What We Look Meant for & Look Past While House Hunting

Q: I have a house-hunting question for you. What do you look for? What do you look past? Assist! My main complaint of all the older homes that we are looking at in our price range is that they all feel dated, but that seems to be what you folks look for. How do you know which dated houses are worth buying and which ones are lost causes? I keep worrying we will end up in a money pit! – Aviva (not the one from Housewives of NY).

A: First of all, I am glad you clarified that you are not NYC Aviva. Haha. And second of all, we in fact get this question a lot. So when it comes to what we “look past” in a house (and what we pay attention to) my general answer is to never be deterred by the following things:

• baaaad paint on the walls or the trim
• nasty wallpaper (borders, or whole walls)
• dated or not-your-style furniture
• ugly curtains
• dark brick or paneling
• not-your-cup-of-tea light fixtures
• green/blue/pink toilets

For example, here are a few before photos of our first house to further demonstrate how off-putting those dated features can be… but we all know they can be remedied with a little elbow grease if you are a willing DIYer:

As for what we consistently try to pay attention to or look for, it is mainly:

• the neighborhood (cannot move a house after you buy it)
• the overall layout (you can adjust some things, but repositioning every room gets pricey)
• the size of rooms and number of bathrooms, which is another hard-to-change factor (ex: if it has too-small bedrooms or one bathroom when you need two, you likely want to keep looking)
• things like ceiling height and window placement (which are not consistently straightforward to change)
• interesting architecture, like a fireplace, ceiling beams, etc
• the terrain of your lot (a steep drop off in the back is not exactly plain to fill in, etc)

Here are some photos of our first house that demonstrated some of those strong “diamonds” that we saw in the rough. For example, the same room that showed dated brick and paneling also sports a pleasant cozy centered fireplace along with architectural beams overhead:

Which meant that once we painted all the dark wood and brick, it fully changed the feel of the room:

Another strong selling feature for us was the lot itself. It was nearly an acre (something you cannot change once you buy a house) with a pleasant flat and wooded backyard:

All that landscaping was a more than a little rough to stay on top of, but since we had a pleasant level lot that was private and wooded in the back, we knew it had tons of potential. And thanks to craigslist we got folks to dig stuff up for free (by posting you-dig-it-up-and-it is-yours ads like this, which even worked for all that pea gravel) and we ended up with a pleasant straightforward-to-maintain yard that made us (and especially Burger) endlessly glad:

So although we are hardly pro house-hunters (we have only done it two times), I think we have learned that the sweet spot for us is to fully ignore things we know we can change. If the walls are a color we do not like, we do not even pay attention since we know it can easily and affordably be updated. Same for the color of cabinets that we can potentially paint, or wallpaper that we can remove. Things that we cannot change as easily are what we pay the most attention to (ex: the floor plan of a house, the location of the kitchen and all the windows, the size of the bedrooms) – you know, things that would be a lot of money, and trouble, to alter.

For those who have a harder time seeing past the bad cosmetic things (like dated curtains and crusty old wallpaper) it likely helps to look at inspiration images in magazines, online, etc and save things that you enjoy (in a binder, on Pinterest, etc). Then stare at them to see if any of those rooms could inspire something. For example, if you see a room that looks totally distinct than a potential home’s living room but look closer and realize it is the same size and shape, you could totally repaint and hang curtains and otherwise decorate it to get that look in your space. Know what I mean?

Update: Oh and as for avoiding a money pit with structural issues or other pricey upgrades you did not see coming, we certainly value getting a thorough inspection! Of course they cannot consistently catch everything, but we’d never buy a house without one and you certainly have much higher odds of finding potential issues (and then being able to opt out of the purchase) than if you skipped the inspection. We hire someone especially thorough who is highly recommended and in each case he spent a minimum of 3+ hours crawling under the house, on the roof, looking into vents, etc – our guy got verrry friendly with each house. It can certainly keep you from ending up with a lemon! At least for our two house purchases it has worked out well.

So what about you folks. What do you look for or look past when it comes to house hunting? Do you make must-have lists and must-not-have lists along with pleasant-to-have lists? It is certainly smart because that way you will not let something on the pleasant-to-have list creep into your brain and convince you buy a house that is missing a few of the must-haves.