February 20th 2008
Shopping for a home online?
Most of us including me have found that it
is so much easier to just have the fingers do the walking for almost everything.
This included shopping for your next home online.
I love shopping online for anything including groceries…..but let me give you a
word of caution when you are shopping online for a home. Nothing beats to narrow
down the selection and do a strategically planned visit.
How many times did I see a very nice looking home online with a description to
die for and as I did the preview for the buyer I had to send a very disturbing
report? Too often to mention!
Here are some keywords you might look for when you are reading the description
of a home in the MLS sheet for a certain property.
"Recently painted and updated"; OK at first glance it sounds very good but now
here comes the word of caution. Recently painted, could just mean” I left the
old drywall up and threw some paint on the wall to make it appear nice”
“Updated” sounds very nice but did thy just put in new cheep cabinets or did
they also change the old plumbing and electric out? I can give you a very good
example from a house I had toured and found that the pictures did show a very
nicely renovated Kitchen but the plumbing was not changed and the dishwasher and
kitchen faucet was only superficial hocked up.
"Needs TLC"; have you ever looked up the definition of the word TLC? Not? You
might be surprised to find out that the word alone can stand for so much more
then you might assume. “Needs TLC” can mean as little as just "minor issues" to
deal with and as much as to "watch out" what you are buying.
“Recently updated” sounds very nice also. Not that I ma suspicious….but recently
could spell out that that seller had some issues with something and it had to
get fixed and many sellers are thanks to Home Handy shows think they know who to
fix anything. My word of caution would be…what has been updated and who fixed
it?
“Newly renovated” is another one of those buzz words I am very cautious about.
Did you know that when you look at the word newly it also could mean once again,
once more? So….what had been done and why had it to be done over? I love the
example I found in a house I was looking into for one of my buyers. It had very
nice pictures on the MLS and at first glance it looked very nice until I stepped
in to the “newly renovated” bathroom and found that the seller had put in some
work by paining, cleaning and flooring but neglected to change out the soft sub
flooring around the toilette….
Sometimes I wished we could have “smelle MLS” with the pretty nice pictures. ….I
have looked at homes my buyers from all over the US asked me to look at and with
one I wished I could have sent them a scent sample over the MLS. I looked at a
very nice 1890 Historic home. It had a remodel done from top to bottom.
Everything…….floors, ceiling, walls, pluming, electric. It was brought up to
recent building Code; it looked very nice on the MLS. Walking in to the home I
had to take a double take and did not get past the front door, it smelled so
bad.
What was the smell? Have you ever smelled the smell when a mouse died in an
enclosed space?.....
Finding out later that one of the contractor knew about a mice nest in one of
the walls and neglected to call the exterminator prior to closing the wall off
again and the mice this time did not have time to eat their way out and died……it
took the new contractor two weeks to find the nest and get the smell out of the
house……
The moral of this short story…sure shop online, narrow your selection down to a
few homes you would like to see……then GO SEE THEM……
When you are looking for a REALTOR® to help you buy or sell you home, or investment give us a call.