Boost Your House Hunting I.Q.

As a future new home owner, whether it's your first time or tenth time, you have a lot of decisions to make that will effect your life for years to come. One mistake could be enough to lay waste to your bank account and stretch your credit cards to their limit. It seems there are more ways to throw money away than there are to save it when shopping for a new home.

But at the same time it's all very exciting. Your dream home could be around the next corner. You just need to be prepared when you get there.

Last week I met my good friend Steve for a cup of coffee at Dunkin' Donuts. He has been trying to find a new home for months. His budget is limited but he has found a place that he thinks is the one for him.

He is intimately familiar with my background in architecture and construction and wants to bounce a few questions off of me. I rib him about his mother being his agent and then happily oblige.

The house that he is considering is a serious fix 'er upper. It is more work than he is comfortable with. He is rattling off the things that he has found wrong with it between sips of coffee. I cut him off mid sentance.

"Steve" I said. "Take me there tomorrow. Give me the tour. It will be much easier for me to form an opinion actually seeing the place."

The next morning he picks me up in his Chevy Malibu with two more cups of coffee in the cup holders. On the way there he is explaining his financing situation to me. He is getting a really good deal on a 40 year fixed interest rate mortgage.

We pull into the gravel driveway. The house is tiny but it is on a big piece of property. He has a dense tree line in his backyard. I know the highway is back there somewhere but it's too far to see or hear from anywhere in the yard. The pine trees are a benefit too as they wont lose their leaves in the fall and reveal the busy road.

We get in through the back door and walk right into the kitchen. A serious smoker lived here and they left all sorts of things behind. Stacks of old newspapers dating back to the sixties reach high enough so that I can't step over them. Some of them have toppled over and completely cover the carpets.

Steve leads me around the house and shows me everything that needs fixing.

"The furnace is newer but it's broken", he says.

He cranks up the thermostat and the furnace kicks on. Two seconds later it emits a horrible grinding noise that just wont quit.

"Circulator", I tell him. "It will cost you seventy bucks for the part and I will replace it for you. Don't worry." He accepts my offer and we make our way back up the stairs after checking the basement for termite and water damage.

He shows me all the beat up cabinet doors in the kitchen and all the missing little tiles on the bathroom floor.

He goes on and on about all of the junk he has to move out and all of the coats of paint it will take to cover up these stained walls. He is adding up the cost of all these little problems in his head.

We make our way up the stairs to the attic. The underside of the roof has some water damage. He is very concerned about it.

I let him know that I think he is going about this all wrong. He is way too focused on the negatives. I hand him a piece of paper from my notebook. I have him fold it in half. On the left side I ask him to write down all of the problems that he can think of with an approximate cost to fix them. On the right side all of the positives. I urge him to come back with his contractor and get an estimate on what he thinks it would cost to fix these things too.

We start writing on the right hand side things like hardwood floors, new bath tub, very nice wood trim around the windows, wood crown trim in the living and dining rooms, bead board paneling in the full bath on the first floor. It was even going to be easy to expand this tiny kitchen without seriously impacting the existing house. The right hand side starts to get pretty long.

Can you guess which side grew bigger? Thankfully, it was the right side.

The story doesn't end there though. This place is looking like a great deal but I still want to check with the town to make sure we can expand the kitchen legally. I had to do a little research for him and I prepared what is referred to as a zoning chart. It's basically just a check to be sure that the new kitchen wouldn't get too close to the neighbors property and other town enforced things like that.

I was able to get all of the information I needed for the study off of the towns website but I headed down to town hall anyway. I was going to request to see what information they had on file for the property.

When I arrived there the clerk greeted me with a smile and asked how she could help me. I handed her a piece of paper with the address on it and she smirked. She had the file out already on a rolling cart with about twenty other files. Someone else had already been here today looking at Steve's property.

As she handed me the file she asked, "Did you hear?"

"Hear what?" I said.

"The owners of the property and the surrounding homes lost their final appeal. They are going to lose some of their property to a new highway exit ramp." she replied.

Talk about a deal breaker. I thanked her for the tip and called Steve from the car. He was crushed but he learned a valuable lesson in doing his homework. Every house he looked at after that he went into with a piece of paper folded in half and he always checked with Town Hall to see what they had on file.

Happy House Hunting,

Connecticut Realtor©