Water And Sewer Construction Site Plan Design Checklist: Fill & Download for Free

QUESTION: What are the 25 most important things about buying a house?ANSWER: Do you mean just the process of buying? Or do you mean the entire endeavor of finding and acquiring to suit your situation and purposes?I probably won’t get to 25, but I’ll offer a few from the wide perspective.1) WHAT CAN YOU AFFORD, REALLY? DON’T FORGET THE FEES AND COSTS. Know your budgets. That means:— Know how much house you can afford to purchase, in terms of the purchase price, required down-payment (unless you can pay cash, in full), financing costs, closing costs (realtor, lawyer, land-transfer taxes and sales taxes if applicable).— Know the ongoing or recurring costs of ownership:—— insurance—— property taxes—— HOA fees or condo fees if the property is not freehold—— other levees and tax-like charges, water-and-sewer etc.—— costs of doing - or hiring out - yard-work, snow clearing, etc.—— utilities (electrical, gas-or-other-fuel, landline/internet)2) PROPERTY PRICE IS LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!Your budget tells you where you can look for a house (cost of houses vary from neighborhood to neighborhood) and how big a house you can afford in any given neighborhood.3) DO YOU WANT SPACE? OR MINIMAL MAINTENANCE AND YARD-WORK? Decide what aspects of the ongoing homeowner experience are important to you, and which ones might fall in the category of “don’t care”.— Do you care about the style of house?Semi-detached or row houses cost less for a given interior space, but you give up some privacy.Single-family-detached homes tend to have larger outdoor spaces which usually means more to maintain (lawn-mower, hedge trimmer, gardening, fences to erect and keep in good shape, but generally require some agreement with the neighbor, etc.).Two-story houses have more volume and floorspace (number and size of rooms) on a given foundation/footprint than do bungalow and ranch-style houses. But two-story houses tend to require more use of stairs, which is why older and physically limited people prefer a one-story design.Depending on what part of what country you will live, it might be common to have homes on slabs, or to have crawl-spaces, or to have full basements. Or you might have the option to buy any of those.Slab-built is simple and sturdy and means you normally have less issue with ground-water entry. Slab-built in a climate that gets cold winters can mean chilly floors. This can be mitigated by construction and slab-insulation techniques, but if you don’t see the place being built, it’s hard to know if they did it right, before you buy. If you have a furnace or AC and water-heating, you lose some space to a utility closet.Crawl-space gives you some distance above whatever might be trickling or crawling in the soil, and allows some insulation in order to keep main-floor floors from getting really cold in winter. It can also be a place to run plumbing, wiring, and HVAC ducts, as well as a place for furnace, water-heater, etc….. but anybody who services any of that is doing what the name suggests… crawling.Full basements make an otherwise same-size house cost more, but the furnace, the water heater, any ducting, the electrical panel, natural-gas entry, etc. are all downstairs, and usually easier to access. Normally the utility equipment resides in one corner, so you have the option to finish the rest of the basement to expand your living space, add bedroom or office, exercise room, man-cave/playroom. In that context, a bungalow or ranch has a bigger basement than does a multi-floor home of the same nominal floorspace. That is, if your two-story home is 1600 square feet, then that’s about 800 square feet on the main floor and 800 square feet on the second floor… which means your basement is 800 square feet to house the utility room and any rooms you want to build for living space. Meanwhile, if your ranch or bungalow is 1600 square feet all on the single floor, then your basement is also 1600 square feet, which is twice as much upgradable basement as you have under the two-story house. But then a bungalow tends to cost more than a two-story home of the same nominal floorspace and the same location and quality of construction; and it usually requires a bigger property to sit on.4) NOT RICH? DOWNTOWN WITH “THE ACTION” MEANS SMALL SPACES AND NOISE. Where are you? You can get more house for your money, and usually more green space (lawns and gardens) and the option to have larger decks and yard features (pond, fire-pit, pool) if you choose to buy in a suburb. But then you are farther from the chic spots for nightlife, the trendy boutiques, the wide variety of restaurants and bistros, the higher-class entertainment venues (theatre, opera, concert, etc.), dance clubs, comedy clubs, museums, and so on. Going to those is not a matter of hopping a cab or walking, it’s something of an expedition, so you tend to “go downtown” only two or three times a year. Suburban retail leans toward the big-box variety, which can mean good selection and great prices, but you pretty-much have to drive to everything. You might need two cars for the adults in the family… and even a third for a teenager. Consider how much garage and driveway space you’ll need.By contrast, if you live close to downtown, everything is a walk, a bicycle ride, a bus ride, a short cab-ride away - a wide assortment of shopping and entertainment options is minutes from your doorstep. You can “do stuff” spontaneously and get back home without driving drunk. You might not even need a car… which is good because parking spaces in an urban setting can be murder.Of course, the same amount of house-buying money tends to buy smaller, older, or both, when you buy nearer to the city core… where all the action is. You might have to put up with constant noise, day and night. Older houses often amount to buying somebody else’s problems.Maybe you’d prefer to live in a condo tower, with a view. Higher floors will protect you from noise… but you’ll have longer elevator rides. Of course, if you take the stairs to your 20th-floor pied-a-terre, you’ll be in great shape. But condos tend to have no in-unit storage; rather, you go to a locker or cage in the basement to retrieve your seasonal or seldom-used stuff. If your building even offers an underground/covered parking space, you’ll pay tens of thousands of dollars for it, cutting into the money you have for the living unit itself.Brand-new condos are all shiny and nice, but they are administered by the builder for a year or three until handover to the condo board or the condo-committee. This often means that the condo fees are artificially low while the builder is still in charge. When the building gets turned over to the condo corporation, governed by the condo board, reality should set in, and your fees should go up if the board knows which way is up - you can either get involved or let them rule. But you need to know that they are using the condo fees properly AND that they are regularly putting aside money for a large maintenance/projects/contingency fund. If they don’t take it regularly and manage it until it’s needed, then when something big strikes, there’s nowhere near enough money in the condo fund, so the board must borrow. Then they apply a huge assessment against every unit owner, to pay back the big chunk of borrowed money AND the interest and financing fees that would not have existed if the board had been maintaining a proper condo-fee regime and had been properly managing the fund. Every condo owner should have the right to inspect the unredacted books. Seize that right. If you are not yet an owner, have your lawyer do the verifying.Older buildings often feel … well-used, but the units also tend to cost less and have larger floorplans. It is just as important that the common areas and systems have been maintained as that the individual unit has been well-cared-for. You need to find out, before you buy, if the finances and the physical premises have been properly managed, if there are martinets and dictators on the board or committee, and whether they HAVE a big fund in place - because an older building is about to need — or already does need — substantial repairs. Roofs, exterior windows, common areas, common “physical plant”, repaving the parking lot or the garage, repairing concrete support columns in the garage-or-basement. Fixing or replacing elevators. Updating or upgrading electrical and plumbing to reflect modern practice and building code. Maybe they HAD a decent fund, but it just got eaten by replacing the elevators, and now the roof is coming due for a quarter of a million bucks before that fund can be replenished. Are you ready for the inevitable levee/assessment on top of the regular condo fees?5) HOW MUCH COMMUTING IS TOO MUCH? Where is your work? Will you live a few minutes from your workplace? Or will you be crawling in “rush”-hour traffic, every morning and every evening? This is an important consideration in quality of life. Does your employer or business permit working from home, and is it convenient to do so? Often enough to make a difference in the daily-commute calculation? Is there convenient public transit? In many cities, public transit is geared _first_ toward getting people (often without cars) around the downtown area, then _second_ toward getting people from the suburbs to the downtown core, and then a distant _third_ the system might try to accommodate getting from a house in one suburb to employment in another suburb… but usually with all kinds of waiting and transfers… the kind that make people choose to pay for that second family car rather than face waiting for the bus(es) every morning and evening.6) WILL YOU LIVE NEAR WHERE YOU HAVE FUN? What do you do for recreation? Are you going to live near whatever it is? If you are into scuba, skydiving, sailboarding or SUP or kite-surfing, boating, mountain-biking, or a number of outdoor sports, you might have equipment that you need to store and transport, so a suburban home has space for that storage, and space for the vehicle you need to haul it. Downtown, not so much.But, if your recreation is done in bars and coffee shops or the raquet club, etc., you have everything nearby and no need to travel for it and no need to haul heavy equipment and camping gear in a vehicle.7) PET-FRIENDLY? Do you have, or intend to get pets? In our suburban bungalow, the two cats have the run of the house, but their crappers are in the basement near the furnace. In a high-rise condo, where would you put the cat-toilets, so the smell didn’t bother you? Yes, you clean them daily, and replace the clumping-clay every month or so, but still… wheeeooo what did you _feed_ that cat?How about dogs? If you have a yard, your dog can stay outside for many hours each day, enjoying fresh air and sunshine, maybe chasing the odd squirrel or bird… and using the yard as a crapper. Just what you want when having guests over for barbecue and croquet.In the city, especially in a tower condo-appartment, the dog stays indoors going stir-crazy while you are at work, and needs to be walked (with pooper-scooper at the ready) at least three times per day. If you have a pet and don’t have a vehicle, how close is the vet? Just in case…8) LEARN SOME SKILLS AND USE THEM? OR RENT SKILLED WORKERS WHEN YOU NEED ‘EM? Are you handy and do you like being handy? Well, a house of any kind provides opportunity to acquire and use tools, maybe have workshop in basement or shed or garage. Old houses pretty-much demand it. New houses with unfinished basements, no fences yet, maybe a nice space where a deck should go… present all kinds of inducements. Condos also need renovating, eventually, but you are more likely to have a bare-bones toolbox for doing some basic repairs, but any big jobs will mean calling in the professionals. Your condo space is too small to store much and you have no space to displace yourself while part of the unit is on your “when I can get to it and I’m not too tired” reno schedule. Without a car, you must get any materials delivered… so you take time off work, and then it must rest inside your unit until you or the hired workers install it.8) PAY COMMISSION, PAY A FLAT FEE, OR DO YOUR OWN LEGWORK? Regarding the transaction itself, you can hire a realtor to help find you a place and guide you through the process, and to take care of all the details and ensure no loose ends. But it will cost you thousands and thousands of dollars. Alternatively, you can use a bare-bones service like Grapevine and do almost everything yourself. You save cash, but you are working at it like a second job. And if you overlook anything, you can get stuck in ways that you will regret for years. If you really like the idea of do-it-yourself real-estate, I suggest get a realtor and pay very close attention the first time, then maybe consider Grapevine or other no-frills, one-price, no-commission methods when you go to do it again, with at least one successful transaction in your past.A good inspector is worth her-or-his weight in gold when you are considering buying a property. They normally aren’t allowed to cut holes and dig into things, but with just a flashlight, a ladder, a thermocamera, and a lot of experience and skill, they can find out a whole lot of important info about the state the property is in, how well it has been maintained, what big-ticket items are coming due (roof, furnace, foundation, grade/slope of ground around the house, windows, plumbing and electrical, and so on. You can either let yourself be warned away from a property, or at least negotiate a better price if the inspector finds something nasty, like evidence of termites or carpenter ants, evidence that wildlife has been camping in the attic, soaking the insulation with urine and feces, etc., or that electrical entry is too small for the needs of a modern household and it’ll be X-thousand bucks to bring in an upgraded entry and …. does the inside of the house need rewiring? In other words, all those things you see on the reality-TV shows on House & Garden channel, except your inspector knows what the signs are when everything is covered, and has long checklists to ensure s/he actually remembers to look for all those conditions.Is that buzzing sound a loose wire inside the wall? Or a nest of a hundred thousand bees?You need to see a modern survey of the property. Are fences in the right places? Are sheds or extensions of the house too close to the neighbor’s property and might need to be torn down? Are there liens on the property? Unpaid taxes? Fines? Is title completely clear? All of this is stuff you CAN do, mostly using the interweebs, but without actual experience, do you really know what you are looking for, what the implications are if you see something, what agencies or sites to check, what is allowed and not allowed in your jurisdiction, and so on?Supper is calling me; I’ll stop now.——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——-UPDATE 2019: Wow, all that solid-gold observation and advice-from-experience, and one upvote? That’s encouragement… not… I mean, thanks Jon, for the vote of confidence, but it looks like you are alone in your generosity. :-)I wonder: was it written so clearly and straightforwardly that it seemed ‘obvious’? Too easy?Or was it so obscure and murky that readers couldn’t even begin to figure out what clarifying questions to ask? Hmm.