080810-drain.jpg We've learned the hard way that there's some very important things that should be checked before signing the papers to buy a new home. Sure you can have someone do an inspection and look over the place to make sure you're termite and flood damage free, but these things fall into a different category — the immediate honey-do list!
Even though there will always be cosmetic changes to make to a new home, trying to avoid costly repairs upon first moving in is always a bonus. Being able to save that money for the dining table of your dreams, or even just for gas and groceries can be extra beneficial. Here's a few things we suggest checking before you sign the papers and inherit all of the previous tenants past problems.
1. Check The Drains: This might sound silly, but we've had two homes with the same issues in the last several years. Somewhere between the house and the sewer line, there's a backup. Usually tree branches or a collapsed pipe, but either way, it's hard to spot unless you run a load of laundry, fill up the tub and sinks and let them all attempt to drain at the same time.

2. Open All The Windows: Replacing windows isn't fun and it isn't cheap either. Open them all to find out if they stick, are stuck or just plain old won't open.
3. Turn On All The Faucets: Although changing out faucets isn't exactly rocket science it's always a pain to lay under a cabinet and reach for the sky with funny tools to get things removed. Just check to make sure they all work before buying to eliminate the back ache.
4. Light A Fire In The Fireplace: Even though chimneys are usually installed by professionals, that doesn't mean they're always in pristine shape. Cleaning them is as simple as a phone call to a local chimney sweep, but finding out if all the fireplaces in the home draft correctly is another.
5. Taste The Water: This lesson is always learned the hard way. Even if your city has great water, your pipes might be old enough that they'll send a little extra something out of the tap and into your glass. Knowing up front if you'll need to install a whole house filter or invest in a few Brita pitchers is always helpful.
6. Flush The Toilets: Knowing that all the toilets in the home can handle toilet paper is a bonus. Although they're easy enough to replace or fix, finding ones that flush well are a bonus. If you're dissatisfied they could issue you money back to make the replacement in order to get you to sign on the dotted line!
7. Open The Electrical Panel: A clean and labeled panel is a happy panel. Something that looks like squirrels got up inside can signal trouble. Look for loose wires or ones that simply don't connect to anything. It could signal that there's live wires inside the walls!
8. Turn On The Heat/Air: Knowing that both of these things work prior to actually needing them can be a serious bonus. Check to make sure they blow their respective temperatures in addition to just turning on.

9. Pull The Carpet Back: Before you move in, you'll want to find out if there's hardwood floors and also any mold or mildew under the carpets. Look for the lowest side of the room and if possible pull a corner back. Many homeowners will have a section of carpet removed in a closet to allow you to see the condition of the floors below.

10. Basement Moisture: Although most home inspectors will sniff this one out for you, look for signs of dampness. Even if the walls aren't apparently wet, look for things like dehumidifiers, bucks of silica or other things that grab moisture from the air and keep it at bay. If the home owners are smart enough to move these things, look for places near outlets that look clean (or leave a dust ring) where something like this might have sat.
Do you have one to add to the list? Share your tip (and story behind it) in the comments below!

 Here in the humid Midwest, we keep a dehumidifier running all summer in our basement, and we don't have what anyone would call a moisture problem. It's just really humid here, and running a dehumidifier helps keep the whole house more pleasant. I would rather buy a house from someone who ran their humidifier frequently, than from someone who never used one.

 One week after moving in, our new neighbor across the street said "so you know there's a family of raccoons that lives the space above your front porch during the winters." Homeowners didn't disclose this.

Hire a professional inspector. He will check EVERYTHING for you. Mine found a fault in the foundation, and the seller agree to pay it. $350 saved me about $28k.

Garbage disposal - do it have one and does it work?

There's a lot that we didn't realize to look for - like is there a drainage system in place so that rainwater has a place to go (preferably to the street) instead of pooling in the yard or around the house.

The previous owner agreed to fix all the things that the inspector found.. even cleaning the chimney.

Homeowners association/condo fees! If you're at the top end of your price point  the extra $XXX in fees every month may put you over the top. I almost bought (what seemed to be) a pretty cheap condo until I realized the monthly ownership fees nearly doubled my monthly payment!

And don't let the real estate agent try to talk you out of hiring an inspector.

If the inspector finds something really look into it.
Our house has an outdoor breaker box that looked terrible. The inspector pointed it out, but we were so excited about the house we just asked for 1k off the price. Turns out that replacing a breaker box costs over 3k. We now know to get estimates on anything that we are unsure about.
---when we had the estimate done the electrician asked if he could take a pic to show the guys at the office because it was the worst one he had ever seen :(.

Independent sewer inspector. He snaked our drain with a camera all the way to the street, so we could physically see that the pipes were all in good shape. The sellers wouldn't pay for it, but it was $350 well spent.

Make sure the water shut off valves work. I had the seller change the ones in the apartment I bought because they were frozen. All you need when the toilet is overflowing is for the shutoff valve not to work.

And definitely make sure the person inspecting your place takes the electrical box apart. We didn't look under the top panel so we didn't know about the three fuses that had caught on fire at some point. You couldn't see the scorch marks if you just opened the door and looked at the top panel and the switches.

Check to make sure that there are no open building permits for your property. In LA, this is a very quick and easy online search and can save you thousands (since you become responsible for those permits once the property is yours, even if you didn't pull them or own the property when they were pulled).

Check water pressure when more than one area of water is running.

#1 is really important, but it should be titled "get camera sewer inspection" and not "check drains." Six months after moving into our house, we ended up shelling out nearly 15,000 dollars to replace our side sewer. Based on some evidence they found when they dug, our plumbers were pretty sure the previous owner was aware of issues but did not declare them.

Don't just check "with" the neighbors... check "on" the neighbors...
Not in a creepy way, but you're going to be moving into a community, not just a house, and you might want to know that the neighbor next doors is a raving NASCAR fan with a 80in big screen TV in the garage... and on Sundays he likes to invite 27 of his friends over for a race-watching kegger with the door open.
The adjacent house is a care facility for mentally and physically handicapped young-adults. there are vans pulling up to the house 4 times/day starting at 7:30AM *every* day and on occasion one of the residents goes into a screaming fit at 5AM. unfun.
Granted this is something which i also think should have been disclosed by the sellers (let's not get into the real-estate law part of this as a lawsuit isn't out of the question), but had we known, we'd likely have offered a lot less for the house (like 10-15% less). I can (and have) fixed *everything* in my house... i can't fix the neighbors.

Jiggle the toilet and make sure the bolts holding it to the floor aren't corroded. Not a huge cost to fix a wobbly toilet, but it's nice to know that kind of thing beforehand.
Also, during the walk-through, make sure none of the windows are cracked or missing. I had my place painted before I moved in and didn't know whether the painters or the previous owners had broken the windows.

 I concur with the separate sewer inspection - saved me a ton of money, as did the pest inspection (powder post beetles had eaten away my foundation posts).

If you're buying a condo, ask a neighbor to turn their TV up as loud as they can while you stand next door. The builder assured us that they'd soundproofed the places (it's brand new), but the people next door have a daughter that throws tantrums at all hours of the day and night AND they like to take advantage of the fact that our units came prewired for surround sound and blast their bass-heavy music...and our shared wall is my BEDROOM wall. I haven't had a good night sleep since I moved in 7 months ago, and will now have to pay $2K to blow out that wall and install soundproofing.

Second, and this is REALLY important: HIRE YOUR OWN INSPECTOR. DO NOT USE THE PERSON RECOMMENDED BY YOU REALTOR. The person recommended by your realtor is going to say that it's a nice place so that your realtor can make the sale and continue to push business their way. I have to replace my patio doors AND windows due to issues the inspector should've caught. Do research online and find a sound inspector on your own. At least I'll know these things next time :D

 If turning on the A/C, make sure the outside temperature has been consistently above 60 degrees for at least 48 hours before turning it on. Otherwise you run a pretty good chance of burning out the A/C motor almost immediately.

Find a good heating and cooling company, a plumber, a roofer and an electrician. Have them assess the place and give estimates for fixes. The inspector told me that the furnace worked, but he never noticed that the VENTS weren't attached correctly. He didn't tell me the main sewage line would need replacing in two years. Inspectors + pros = better picture of the house and definite ammo for price negotiation.

try using QuietRock's line of boards... all have a really high noise-blocking rating. put a layer of QuietGlue between your old drywall and your new soundproof drywall and you'll be set. honestly, if the wall is already stuffed with insulation, i'm wondering what ripping it out and replacing with something else would solve.
we used QuietRocks 510 (the cheapest -- essentially two 1/4in sheets of drywall with a layer of QuietGlue in between in place of regular 1/2in drywall in our bedroom and the difference is staggering.
quietrock.com

The previous owners of our last house 'forgot' to tell us that the washing machine they left behind was leaking and had been for a while....cue one new kitchen floor and five days of running a dehumidifier.

 After I move in, I start having severe clogged pipes and back up problems, the plumber I hire tells me that my pipes are the old galvanized kind that are pretty much ready to expire! I don't have the money to replace them. So about every three to four months- I have to spend about $300 hundred dollars to have a plumber clear out this terrible corroded mess in my pipes. I also had to rebuild the toilet. Seriously- the accient plumbing was not caught my the inspector before sale. My realtor just had someone tell me that my place was in great condition so he could sell this place to me. Get your own inspector- someone who can check everything.

I just bought a home in June, and we did hire an inspector to look at the place. There were some things he did not find, and as a new homeowner I hadn't thought to look for them myself:

- The pipe leading away from the drain near the furnace was backed up with sediment. When 8 inches of rain fell in three hours here a few weeks ago, all of that water had nowhere to go but into my newly-finished basement.
- There was no cap on the chimney either, so anytime it rained, water came down and dampened the basement floor. I didn't even know what a chimney cap was until we had this problem! The previous owners HAD to have had water in the basement as often as we did, but clearly just put up with it and did nothing.
- More water problems: a wet bar was illegally installed into the rest of the pipe system by a previous owner. It later caused a clogging issue that required us to disassemble the whole flushing system.
- It was pointed out that some of the wiring was not up to code, but it was not acknowledged that many of the switches and outlets ran off of the same line. One wall of outlets in the upstairs office and all of the outlets in the basement, as well as the hallway light, were all hooked up to the same circuit. Who in their right mind thought it made any sense to do that?

Overall, I'm still very happy with my home purchase. Even though I'm new to this, it's very clear that the people who owned before us had no idea what they were doing and never bothered to learn. It's like they sat back and waited for a landlord to come and fix their problems (and whomever they hired to do plumbing and electrical work was a hack).

The roof is key and you have to make sure that your home inspector looks in every attic crawl space. My inspector did not because they were screwed on and painted shut--this was a mistake.

 Major things that inspector couldn't see that all went within two weeks of my moving into the house (electrical line, roof leak). So it can still be kind of a crap shoot. :)

I didn't realize until I moved in that there was no receptacle in the bathroom! (Apparently a common occurrence in row homes like mine.) So check where the plugs are and what switches they're wired to (my guest room is controlled by the switch in my master).

The outside temperature was 40 degrees the day we inspected our "completely renovated" condo. We couldn't turn on the AC to test it and didn't think to check the wiring. You can imagine our surprise come May when we discovered that our brand new AC unit had not been completely finished being wired and wasn't even connected to the thermostat.

We hired someone from http://www.ashi.org/

The American Society of Home Inspectors (ASHI), founded in 1976, is North America's oldest and most respected professional society of home inspectors.
He used to be a master builder so that impressed me. He found a leak in our shower which had to be replaced saving us $300.00 & a world of house repair. He also advised us on some outside drainage issues which we never would have known. He was well worth his $300.00 fee.
We also had our furnace checked by a reputable HVAC place per his warning.

Check the hot water and the shower pressure.

Make sure the electrical outlets in the house are grounded. We bought an older home and the inspection revealed that the outlets had been "updated" to three-prong but they never actually ran a ground wire. That's a big problem if you have lots of computers and electronics that you would like to not be destroyed by a power surge. We finally got the seller to fix it, but it was a huge headache. I don't think we would have bothered with the house had we realized before the inspection that the electrical was so outdated. A $5 tester from Home Depot will tell you whether or not the outlets are open ground and you can be aware of that issue even before you hire an inspector.

I agree with most of the others that a good home inspector will catch most of these things. That being said _never_ use an inspector recommended by your Realtor(tm). The agents involved are motivated to get the deal closed. Inspectors are compromised in keeping the agents that feed them biz happy.



Look on Google maps arial view to see things that may be far enough away that the owner does not have to disclose, but you may not realize are very close by. Things like a heavy industrial area, landfill, or even a small airport.

Research the schools, even if you don't have/plan to have kids. Schools radically affect resale value.

If the neighborhood has a listserv/e-mail list/bbs join it as soon as you start to look at the neighborhood. Pretty quickly you may find these are not folks you want to be your neighbors.

Avoid new neighborhoods of starter homes. Frequently the first round of homeowners will move on in a few years and be replaced with investors renting out the properties. The neighborhood will shift dramatically and resale values may crumble.

Others have mentioned watch the HOA dues. Watch the HOA period. Restrictive covenants can be the greatest or the worst thing depending how they are enforced. State law differers widely when it comes to how much power HOA's have. Read up on what your state allows and does not.

Best advice above all. Slow down, take your time and enjoy the experience.

A basement excavator saved us from buying a house that needed three new basement walls, which would have cost more than $30k. One other thing to think about are the trees on your property. I love the towering trees surrounding our house, but I wish I'd known that they were almost all totally neglected and would require $2-3,000 of work by an arborist. This may be apparent when you're looking at a house in the summer, but an experienced arborist can tell you what's what in the middle of winter.