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Non-financial buying advise

anforowiczanforowicz
edited October 2009 in Seattle Real Estate
Hi,

There have been lots of threads with good financial advise about buying a house: are housing prices going down? should I buy now or wait? how much home can I really afford? is renting a better investment? how interest rates affect home prices? etc. etc. Googling (Binging?) for "home buying tips" similarily returns tons of stuff about financial (mortgages, affordability) or technical (inspection, escrow) side of buying a house.

I wonder if you could share some of your advise and/or experience related to the non-financial/non-technical aspect of buying a house. For example
  • is a flat yard and/or driveway important? should one ignore flatness and terraform after buying? what other features of a house do you desire or avoid?
  • how do I search for homes within 25 minutes commute (assume heavy traffic) instead of searching by zip code?
  • what is your favorite method for comparing houses you looked at? do you take pictures? do you take notes? what kind of notes?
  • what percentage of a day one can plan to spend on 1) browsing for houses on the internet, 2) looking at houses, 3) arguing with the spouse about the house to make an offer on, 4) sleeping (and eating+bathing? and working?)?
  • is it better to listen to advise from strangers or rather rely on your gut feeling ;-)

All answers are welcomed! Hints/tips/websites/more questions - anything! Bonus points for personal experience! Take it away!

Comments

  • ira sira s
    1. A flat yard is not that important if the yard is small or not incredibly steep. A mild slope is easy to mow. I have a loped lot and it's a pain in the butt, but the yard is huge, and I'm just getting too old to mow a sloped 1/2 acre, but we've dug up grass and planted bushes, etc, which don't require mowing. There are also varieties of grass which are low growing and slow growing and drought tolerant...A steep driveway can be a major pain, especially on ice or snow.
    2. I like searching via Redfin. The maps are friendly. If you specify size and price, you can narrow it down geographically.
    3. I take notes. I look for things I don't like, especially things that are going to cost a lot of money because they're necessary as opposed to something cosmetic. I also write down how a house feels and whether it's professionally staged, etc. Compare size, lot size, etc, whether it meets the criteria you're looking for...Sometimes that criteria changes as the searching process progresses.
    3. Don't take advice from strangers if they're going to profit from the advice they're giving. Listen to their advice either if they have no vested interest OR the advice they give will not potentially reward them. I've followed my gut before, but afterwards realized I was falling for cute staging and it wasn't my gut. My gut was telling me to eat pizza but I thought it was telling me to make an offer on a house...So maybe don't go house hunting while hungry?
  • bilirubenbiliruben
    Sloped yard/driveway - Depends on what you want to do with it. With a kid and a dog, a flat expanse of grass was important. Without it, I wouldn't care too much.

    In Seattle, you have to be a bit careful about slopes. Steep slopes are often classified as part of a "Critical Area", and there are restrictions on what you can do with your landscaping. Landslides are common. You basically often have to hire an arborist or landscape architect for things that I, personally, was used to doing myself.

    Insurance companies sometimes are picky about steep driveways and their maintenance , and winter weather can make them tricky to navigate. You get your exercise getting your bins up and down 'em as well.

    Commute - depends on how you are commuting and where you are commuting to. I'll assume car, and downtown. Most of the city limits will get you downtown in 25 minutes at rush hour. In-city, the reality is that traffic really isn't as bad as people say. The exceptions are West Seattle, which is reliant on the West Seattle Bridge, which can back up pretty badly, and some of the farther reaches of Ballard/Crown Hill/Broadview. Going East-West can sometimes be a bit nightmarish in Seattle. We don't have good sideways arterials. Parts of Shoreline you can get downtown pretty quickly too. Maybe Tukwilla/Renton as well, though I don't have personal experience on the southend.

    Out of the city, you are dependent on bridges, and I-5. That makes traffic much more of an issue, and all bets are off.

    I looked online at every house within a couple hundred grand either way of what we were looking to spend. The ones with potential I bookmarked on Redfin and did a drive-by, sometimes taking notes. If the street is quite and the neighborhood good, I would schedule a viewing and/or go to the open house. Over the last few years, people priced unrealistically, so I kept my range broad. They eventually get within striking distance of what you think they're worth. The good, unique ones priced well, however, go fast. Especially in-city. If you find your dream-house, don't dither. Make an offer, even if it's low.

    I made sure only to bug my wife to look at the ones with high potential, and did my best not to show her things with too long a commute. There are some beautiful houses in the boonies with acreage, but if you start looking at 'em, you are dooming yourself to losing a couple hours a day for the rest of your working life staring at the back of an SUV with your blood-pressure elevated. Don't look at 'em and especially don't let your wife look at 'em.
  • WestSideBillyWestSideBilly
    - Driveway flatness depends on how you plan to use it. If you plan to park a car on said driveway, it should ideally be pretty flat. If it's just access into a garage, it's not as important, as long as your vehicle(s) can get in and out without scraping.

    - A slight slope in your yard means better drainage, unless it's sloping up in all directions (i.e. you're at the bottom). Terraforming is fairly expensive and/or labor/time intensive.

    - Commute time. Microsoft Streets and Trips used to have a feature where you could create a drive map based on travel time; combined with adjusting travel speeds downward (change freeway from 60 to 25, arterials from 45 to 20, etc) you could create a good 25 minute travel map. I'm not sure if it's in the 2009 version, but it probably is. It's not ideal of course.
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