FROM THE OUTSIDE IN

admin — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:25:42 +0000

Begin with the home’s surroundings. You’re not just buying the house, you’re also buying into a community and a neighborhood. What’s around the house can be as important as what’s inside it. Consider the street on which the home is located, as well as the other streets with the six blocks or so on all sides. Do the homes and yards appear to be well cared for? The condition of nearby properties will affect the value of the house you buy. If the houses around yours are in poor repair, you should be concerned about what’s happening in the neighborhood. Maybe it’s a down-and-out area that’s on its way back up; on the other hand, it may be heading down. Make sure you know which way the trends are moving. What kind of area is it in? Is it exclusively residential, or are there commercial uses as well? How much space is there between houses? What amenities — shopping, movies, transportation, parks, schools, churches, and so on — are close by? Are there any other developments planned for the area? If one of the things you like is the open space nearby, see if you can find out who owns the land and whether it’s likely to stay open. This is the time to discover that a developer plans to build a 200- home subdivision across the road, or that the state has selected the nice field at the foot of the hifi as the site of its new waste- treatment facility. All of these questions about the neighborhood are of concern to you not only as a prospective buyer, which you are today, but as a prospective seller, which you may be in the future. Don’t say about potential problems, “I guess we could live with them,” without also asking, “But what about other people — the ones we might want to sell to later on?” So if you’re interested in a neighborhood, find out as much as you can about it. A real-estate broker should be able to provide basic information about market trends, development plans, and the like. But count on doing some research on your own. Now’s a good time to start reading the community newspapers — the supermarket “throwaways” as well as the wider-circulation dailies and weeklies. Grab anything you can find that might give you a better idea of what it would be like to live in the area. This is how you might discover, for example, that a regional shopping center is in the works nearby or, in a less positive vein, that the local schools have lost their accreditation or that local property taxes are going to be revalued for the first time in twent’ years (which means they’re likely to jump).
Make sure your research on the neighborhood includes the other people living there. Is the area full of two-career families, leaving it practically deserted during the day? That might be a drawback to a new mother who’s going to be at home with her child. Families with children typically like to live in areas where there are other children living nearby. It’s true that you can’t really know how you’re going to like a neighborhood until you live there, but you can ask other people how they like living there. One very good question to ask some of your prospective neighbors is simply, “If you had it to do over again, would you still buy a house in this area?”

TO BUILD OR NOT TO BUILD

admin — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:21:32 +0000

In the course of evaluating your options, some of you may find yourselves in a position to consider whether to buy an existing home or to build a new one. The appeal of building your dream home can be hard to resist. The paint is fresh, the systems are unused and probably covered by warranties, and, most important, you decide on the materials to be used, the layout of the rooms, and the size of the closets. From a cost-efficiency standpoint, however, you stand to get significantly more house for your money by buying a previously owned and occupied house.
These are the key points:
1. Square foot for square foot, an existing house is cheaper than a freshly built new home. In 1987 the median price of new homes nationally was approximately $105,000, while the median price of existing homes was about $87,000.
2. An existing home has the additional advantage of being something of a known quantity. You don’t have to guess what the utility costs will be, because the people who are already living there can tell you. If there are structural problems in an occupied ñouse — a leaky roof or a damp basement, for example -
can find out about them before making the deal and moving in. As the first occupant of a new home, you’ll be the one to discover all its hidden flaws.
3. Building generally requires undeveloped land, which is scarce almost everywhere and virtually nonexistent in some of the major markets.
4. Financing a land purchase can be a problem, since in many areas lenders prefer not to get involved in land deals. You may have to buy the lot outright.
5. Managing any kind of building project is a headache. No matter what the project — whether it’s rehabbing a kitchen or building a new home from scratch — there always seems to be a force at work that causes every job to take three times as long and to cost twice as much as planned. Finding reliable workers who do quality work can prove to be a challenge, and scheduling and supervising their work even more so. You can hire a general contractor to ride herd, which is expensive, or you can do the supervising yourself, which is vexatious, time-consuming, and usually more difficult than people who aren’t in the business typically assume.
6. A house isn’t going to be perfect just because it’s new. A shoddily built home will mean an endless stream of problems large and small, from a leaky roof to a heating system that breaks down to a stairway that sways. Even in well-constructed homes, settling can cause walls to crack. New systems often have to be debugged, and even small problems can seem worse because you were expecting perfection.
7. Scheduling occupancy is more likely to be a problem with a newly built house than with an existing one. The pressure can get intense when you know you have to be out of your current apartment by an impending date and the contractors are still putting up staging and waiting for materials.
Building a new home can also be a brilliant solution. You may have a special shot at a choice piece of land. You may be living in a region where builders are desperate for work. You may be in a position in which financial factors are not constraining. If so, good luck and God speed.
But if you’re among the almost 90 percent of new homeowners who buy existing homes, then let’s move on to the business of sizing up houses that are already standing.

Fascinate Transport » Real Estate

FROM THE OUTSIDE IN

TO BUILD OR NOT TO BUILD