to eventually be able to use the telescoping ladder one more time and disconnect the wiring for the smoke detector.
09 – Bay Windows Provide Extra Space, But…
We had a bay window in our town home and I said I would never buy another home with a bay window. Our single family home has two of them…face plant. Bay windows do provide some extra interior space, but they can be a pain to maintain because of the multiple edges and corners on the exterior.
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10 – Bigger Homes Require More HVAC Equipment
I didn’t realize that we had two separate HVAC systems until we moved into our single family home. There is a heat pump that conditions the air on the upper level of our home and a gas furnace and air conditioner that conditions the air on the main level of the home, as well as the basement area.
There are two air filters for the upper level system and one air filter for the lower level system, so I have to replace 3 separate air filters on a 2-3 month basis. I use 3M Filtrete air filters, so we pay quite a bit for air filter replacements.
We constantly had problems with our heat pump after moving in. In January 2012, our HVAC service provider said that the system had a leak. I asked about finding the leak and fixing it. The technician said that due to the age of the system (14 years old), it wasn’t worth the effort to locate the leak and it would probably be impossible to pinpoint the exact location. So at a cost of just over $6,000, we had our Goodman heat pump replaced with a Lennox heat pump.
In July 2022, the heat pump wasn’t working correctly, so I contacted our HVAC service provider. I also asked that the lower level system be inspected as well since it had been a few years since either system had been inspected or serviced.
The technician did quite a bit of troubleshooting. He then told me that the heat pump had a leak. I was dumbfounded because the Lennox heat pump was only 10 years old. I was told that the average lifespan of a heat pump is 10 years. The technician went into the attic to inspect the air handler and detected a leak in the air handler. He recommended replacing the air handler, which he told me wouldn’t be cheap.
In August 2022, I went out and worked in the yard for awhile in the early evening. When I came back into the house, it felt warm. We keep the temperature at 78 degrees Fahrenheit during the warmer months. I looked at the thermometer in the family room and the temperature read 80 degrees Fahrenheit. H-m-m-m…that’s not good I thought to myself. The system was running, but it wasn’t cooling effectively.
I looked out the windows in our kitchen at the compressors that sit outdoors. I didn’t see any icing on the pipes, which happened in the past with the heat pump, signaling low or no coolant. I then thought maybe the capacitor had blown again. The capacitor blew on the compressor for the lower level system back in 2015. I also noticed that the compressor had been moved. Did our lawn care company bump the compressor with their large lawn mower?
I thought about trying to replace the capacitor myself. I did some research on YouTube about replacing the capacitor on a Goodman compressor. However, after viewing a few videos and thinking about it more, I decided that I should contact our HVAC service provider.
A technician came out and inspected the lower level system. After performing an inspection, he came back and said he had bad news…the system was completely out of freon. The technician recommended replacement and stated that servicing the existing unit wasn’t an option because of its age (22 years old).
We had the Goodman furnace and air conditioner for the lower level of our home replaced in September 2022 with a Lennox system by another HVAC service provider for almost $10,000.
During the consultation with the company president of the HVAC company that installed our new Lennox system in September 2022, the company president told me he recently replaced 3 systems for a large home in a nearby area. Can you imagine what the utility bill would be for that home?
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11 – Don’t Completely Trust Building Codes
The original main water supply line to our home was made of black polybutylene. Even though there were several lawsuits due to the material failing not long before our home was built, black polybutylene still met local building codes.
When we received our quarterly water and sewer bill in May 2016, I was dumbfounded by the amount of water we supposedly used over the previous quarter; 69,000 gallons. The average for the same period was around 21,000 gallons. My first thought was a water leak, but at 69,000 gallons the leak couldn’t be a leaky faucet. There also was no evidence of a hidden interior pipe leak; e.g. water damage, mold, etc. I searched the Internet and learned that we might have a leak in our main supply line and I also learned how to test for such a leak during my research.
I shutoff the water to our home from the main shutoff valve in our basement. I then went out to the water meter near the street curb and checked it. Sure enough, even though the water was completely off in our home, the dial was still spinning, meaning that there was a leak in the main supply line.
I contacted the water and sewer utility company and asked them to come out and verify the leak in our main supply line. Within a few days a technician came out to perform the test and he verified that we did indeed have a leak in our main supply line. I asked the technician where all the water could have gone because there was no evidence of a leak anywhere on our property. The technician didn’t have an answer for me.
I then contacted a plumbing company that had replaced our water heater the prior summer and the manager told me they didn’t do main water supply line work, but he did provide the name of another company. Two days and over $4,000 later, we had a new water supply line installed. I also discovered that other homes in our community had also experienced the same issue after sharing our misfortune with our HOA to warn other community members.
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12 – How Do You Feel About Being Told What You Can and Cannot Do With Your Home?
More and more communities are governed by homeowner associations (HOAs). Use your favored search engine and discover some of the horror stories about HOAs. Ours isn’t that bad, but I despise the “mother may I” feeling I get when I want to do something to my home.
Our HOA came up with the bright idea (I’m being sarcastic) of having neighbors, whose property line is adjacent to yours, sign off on design applications that you submit. A design application is basically a request to make a design change to the exterior of your home. Even something as simple as changing the design or color of something on the exterior of your home can require approval.
13 – Expect Problems and/or Inferior Workmanship
I could easily write a separate post about the problems and shoddy workmanship I’ve encountered with the two homes my wife and I have owned. Suffice it to say that I’ve been very disappointed with the workmanship I’ve seen in both of the homes we’ve owned. Our town home was brand new and our single family home was only about 4 years old when we bought them. Based on my experiences, I think the American home building industry is sorely in need of a major shakeup.
14 – Undeveloped Areas Near or Around the Home?
Undeveloped areas can be nice as they provide a buffer from noise and development. However, in my experience such spaces end up getting developed. It would probably be a good idea to check with the applicable government office to find out what future development may be planned for the undeveloped area(s). There was undeveloped land not far from our current home when we moved in and now there is a high-rise office building and a shopping center.
15 – Higher-Priced Neighborhoods Do Not Necessarily Mean the People Living There Are Nicer or More Thoughtful
That was one rude awakening I’ve experienced. I thought that buying a home in a higher-priced neighborhood would mean nicer, more thoughtful people; quite the opposite. Within reason, you’ll probably encounter the same types of people you might encounter in lower-priced neighborhoods.
Post header image is courtesy of tkoch at Pixabay.
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