What are your must have's when buying a house?

Xandi, I like your l

I think I'm the only person here who likes carpet.  . But I despise sweeping and mopping, so I'd much rather just invest in a good carpet cleaner to use once a month. We have a no-shoes rule even with our gross, apartment carpet, and I like vacuuming. So carpet is much more appealing to me than a houseful of hard floors.

Sarah, I've heard the same thing about shampooing carpets. I would love carpet in the living room and hall. I despise sweeping and mopping too.

mommyjessica wrote: after living in our current house for almost two years now, i know what i want ;) must have: single story with full or at least partial basement easily accessible entry door (front or back) flat concrete driveway for the kids to play, ride bikes, skate, chalk... convenient laundry location (right now it is off the kitchen but it is in the very back of the house, it is a pain to drag the laundry AROUND the house) bedrooms all together at least two bathrooms (you just never know who has to poop really bad at the same time, yk?) decent storage big yard with room for the dogs and kids and sparse neighbors. this is jareds must have. i prefer neighbors with kids. wants: four bedrooms large deck screened in porch (i hate bugs) huge garage or barn for jared special tornado room in the basement (i am a scaredy cat) good layout for bedrooms and en suite bath for master and maybe even another room. surrounded by woods

This is really a plus for me too.

bree wrote: Yes, we have lived on military bases most of our marraige and I hate all the 'rules'. Like last year I had to FIGHT to be able to put up my clothes line. Right now, the grass REALLY needs cut and they haven't done it yet. I'm *thisclose* to going and buying a mower and doing it myself. It just looks BAD! I don't ever want to have to have permission to do things to my OWN home.

GoldenEmpress wrote: minneapolismama wrote: I like wood in the kitchen because all of that tile grout would make me crazy. we actually have wood in our downstairs bath and just tile in the upstairs, which I appreciate. I do sometimes wish we had done the whole downstairs in wood, but we did the family room in carpet because we knew the kids would be playing on the floor all the time.  when we got carpet they told us to vacuum 3x/week. Who on earth has time to vacuum 3 times a week???

Ummm... I usually do . I don't move furniture or anything, but hit the hot spots usually every other day or so. I guess dirty floors are my main irk with the house. If I see a speck of anything, I get the vacuum out. I get under the living room furniture once a week. It's also one of the few chores I don't mind so I do it so I can feel productive but still procrastinate on other not so fun things like laundry or dishes .

Renee & Nuttygirl, you can come to my house and vacuum anytime you want.  I have no love of the vacuum.  I guess it is kinda satisfying to see all the dog hair whirling around in there, but I still hate it.  DH always vacuumed until DS came along.  That and one of our dogs is changing coats so it's hair city.  DH vacuumed earlier today, and it already looks like a rabbit was killed in our living room.

this is our current list.  :)

property:
*at least 4 acres
*good source of clean water (not municipal water)
*no marshy/boggy areas! unless we're talking 10+ acres with at least 8 usable
*some woods, flat areas that could be cleared and planted/used
*no big electrical lines, train lines, or highways near property
*lowish taxes
*schools aren't really a big deal for us

House stuff:
*3-4 small bedrooms: kids will share rooms, one room will be for sewing and school
*1-1.5 baths
*well-laid-out kitchen that's open to the main living area
*pantry or room to expand to add pantry, even if it's in the basement.  We use buckets and jars to store stuff and the bulk bins don't fit well in standard cupboards.
*mudroom near the kitchen: could add this easily enough though if there is space for a back door adjacent to the kitchen
*ideally a ranch/single story with a walkout/hillside basement
*majority of windows on South side for greatest passive heating. 
*masonry heater/Russian furnace, or room to add one
*great insulation or ability to add more
*if the windows/roof are old, I would want to have room in the budget to replace them.  Ideally, i would love a well-insulated, well-installed standing seam metal roof.  :) 


Edited by sunnymom - 27 Mar 2012 at 5:06pm

I keep coming back to watch this post....  I'm not really sure it applies to me.  We are pretty settled now, it would take one heck of a house to get us out of this one....  Our house is NOT ideal, but it is pretty good.  For how much work we put into it, any new houses we look at all I can think is that we would have to start again.

I would like:
- four bedrooms (we have three and a basement suite)
- a big kitchen with lots of storage and counter space (ours is big, but not great storage and almost no counter space)
- at least 2 1/2 baths (have that, with four females in the house I can't see fewer being practical, sometimes they are STILL all full)
- reasonable sized flat yard with fence and space for my clothes line (ours is smallish, but check)
- not too many rooms (kitchen, eating area, living room and office would be nice, I don't need doubles like a formal dining room and an eating area or a living room and a family room)
- a footprint of less than 1000 square feet.
- a basement with full or close to full height ceiling.

I like older builds.  I can't really see myself buying a house that is newer than about 1970.  Our house is 1963 and that is newer than I thought I would like, but it still has a lot of original features like real wood cupboards stained to look like teak and lighting with copper and frosted glass.  We also managed to put back some vintage lighting that had be replaced with bad 1980's ones with plastic crystals and shiny fake brass.

I would LOVE an Arts and Crafts house, but I wouldn't trust the previous owners to have found and removed all the knob and tube wiring.  I don't that the back bone to do another gut job on a house.  We have had to replace all the plumbing and dig up the basement to replace the sewer line here.  I DO NOT want to have to do that again.

GoldenEmpress wrote: Erin, I think that Arts & Crafts is my all time favorite style of house.  They are just oozing with character.  Unfortunately in the area all the homes like that are in the area of town that I don't frequent when it's light out, much less live there.  That and DH just has no patience for older homes and their upkeep.   So that's not in the cards for us anytime soon.

Here's the thing that makes me crazy - we have issues with our older home, but people I know in new builds have the same issues....  they just don't have any warning that they are coming.  If you are really lucky, in a new build you have about 10 years before it starts having major maintenance issue.  But once those ten years are over, there isn't a lot of difference between a new home and an older one.  Except that my house is framed with old growth timber that it is illegal to harvest anymore, and it came with hardwood floors and teak or mahogany trim.  The hand made wroght iron railing was included, not an add on.  And the trees were already full sized instead of twigs. 

We have a new build and have issues. The builder was supposed to come back and fix a couple of them, but never came . He is/was a family friend that FIL worked with for years so we thought it would be less likely to happen... I guess we were wrong .

Some of the things with ours:

-Recessed light in the kitchen that doesn't work... need to try replacing it
-Leak in the master bath - figured out the problem, just need to fix it
-The back fill around the foundation majorly sunk taking the back stoop with it (it was so dry during our build the clay turned to super fine powder that wouldn't compact. No significant rain for months afterwards... once we did get it though it was ugly). He was supposed to come fix it, never showed so we just tore it out and built something bigger. We saved a whopping $300 with a small stoop, but then paid $1500 to build the original size deck in the plans. Can we say stupid tax? (and/or majorly screwed)
-B/c of the back fill issues the AC/heat pump unit started sliding down the hill behind the house. Took a couple weeks to get them back to fix it.
-Lots of seepage in the basement walls, even though he said we wouldn't have a moisture issue at all
-French doors and window both leak like crazy in the basement
-A couple windows are wonky - too tight of a fit I guess
-Not the builders fault, but totally sucky septic system. Had to install 600 FEET of line!! We have a HUGE front yard and no options for landscaping b/c it's a shallow system so we can't plant anything... at ALL. We knew when we built that we would get full sun from the front all afternoon and planned on planting a bunch of trees to provide shade which can't happen now so we just bake day in and day out in the summer
-Linoleum in the kitchen bubbled up b/c it was a loose lay
-Didn't heat seal the seams of the linoleum so crud is getting into it and it's starting to pull up
-Almost had my washer and dryer backwards (washer on the right) which would have been a royal pain switching clothes. Thankfully I noticed it soon enough so they could fix it. Evidently there was no common sense used and when he told them to do a mirror image of the plans they didn't compensate for little things like that

That's just unacceptable!

Crazy about all the issues w/ new houses you guys have!