I bought a house, now what?
I posted previously about looking for a house for my disabled partner and myself and after several stressful months we're closing on April 30th!
So, now what? I'm working on home insurance quotes, I have the money arranged for closing. We're in the "these issues need addressed" phase of the contract process (there are no smoke detectors in this house wtf) and the home inspection raised no dealbreakers. No radon or termites.
So what don't I know about? What new homeowner things do I need to be thinking about now? We plan to move in the latter half of May. Accessibility suggestions are also useful, we're going to have to add a small ramp inside (one step), move a cabinet in the kitchen and replace carpet in the master bedroom.
Thanks for all the advice last time, please give me more of it?
The easiest time to paint is before you move your furniture in.
Same with doing flooring, too. And cleaning, and honestly most things (including early furniture arrangement) are easier without furniture.
Expanding on this idea: Last time I moved, I measured the furniture and then went to the new space with a roll of painters tape and taped out where everything would go. It's much easier to move tape than couches and tables and it was a big help for feeling out what the space would be like with furniture. The more extreme method of this is using folding chairs and air mattresses. They aren't the exact right size, but they can still be helpful.
Same goes for attic remediation if you're moving into an older place. It's not cheap, but if there's vermiculite in the insulation and you plan on doing renos that open the main floor ceiling in the future, you'll need to get it all pulled and reinsulated.
!!!!! HVAC warranties!!
So most companies have 10 year warranties on their equipment if it's registered with the manufacturer, HOWEVER that warranty does NOT apply to the house, it applies to the purchaser.
You have to have the warranty transferred to your name, typically within 30-60 days (depends on the manufacturer) otherwise your equipment will default to the factory standard 5 year warranty.
Some manufacturers have nontransferrable warranties, like Lennox, but many don't! If the equipment is over 10 years old this won't apply, but I wanted to let you know just in case!
Holy loopholes Batman! Great suggestion. So scammy.
I think it's over ten years old (probably will be our first major expense if my guess is right) but thanks!
This is really vital info. I want to add one point of clarity my HVAC guy told me that was specific to new house builds, in case anyone buys anything from a "starter home" to a custom house.
The builder is responsible for registering for the warranty of the HVAC system. They have anywhere from 30-90 days to do this from the time of installation by the HVAC guys. If the builder does not register for the warranty, the warranty may drop from 10 years to 1, or 0 years. Zero! That's crazy. Don't let builders be lazy. Ride them and make sure you have proof that the HVAC system has a warranty at all before you buy or build.
It varies by manufacturer, but I've never heard of a warranty dropping to 1 year.
Typically they come with a 5 year warranty out of the box. You register them to get the extended warranty of 10.
Mind you this applies to change outs as well, a reputable installer will register your equipment for you, but I've been to houses where the last company didn't, and I'm the one who gets to deliver the news.
Yeah it's really shady/lazy/pathetic when builders don't register the warranty on behalf of the future buyer. Especially when houses can sit unsold for several weeks or months. It may be that HVAC companies have changed the minimums, which would be welcome news. I read that California has consumer protections where buyers (of anything) may not have to register the warranty to be entitled to a manufacturer warranty. Would be nice if more companies were like that.
A while back I had to buy a new dryer and I chose a well-priced Electrolux. Within about a month I had an issue with a sensor in the door. I contacted the store I bought it from, they contacted Electrolux, and they got not only a new control module out for the door, but also a new motherboard because they "couldn't be sure which was causing the problem." I didn't have to return any extra parts, send in any paperwork myself, or anything. Completely hassle-free. That's how warranty service ought to be.
Also, parts warranty is not the same thing as service warranty. I found out the $1000 per service trip + $200/hr way.
But on the plus side apparently I can hire whoever I want and they'll get the parts from the manufacturer for me, eg I don't have to use the original company for services.
Yeeaaah, tbh I'm not sure how people still get those confused.
Your service company just installs the equipment, they don't make it. People are downright shocked that their 8 year old evaporator coil isn't getting replaced at no charge.
Well, in my case I was listening to the "tone" of "don't worry we'll be there and take care of you" sales pitch rather than the words, and I thought warranty means a similar thing to returning broken things at Costco and they'll handle it even thought obviously they don't make it.
It makes me feel very ashamed, but I'm sharing it here if it helps one other home owner I'm happy to be ridiculed for it
I don't think it's inherently your fault to misunderstand, I think there is definitely room for confusion there especially if the service company doesn't seek to provide clarity because it might be for their benefit to make a sale.
I didn't work in HVAC but I previously worked for a low voltage company (security systems/security cameras/smart home devices/home audio systems etc.) and in some cases the company I worked for did blur the lines on what the "warranty" covered. Part of it is because in that space it's somewhat typical to 'lease' equipment, but even for non-leased equipment, which is generally much lower cost than HVAC equipment so it's not a direct comparison, it wasn't always obvious how the warranty worked. A lot of it was due to mismanagement but for example they would sell a customer a smart lock that integrated with the security system, so not lease the lock but the security system might be, but they'd charge a service rate equivalent to the leased equipment (which is not hourly and it's a relatively small flat-fee) and cover the replacement of the lock under the manufacturer's warranty. I wouldn't doubt if other service industries have quirky things that happen too, and sometimes the manufacturer of a product might cover service under the warranty even if they outsource service to another company.
To me I find it rather unsurprising that people can misunderstand what a warranty covers for any given product because there's no real standard across experiences for consumers when it comes to warranties. Higher-end products probably are more uniform in only covering parts, but I've heard stories of car warranties etc. that seem to conflict with that so again doesn't seem exactly uniform across a broad spectrum of experiences we have as consumers.
Houses are expensive and frustrating if you don't plan expenses ahead of time. Do you need to mow? Shovel? Rake? Clean gutters? Make a list of the core upkeep tasks you need to perform throughout the year, and budget ahead of time. Planning the work and budgeting the purchases is easy better than being in a rush later.
Double check the gutters, the need for gutter extenders, standing water, etc. Be paranoid of water and keep an eye and ear out for it.
Appreciate the maintenance task list. I truly don't remember what the gutter situation is so time to learn that. We do need to add some soil to keep water flowing away from the house as well.
Yeah, building up soup around the house can help a lot. The first few projects I did that involved digging, I moved the soil next to the foundation. Generally the order of importance is 1) make sure the gutters don't leak, 2) make sure you have downspout extenders to help move it away from the house, 3) build up extra soil.
Good luck!
You can also plant stuff that will absorb the water. Check out if there are any storm water control or water garden programs in the area, sometimes the court or county will help pay for that. Houses in water sheds often have several options in my area.
Run ethernet cable to every room if you do anything heavy involving the internet or big file transfers around your internal network. It costs an afternoon and a couple hundred dollars and you have usable speeds for the duration of the time you are in the house.
I suggest doing this before painting because you might be able to cheat and do the hard part of running the cables by using cables that you would otherwise remove. I ran all of our cables by pulling them up behind some old telephone lines that we had no intention of using.
This makes sense. I'm not sure where those cables run now - I'll go back into the inspection and see, I wasn't looking for it before - but they did have tvs in multiple rooms and a home office in another so hopefully it's been done, unless they just ran everything off WiFi.
Adding to my list!
If you've got cable Internet service, and coaxial cable running into most of the rooms, you can buy a cable modem (don't rent from your cable provider) for each room where you'd likely need highest quality service. Just connect Ethernet cable from your PC, TV, or wireless access point to the modem. If you have many wired devices in a single room, get a small network switch. Use mesh Wi-Fi everywhere else. It's cheaper and easier than putting Ethernet drops everywhere.
Realistically we have one PC and a smart TV that we'd prefer to wire in, probably another TV in the future. The rest being on WiFi is more than fine with me. but setting up a house is also new for me. I'm used to campus coverage 😅
So yes, a single cable modem where the PC is, with a small network switch (if the cable modem doesn't have built-in extra Ethernet ports) and mesh Wi-Fi access point. With consumer mesh Wi-Fi, you can plug additional access points in where needed for extra coverage. I've had decent success with Eero (originally for Florida concrete bunker house construction where adding drops was too difficult). I can't recommend the brand anymore since Amazon bought it. Depending on the modem/switch/access point software, you can segregate the Wi-Fi on a separate VLAN (and maybe segregate private, smart TV, and guest Wi-Fi networks) for some privacy from Smart TV and other network snooping.
If there's coax in the walls already, you can use MOCA 2.5 adapters to get surprisingly good speeds (we get symmetric 500 Mb per second)
I know what coax is and I know you're talking about getting good speeds but idk what the adaptors are.
These are the ones I have. They're an adapter that lets you run ethernet over coax. So, instead of rewiring the house for ethernet, I'm using something that's good enough and doesn't break my lease.
Got it, thanks!! I'm not sure what our wiring situation is yet. I will be looking into that
I understand this from a nerdy point of view, but is 600 MBPS download speeds over wifi not sufficient for basically all use-cases? This seems like a very luxury nice-to-have feature. Maybe one cable to the TV & PS5, directly from the router?
Latency and reliability of connection can be annoying if you're playing online multiplayer games, specifically more pvp/competitive games. Not saying wifi is so unreliable you can't maintain a connection, but ping spikes etc. can degrade the experience.
Partner plays some co-op games like Ark but neither of us do PVP or mmorpg raiding or anything. So we should be ok I think.
I did specify "heavy" data, like photo editing or video transfers, and most consumer grade stuff isn't getting 600MBps, maybe 600Mbps. Wifi is totally sufficient for TV streaming or whatever.
Last time I tried to install network cables in my house, I drilled a hole through the floor on accident and never finished the job, because it was an enormous pain in the ass, so only my server is hardwired.
Next time, I'm hiring someone.
I’ll second this. I ran a network cable from the basement to the living room of a condo and found out all the gas lines for the building ran under the living room floor- by drilling into my neighbor’s 3 units down.
That was an exciting night to say the least.
Expertise - or at the very least solid due diligence and humility is good to have in these manners.
We have a bit of time between closing and moving in, but I appreciate this caveat. We have to prioritize accessibility work first.
This is definitely the time to do any necessary bathroom work. Not having convenient access to a useable bathroom can otherwise drag out for a long time.
I'm not sure we'll be able to get it done in that timeframe but we'll try. We have a second bathroom - and unfortunately he's not had access to a usable bathroom for a while now. But yeah it's high up on the priority list.
If not, maybe they're some kind of portable solution that can work for a bit. I'm sorry to hear it's been an issue for a while, that must be frustrating.
It is, we even bought a very expensive (used) shower chair system that did not work and yeah, it's frustrating. But new it would be several thousand dollars. At this point I'd rather just remodel.
I was so excited to do this, then so disappointed that our attic is 3 feet tall and our subfloor has a giant beam splitting it. Cable runs it is!
Congratulations! Now that you own your own house, my only advice is to do what you want to your house, make it yours. Yes yes, your house can be an investment, but it's also where you live. If you want bright green walls, give the place a nice lime coat. If you have cats and want to cut holes in the walls to give them a overpass of shelf space that connects throughout the house, do it. Your house should fill it's main role of being somewhere you enjoy being first and act as an investment second. Do you want to dig up your backyard and make a mud wrestling pit? Sick bro.
Oh also, evidently weeds are best controlled by diversity in the landscape, so don't make your yard all cut and regimented, with duplicate plants and uniformity. Mimic your local landscape and let it grow more natural. It seems like it would be more upkeep, but it's not and it's great for your local ecosystem.
I'm very on-board for, probably slowly, converting the grass yard to low maintenance native or "better than grass" plants (clover perhaps). I have a couple of niblings who may visit, and we've talked about a service dog for my partner but otherwise the yard won't get a ton of use from us. So it's ideal to pivot!
Open to guidance or ideas there.
The biggest mistake I did with our property when we first bought it was to go for immediate results. A lot of flowers and shrubs in places that they were unhappy with equaled a lot of work and money lost. I'd take time to watch your land--how the shadows change over the course of the year, where the winds tend to blow the worst, where the cold seems to sink and stay longer in the day, that sort of thing, before making any permanent or expensive landscaping. For low-investment, high-yield immediate gratification, sunflowers will grow almost everywhere, feed the birds and invite beneficial insects.
This, plus look at your neighbors' yards to see what's flourishing in the local soil and weather conditions. Introducing yourself to the neighbors and asking for gardening/landscaping tips is a great way to get to know your community! Another item - if the house has a sprinkler system, get that professionally maintained before the watering season starts.
I live in the Pacific North West, and we get water restrictions every summer. We also have to deal with some beetle thing that crows and raccoons love the grubs of. I didn't want to waste water on grass lawn, so we planted micro clover instead. Best thing ever. In the spring it flowers, and attracts pollinators. Then I give it a mow down to keep it from getting too tall, just before the summer heat arrives. It will help keep it low and dense for the drought that is inevitable. Our lawn is the only one that stays green all summer. I never water it. Don't cut it too low, but don't let it run wild. It will expand and try and take over other areas. Requires very little maintenance too. It's awesome.
I didn't realize those would stay green all summer. Time to add that to my gardening list!
Yeah! Just don't cut it down as low as you would grass. Let it grow a bit higher and it will stay green all summer! And the Beetle I forgot the name of, is the Chafer beetles. They don't like clover! So no ripped up yard.
Make a note on your calendar to find the local native plant sales once you're settled in. Those usually have a ton of local experts at them and often wildflower seed mixes that don't contain any invasive species. Local college extensions are gold for any plant information you can't figure out on your own. The library can point you in the right direction if you aren't sure.
Yeah I work for a university so I'll be tapping into their knowledge!
That's great! They're such a fantastic resource.
I don't know if you're in a place where you can consult an agricultural extension or nature conservancy, but we got great advice from our local groups about native plants and sources. However, as I mentioned elsewhere, make sure that you don't have to deal with restrictive covenants from a homeowner's association or city ordinances concerning what you can do with your yard and outdoor spaces. Our neighborhood is fine with anything as long as it looks tidy, but I've had Florida friends who had to cope with someone measuring their (perfect, chemically maintained) grass with a ruler.
I'll have to check about ordinances but no HOAs thankfully. We have a university horticulture center and a sustainability office on campus where I work so I'll probably hit them up for the recommendations or to be pointed at local experts.
It's also worth looking for incentives. My city will give up to a few thousand for "nativizing" the front yard and offers help and advice to do so.
Similarly our water company offers some free water conservation supplies. Free low-flow showerhead, decent hose spray nozzle, etc. I don't use / didn't ask for all of it, but it's a nice baseline for some stuff you might need at least a spare of anyway.
On the same topic the electricity company did a free energy audit. Walked around the house with one of those neat heat viewers and gave me a heads up on places that don't have enough (or any) insulation for ideas on where to save on heating/cooling. I knew the windows were old, but the rafters just not having insulation anymore was a surprise. (no crawl space)
Yes! I planted creeping thyme instead of a lawn. So.much nicer. And it attracts butterflies
Yes! Honestly a cat-walk is in my long term goals. I'm not buying for resale I'm buying to live here long term. I don't know what I want to paint or anything like that but I'm willing to make wild choices if they're cosmetic!
Take pictures of everything. Check when the last time the water heater was flushed. Decide where your stuff is going and route/install new drops accordingly.
New drops?
I will do a walkthrough with pics for sure.
Sorry, the drop is the box where cables come out. For instance, those fancy ones where the plug is half height on the wall for you to mount the TV there. The drop could be anything, Ethernet, cable, electrical plug, or just an empty hole as a TBD.
Especially depending on the type of mobility limited, if your partner has trouble reaching the plugs, installing a few outlets or drops around the house at a few feet off the ground might create convenient phone charger or desk spots that would allow them to be more independent.
That makes sense! I think we're going to have to have electrical work done so I'll consider this in the process. Ty!
Things I wish I'd asked for:
Start looking into arranging service for things that need to be done on a regular basis, like sweeping chimneys and a furnace inspection by a company that specializes in that. Seetting up service relationships early helps of you need to use them for something that needs to be dealt with quickly. The first things I did when moving on were getting the chimneys swept and getting the 50 year old main water shutoff replaced with a ball valve.
Moving is also a great opportunity to take an inventory of valuable items for your insurance. This is apparently a huge help if you need to make a whole house claim. I used an app called encircle, which made this pretty easy.
I learned that the best way to document for insurance is to walk around my house, recording a video, and just opening stuff up and taking a quick glance. I can do all the leg work of watching the video and documenting the things I see if there's a fire, the record is the only thing that truly matters, and I'm much more likely to do it this way. Also, it documents much more than I would think of if making a list of "Valuables." What most people hurt from after a fire isn't replacing expensive things, those are easier to remember. They get screwed forgetting they had 1200 worth of house cleaning supplies and 800 in random house toiletries and spices. By having a video of your whole house, you're covered on all fronts.
How often should one update those videos because I don't know if I've ever done it often enough as a renter to account for supplies and groceries.
I do it every few years or whenever I think of it. The nice thing about the videos is that, even if it's out of date, you still have evidence of most valuables and random household items. You can piece together the few newest valuables through receipts at that point.
It wouldn't be a current representation of supplies/groceries, but a standard one. You might not know exactly what was in your cupboard, but it was probably similar to the video, so you can pretend that it was.
For the light switches, have you tried all the outlets in the room to see if any of them go to the switch? Both top and bottom because I've had some where only one socket in the outlet goes to the switch.
Or this is a really specific one, but I've come across in multiple houses now. In a bedroom with a fan, the original wiring had separate switches for light and fan. But when they upgrade to a newer fan, it just has 1 switch for both (maybe it has a remote or whatever). I only noticed it in my current house because one bedroom has the original fan while others are updated.
Older houses would also have multiple switches for a single light fixture with many lights on it. My living room has 4 switches that all link to the one fixture in the ceiling (several sets of cables). I just use 1 for a modern led panel...
It's possible they linked to something that is no longer there. I know they updated a couple of the lights.
The master bedroom in my house is like this. Two top outlets are hooked to a switch, and I didn’t make that connection mentally for 2-3 years of years of living there. That whole time I thought those outlets were just dead.
Yup, outlets were the first thing we tried. I only wish the ceiling fans had separate switches. The room these are in has no ceiling fans.
Do your switches go to a ceiling fan or wall outlet? If you don't have a fan, there could be a mounting point on the ceiling in the middle of the room where you'd have an option to install one (probably a painted over flat circle).
At my place, the living room switch goes to the top socket in the corner of the room for a floor lamp since there's no ceiling light. I think I went a year before I plugged something into it and it wouldn't turn on, leading me to realize it was connected to the switch. 😅
They're in the dining room. The light fixture is new, but they said there was a chandelier there before.
This is great thanks!
The electrical panels do not have covers on them and thus aren't labeled. The front of the house is older but they (sorta) updated the wiring when they modified the addition. So I really wish those were labeled.
Definitely a good idea to set up some service relationships once we're there. It's a smaller town outside the city I work in so some of those things will have to be planned more anyway.
You can get something like this to help trace out circuits
https://www.amazon.com/Klein-Tools-80016-Circuit-Accessories/dp/B08VWCSG7G
I have both of these types of tools, but usually we just have two people working on it. One flips the switches and the other reports what went off or on.
Then again, we didn't find out the outlets in one single room were on the same circuit as the lights in the garage until we shut off the garage later for some work. It's on the opposite end of the house!
Trickier when I'm not sure my partner can reach all the switches but I added the tools to an Amazon list.
Start putting money away now for the inevitable big expenses that come with owning a home (replacing the roof, HVAC repairs, water heater, etc).
They sneak up on you and you don’t want to be scrambling to find the money and have to just buy the cheapest replacement you can afford or have to result to terrible financing options to keep your house in good shape.
Don't buy anything that requires financing until you close on the house. For the insurance, find a local independent broker. They run quotes with dozens of insurance companies, rather than just one. If the house is 5+ years old, you'll want to figure out when (if ever) the previous owners serviced things like the water heater, furnace, and AC unit. Get on a schedule for all of those and stick to it. Check any and all filters. A lot of people just don't change them. Along with smoke alarms, get a carbon monoxide detector installed.
Definitely true for the filters. I think my house used to be a rental prior to being sold to me, and when I moved in the filters for the interior HVAC intakes hadn’t been changed in something like 4-5 years, were totally fuzzed over, and were starting to cave in from the furnace sucking on them so hard since they weren’t letting air through.
Now they’re changed multiple times each year.
Yeah I'll absolutely be adding CO detectors too, as this is the first time I've lived with gas in the house it's higher on my mental list.
Unfortunately using a broker with my wheelchair van didn't work out well (poor service but also minimal options), so I'm going to a couple of local agents with a) good references and b) discounts through my job/credit union/etc.
Hopefully I'll be able to get the maintenance records!
The walk-in needs converted to a roll in, unfortunately this is probably going to need doing after we move due to timing and making sure the space can be made what it needs. It's high on our priority list though and we have a second bathroom to use while the first is shut down. He requires full assist to transfer so a lift in the ceiling is in our long term future too.
I am absolutely adding a bidet immediately!
We have 1 step inside that needs a ramp as it's between the rest of the house and the outside door with the most accessible entry for him. After that it's all flat!
We have a smart thermostat but I hadn't thought about the electric blinds! Thank you.
Open shelves up top and the lower ones seem well placed though I might re-do with more of the doors off long term.
Ty!
Remember to save all renovation receipts and find an accountant you like this summer. My cpa saved me many times what they cost in my first year of home ownership.
Oh yeah I realized I'll be saving everything
I would check to make sure you have good cellphone reception in that area. Even if you have wifi calling, during an outage, you may need to call family or emergency services... or the pizza place.
We do so far! We use Mint and the coverage has been good but it's a smaller town so that may or may not hold elsewhere. Home seems fine though.
I didn't read everyone's post so apologies if someone already said this.
Change your furnace/HVAC filter and change it every 3 months. Don't make my mistake where I had to replace my AC after my first summer.
This advice goes even more so the higher the rating on your filters. They make the blower work harder even when new. An A/C contractor can replace the 1" filter box with a 4" filter box which will let your run a higher rated filter with less strain on the unit.
Oh man, I came home from vacation to discovery my house was like 50 oC, just scorching. Thankfully it was just a simple filter replacement to get the AC working perfectly again. Who knew??
Absolutely will, other than the filter being in the crawl space which.... I really wish it didn't have a crawl space
Oh, that's super annoying. Still worth the effort at least.
Congratulations on finding a house. I hope you and your partner enjoy having your own space.
We had a lot of back and forth on adding keypad locks in the last post, but now is the time to make a plan for locks since you will want to get them changed very soon after you close. Happy to chat more about it if you have concrete questions now that there is a particular house.
A while back I posted a list of starter tools that would be good to have on hand as a homeowner, so that might be something you can work on pulling together before your closing date.
Good luck!
Make sure to budget for some unknowns. It's nice to work on home improvements you want to make, but there will be some that you have to make that you aren't expecting.
I'm going to re-emphasize the cleaning and painting before you move in. And for everything else:
If you need any services done, ask your realtor for suggestions. Yes, even months or years after buying, your realtor will be happy to give suggestions, because that means they're on your mind and you might recommend them to someone else. Realtors know service people in the area who actually show up and get shit done for reasonable prices, because that's required to sell homes if they aren't in perfect condition.
If you're capable, and the house has lots of carpet, buy a carpet cleaner on sale and get it over with. I've seen the rentals for anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of the price of just buying your own.
If the seller didn't have someone come do a deep clean, probably worth paying for. Otherwise you'll be playing catchup trying to keep everything clean.
And painting is either something you can do yourself OR hire someone. Materials to do it are pretty cheap. If you need something like retexturing large areas, or maybe reaching heights you're uncomfortable with, it could be worth hiring someone.
Things that haven't already been mentioned:
If possible, get a list from the previous homeowners of the maintenance and other services they've used successfully - HVAC, electrical, plumbing, flooring/carpet, painting, pest control, house/pet sitting, snow plowing, etc.
Internet service! If you're fortunate, you'll have a variety to choose from. Ask the homeowners and neighbors what's been reliable for them. If you rely on Internet service for work, you might want to look at a backup service (e.g. a 5G modem) if there are quality issues.
Though home Ethernet cabling has been recommended, it's not really required these days unless you're a twitch gamer or running very heavy file transfers. We're doing fine with Wi-Fi 6 mesh wireless, getting more than adequate speed (~ 300 - 500 Mbps) for 4k streaming TV, running test VMs and backups from a Synology NAS, and both of us working from home simultaneously. The Wi-Fi range is good enough to let us stream music while working in the yard.
You should also ask about electrical power quality - how often power goes out and how long it takes to fix. This matters if you or your partner rely on medical equipment, and may bring generator installation into the picture.
Flooring/carpeting: You mentioned master bedroom carpet. Let me recommend hardwood or laminate flooring in the bedroom, especially if you or your partner have allergies. Carpet fosters accumulation of dust mites and mold, even with frequent steam cleaning. Switching to easy-to-clean surfaces made a big difference for me and my spouse.
Outdoor spaces: If you've been living in an apartment or rental property, you may now have room to consider extending your space into a patio, deck, or yard. Give some thought to outdoor furniture, eating and cooking, and entertaining space. You may have a grill or fire pit in your future! Garden accessibility may be expensive. Wood chips can make paths smooth enough for a wheelchair when conditions are dry, but they need to be maintained every year. Don't use gravel or stone chips - the stones just spread into the surrounding dirt and they aren't wheelchair-friendly. Long term, concrete walkways or (very costly) professionally installed slate will be best.
Minimum garden tools - a stand-up weeder, rake, shovel, and hand tools - shears, pruner, trowel.
Garage and storage spaces: Put in organizational aids before you move in. Industrial metal shelving, tool chest/workbench, and wall hangers are super handy. You'll be surprised how much stuff you wind up storing for home and yard maintenance and outdoor living.
Window treatments: This may seem inconsequential, but the previous homeowners may be taking curtains and expensive rods or shades with them. You're definitely going to want to make sure you have basic privacy needs taken care of quickly. Window treatments can make a significant difference in your home heating and cooling bills (insulation and light reflection) as well as comfort (light, glare, and draft exclusion). As others mentioned, not all window curtain and shade controls are accessible. Double curtain rods are great for hanging both a translucent privacy curtain that lets you see the outside while cutting sun load, and a blackout/insulating curtain for nighttime and cold weather. You might also need to check on storm windows, screens, shutters, awnings, and other outdoor window fixtures.
And I just thought of another thing. Do you have a homeowner's association to deal with? That can be a major headache...
It's an ask! But also I have some friend of a co-workers who live in town which may be good for a backup.
No work from home here, for better or worse but yeah figuring out what works best will be key. Not a ton of options but there looks to be reliable broadband at a minimum.
Thankfully we don't have equipment that requires constant use but his wheelchair and lift so require charging so good thought.
Oh it absolutely has to come out because of the wheelchair and lift wheels but yeah most of the house, except one other bedroom, are laminate flooring. I do want a few (very flat) rugs for insulating my feed from cold floors more than anything.
We're lucky to have a paved patio connected to the driveway and a porch! Partner wants a grill and smoker, and I'd enjoy a fire pit occasionally so they're on our list. The tool list is helpful! I absolutely don't own a rake.
No garage (it was converted into an addition) but there's a large shed remaining on the property so all my shelves in my storage unit are getting a new home.
No HOA! We're off the hook there. Ty so much!
Speaking of electric service, make sure you know who all the service providers will be. We ended up with one co-op each for water and electric besides the separate trash and sewer providers. The previous owners never did fill that info out on the paperwork, I had to do some GIS searches to figure it out.
Township provides the trash, recycling, water and leaf pickup. Electric/gas there's really only one option (the town has an aggregate discount, we could choose a different supplier but the bulk negotiated discount will probably be best. )
Just some quick notes from having gone through this process a few times with relatives:
Great that radon and termites have been checked for. I assume someone checked for asbestos or knows that it's not a problem in a house of that age/in your region?
What kind of heating does the home have? If it has heat pump unit(s) outside, have they been checked/serviced recently? What's the age of the furnace/air handler? I see above that you think it's 10+ years old, but understand that the life expectancy of many of these are 10-14 years. And by 10 years old their efficiency will have already dropped off significantly, leading to substantially higher heating and cooling bills.
It might be illegal in your state to sell a house this way. You may be able to talk to your agent and they will know how to negotiate this. In many cases during the buying process there is a period where, while the money is held in escrow, that the buyer and the buyer's agent are able to go through the house before any agreement is absolutely formalized and say "this isn't to spec, this isn't legal, this needs to be fixed based on the agreed-upon contract," and so on. The buyer's agent should put together a list and an "appropriate" monetary value to fix such things. The seller has two options. Fix it, or the escrow company will refund the monetary value. If they don't, you can threaten to pull out of the purchase of the sale (presumably with no consequences for you, because this is meant to protect the buyer, but this may vary by state/province). Basically, don't pay for anything that isn't your responsibility.
If there is a deck out back, raised patio, etc., you should check to see if the supports are up to code. It may not be an issue for selling the house, but you want to avoid that surprise if you ever renovate it (because it'll seem more like a full rebuild). Ask me if my deck was up to code when I bought it. D:
Speaking of code, consider that in some areas any professional changes to a stairway require that the stairway be inspected to meet code. If you need to make a stairway more accessible, and this may include outdoor stairs, you may need to consider "formal" professional renovations or the less formal "I found a handyman who won't ask questions" type.
On another note, check whether the vent above the oven/range (electric or gas, it doesn't matter) is vented properly. It's probably illegal for a gas range to not have a vent. It's also a very bad idea for any kind of range to vent into, for instance, the cupboard immediately above it or, and I've seen this, directly into the floor above. Your inspector may have forgotten to check for this. It's not a fire hazard you want to have.
Speaking of fire hazards, check for lint build-up in any dryer exhaust line. Some homeowners don't know how clothing lint works. This is how actual fires start.
If your home inspector went around with a 3-prong outlet tester to check circuits/outlet wiring, great. You should strongly consider replacing a lot of those outlets with GFCI versions. It's worth it to have properly surge-protected outlets. You may be able to do this yourself, but you can also find a handyman (or a very generous electrician) who will do this kind of small work. There are electricians that specialize in smaller jobs like this or just do some of this kind of stuff for elderly and disabled folks. They won't charge you the $80/hr rate for that.
There are shower seats and chairs. But the thing that makes any bath-shower combo more accessible is the shower bench. It straddles the bathtub and lets a person slide along it into the tub area. It's a good intermediate step until renovations are made to allow for a more user-friendly shower or whatever is best for your spouse. I'd also recommend avoiding any suction-based shower rails. Install rails that use screws (or screws and cement/adhesive/whatever is appropriate). Depending on accessibility, there are also grab bars for use around a toilet. I found for my relative with limited leg mobility that a fold-down 36" (90cm) long rail worked really well in one of her small half-baths. It let her use the bar to get up and down from the toilet, but then I could raise it so it wasn't in the way of the door when I had to transfer her to the wheelchair (because the wheelchair didn't fit the bathroom's doorway).
Edit: Forgot to recommend storm windows. If you live in a windy area, think the house might be drafty, live in a cold area, live in a hot area, or want to improve the longevity of your windows, consider installing storm windows (they're not hurricane shutters). You can order custom-sized windows from Lowes (and I assume Home Depot and other large hardware stores) to match the sizes of your home's windows, then have a contractor install them. Will save a lot of money on energy bills, and make windows last longer and avoid air/water leaks.
It didn't come up at all in the process. My realtor is pretty thorough so I'll look into it!
We got our full inspection report back and nothing flagged as concerning with the the heat but yeah it's older. It's in the crawlspace - or the air handler is? And I'm less familiar with HVAC systems so I'll have to go back through the report in more detail on this one.
We're in this process now, we took the inspection and requested fixes based on code and cost with our contract. They got that late last week so we should hear back this week and do all that negotiation. They also didn't ground the outlets when they just swapped out the 2 prong for 3 prong, the range vents at the ceiling (no cupboard), the deck needs a bit of maintenance where one support is going bad (safe though for now just a future thing). My inspector was really good and explained everything to me as a lay person and then came to the car to explain to my partner who couldn't come in.
Thankfully only a single stair inside, so I think it won't count as a stairway.
Thankfully I'm aware of this one and it's on my "regular maintenance" list.
Guess whose outlets aren't grounded and aren't GFCI anywhere by any sinks in this house?
Yeah it's on the "fix /pay for before we close" list. Since they updated the outlets I think this one is firmly on them.
Some of our windows are newer, some older and a few need some repair, so definitely will look into this.
How old is the house?
When the inspection occurred did they check the plumbing and by that I mean did they physically send a camera through the pipes?
My house was built in the 60's, still had mostly cast iron plumbing, started having drainage issues, sent a camera through the pipes (which did not happen during the otherwise very thorough inspection) to find breaks, cracks, and enough bellied connections to make the sewer pipes under the house and to the main line look like a rollercoaster. Cost $26k to replace it all and that was pre-COVID pricing.
If your inspector did not send an actual camera through the pipes, call a plumbing company to do so, give you a report, and the video. A couple hundred bucks now can save you a multi-thousand dollar fix later.
Built in 74 - and I'm gonna go look through my inspection report again based on this, thanks!
Homestead! It's been a while since I worked with realtors, but I'm pretty sure that's what it's called. Let the state know this is your primary residence for a tax credit. They don't assume though, so you have to register. I think you have a year(?), but do it right away so you don't miss out on the credit.
We have to go file for the disabled persons homestead tax exemption so this is on my radar, ty!
Check if your power company does some sort of home warranty. I tried to go without and then right after moving in my a/c died and cost like $4k to fix. More recently I've had some issues with water heater installation and the home warranty guys have just completely taken care of it. It's not a ton of money a month but very worth it for peace of mind.
They usually won't pay for the full replacement of broken stuff but they will give you a discount which is nice.