Parris Petals Designs

Archive for the ‘House’ Category

At a minimum, you want to know what kind of system is in place, how old it is, what condition it’s in, and how much it’ll cost to operate. Typically, you’re not going to select or reject a house because of the type of heating system it has or doesn’t have, or because of the size of its hot-water heater. On the other hand, if you’re buying this house on a shoestring and would have to declare bankruptcy if you had to replace so much as a fuse within the first six months, then the house with the newer heating system will obviously be more appealing than the house with the furnace that will have to be replaced before next winter. Generalizations about comparative energy costs and the relative merits of different systems and energy sources are problematic, since so much depends on the climate and the cost of energy where you happen to live. The type of dwelling, the age and kind of the system, and your life-style also have a lot to do with how high or low your energy costs will be. But with those limitations in mind, you can use the following considerations as a guide in weighing the pros and cons of the various systems you may see.

Any house built before 1940 is a very good bet to contain lead paint. In houses built between 1940 and 1955, the danger is less, though it stifi exists. After 1955, paint manufacturers finally stopped using a lead base, though the use of lead wasn’t actually banned until 1970.
Removal of lead paint is costly. To delead and repaint surfaces accessible to small children in a medium-sized house can cost as much as $6,000. And there is really no alternative to removal, since lead poisoning can devastate a child. Some jurisdictions now require the removal of lead paint from dwellings occupied by children under the age of six.
But you should be concerned about the presence of lead paint even if you don’t have young kids, simply because it could become an obstacle when and if you decide to sell.

Maybe you’d like to raise a few tomatoes or plant a rosebush in that corner at the far end of the yard. Before you allow yourself to be transported by visions of bright flowers or bountiful harvests, take a look at what, if anything, is growing in that area now. What is the quality of the soil? Is it sandy or rocky, or does it seem rich and fertile? Is the corner you have in mind bathed in sunlight or hidden in the shadows for most of the day?
Ask also how well the grounds suit your life-style. Is the yard large enough for the play area you want for your children? Is it small enough to permit easy maintenance? The flower beds around the house are beautiful, but do you know what it takes to keep them up? Are you ready for that?
The smaller questions such as these wifi finally bring you closer to the big question, which is, do you like this house enough to offer to buy it? So take careful note of what you like and don’t like about the houses you see. You probably won’t find a house that has everything you’ve always wanted, but you will find the one house, among all those you see, that comes closest to that ideal.
Be careful about how much weight you attach to any particular fault. If the community and the neighborhood are right, it would be frivolous to reject a house whose chief drawback is that it has only a carport and not the garage that you want. When you walk away from a prospect, it should be because of a critical defect in the house itself.

What about buying a home directly from a seller, with no broker (and consequently no brokerage fee) involved? Certainly it’s possible to do that, and there’s no reason not to explore “For-Sale-By-Owner” properties (or FSBO’s, referred to in the trade as fizz-bow’s). The primary advantage is that a seller who doesn’t have to pay a brokerage fee will typically reduce the price of his or her home — maybe not by the entire 6 or 7 percent that most brokers seem to charge, but often by enough
to make it worth your interest.
So by all means watch out for FSBO opportunities, but don’t let that prevent you from working with a broker. If you stumble across a FSBO on your own, you’re free to pursue it without any obligation to the broker, regardless of how many homes he or she has shown you or how much time you’ve spent together.

The broker’s fee is typically paid by the seller from the proceeds of the sale. Contrary to popular opinion, the fee is not fixed, either by law or by industry practice. It is subject to negotiation by the broker and the seller. As a practical matter, however, you’ll find that the majority of brokers in most areas charge a fee of about 6 to 7 percent. A broker’s willingness to negotiate the amount will vary, of course, depending on the area and on market conditions. The tighter the market, the more flexibility brokers will show.
Although the fee is paid by the seller, most sellers start with a bottom-line idea of how much they want to make on their house and then add in the broker’s fee on top. This is why many buyers rightly assume that it is they who are actually paying the fee. When market conditions are difficult and home sales particularly slow, though, some brokers will waive a portion of their fee in order to help bring a buyer and a seller together and close a deal that might otherwise fall apart.