Buying A House: Must Haves & Deal Breakers?

[GeekyPenguin]

Originally Posted by SthrnZeta

I'm in real estate and I can tell...

Originally Posted by SthrnZeta

I've never heard of burying St. Joseph under the For Sale sign - what is he the saint of? (I'm not Catholic, don't know my saints except for St. Francis since I'm in vet med).

Vet med and real estate? Do you also go to law school at Houston and DePaul?

My boyfriend and I have been looking for a house in his town forever and it's starting to intensify since I graduate in May and we have to get two apartments full of furniture and clothes in one place. Here's important things to us:

1) Closet space - and if there isn't a ton of space, at least make them well-designed. The house he rents where we lived this summer had California closets, but they weren't designed for a woman because there was nowhere to hang a dress, so all my dresses went into our coat closet.
2) Updated kitchen - we want an older house, but at least make sure your cabinets and countertops and floors are younger than we are. I'd also rather have a dishwasher than extra cabinet space
3) Bathrooms with storage - those pedestal sinks are really cute and good for a guest room - not so much the master bath
4) New windows
5) Newer furnace, roof, water heater
6) A yard that's either blank, really traditional landscaping, and preferably lots of trees - we keep looking at houses that have really expensive landscaping that we think is really really ugly
7) No wallpaper!
8) A garage with storage space - even if it's just a one car, make it look like we could easily store a lot there
9) Try and get neutral colors whenever possible - there's a house we love with a perfect home office for us but that was used a nursery last and is electric blue with a truck border. We keep looking at the house and then thinking of home many times we'd have to paint that room before it'd be useable.

[Benzgirl]

One thing that I always look at over and above the house. Check out the neighbors and the neighborhood. Houses can be repainted, rewired, recarpeted, added on to, etc. You can change your house, but, you can't change your neighbors.

[SthrnZeta]

Originally Posted by GeekyPenguin

Vet med and real estate? Do you also go to law school at Houston and DePaul?

I know, I wear many hats I'm new in real estate and I do vet med and petsitting on the side to make extra money. I also had a stint in radio advertising, lol.

[ilovemyglo]

My fiance and I bought a house two months ago. my mom is a realtor so I got to use her MLS to search for potential homes.

My must haves originally were:
3 bedrooms (but wanted 4). I work from home and one bedroom was going to be an office
2 baths
Prefer hardwood floors but not complete deal breaker
2 car garage
Brick exterior (maintenance free!! and great for heating/cooling!)
Closet space....

The house we purchased was on hte market for over a year. There were some minor issues, we even had a structual engineer out to look at the house to make sure they weren't huge, and the house was empty when we looked at it.
The thing about the house we bought is it had great potential but horrid choices made for it.

For example-
The family room has paneling that had been painted. At some point we will replace it, but honestly it was painted a creamy color which emphasized it was paneling. There is one wall of windows in that room, so I painted it a chocolate color and it de-emphasized the paneling and made the room much more cozy and intimate.
The kitchen was blood red. Hideous!! The knobs on the drawers and cabinets were tomatoes, carrots, peas and peppers... as were the light switch plates. Even though that isn't a huge thing, we had to spend over $140 to replace them because they were so ugly. The cabinets were painted white so we went with plain chrome ones, they were the cheapest and it still cost that much!!
The closets had the bifold doors and at some point she had removed all the doors- (I hate bifold anyway) but now our closets are all wide open. We are making curtains to use until after the wedding at which time we are getting sliding closets doors.

Little things, like updated doors (6 panel doors look much better than flat ones) and knobs (brass looks old). Little touches would have made the difference in this house. Instead of getting the additional 10k they were asking for it we got the house for a steal and are doing work on our own. So long as the bones are there you can make the house work for you.

That being said, we are a young couple- know your market in your area. If it is going to be a couple with a few kids they won't want to do the work we have to make the house how they like it.

And keep the yard minimized if you aren't going to upkeep elaborate plant and landscape designs. Our yard was overrun and we had to basically pull everything up.

Not sure if that helps, but I am still working on getting our house to be home. It's going faster than I thought but very time consuming!

eta- Also as for neighbors/neighborhood- when we bought the house, next door the house was only mostly taken care of, but there was chipped paint and a gutter falling down. It looked awful. Within two weeks of us working on our house the guy living there gixed both issues!!! And his son moved out which menat fewer cars next door!

[BetaIotaDZ]

It surprised me that not one of the comments has hammered the classic three - location, location, location. Only the owner knows if he/she is selling the classic three. However; whereever your home is located, look for what the location has to offer and include that in your sales plan. With gas again escalating in price - nearness to mass transporation, airports, and downtown business districts may trump modernization on the interior of the house. At the very least it could give you a valuation to support a move to a less mass "location" appeal area.

Just checked back to see the origination date of this thread. Hope your home - listed in 2007 - sold long before the last "crash". I enjoyed reading this thread.