Questions When Buying A House

Prospective home buyers need to ask certain questions when buying a house to make sure they know what they are getting into.

to make sure they know what they are getting into. While a seller must list any defects on the sellers statement, there are other things about the area, the town, the schools that you may want to be aware of. Some of the basic questions to ask when buying a house is about the associated expenses of the house. These are things like the property taxes, electricity costs, heating costs, sewer and water bill and if there are any association fees or other fees associated with the property.

Different areas have different property tax rates and moving even just one town over can make a huge difference to your monthly expenses so you should make this one of your first questions when buying a house. I just recently moved from a town where the property taxes were outrageous - over $800.00 a month! I moved to a town where the taxes were half that and the result is that I can get a more expensive house for the same payment each month and I am much better off as I am putting the money into my investment instead of the taxes!

Of course, your heating and electric costs will differ due to size and age of house, but you want to make sure those costs are not unusually high as this could signal that something is wrong. Not to mention that you need to budget those costs in every month! The same with the water and sewer (if you are lucky enough to have town services for those!) - not every town is alike and some have pretty pricey bills for those services. An outrageously large water bill can indicate a leak somewhere in the water supply to the house.

Another one of the important questions when buying a house is when the major systems have been updated. This means the roof, painting the house and the septic system if it has one. These can be major expenses and you want to be prepared if you are going to have to put out the money to have them updated shortly after you move in.

Of course, if you have or plan to have children some important questions when buying a house will center around them. Is there a good school system? Are there other children in the neighborhhod? Is the traffic minimal and slow moving? Does the town have any programs for the kids in the summer? All these can be important factors for a family to think about.

When you are home shopping, it is a good idea to bring along a note book that lists the questions you want to ask about the house. It is easy to get excited about a property that looks perfect to you and forget to ask some important things! When I was looking I printed off a bunch of sheets with the questions on them, along with things we wanted in a house (like a master bath, more closet space etc...) And kept them in a notebook that I would bring with me to each house we looked at. Then later on we used it to compare houses and it helped us to remember which house had which features.