liquidgecka · February 29, 2016 21:00
diff --git a/gistfile1.txt b/gistfile1.txt
 Layout:
 - Be wary of staging (the furniture/decorations that are in the house when you see it). Often times smaller stuff will be used to make rooms look bigger than they are. Take a tape measure, and have a list of the sizes of the stuff you own just so you can visualize yourself.
 - Pay attention to ports, outlets, thermostats, windows etc. If putting your bed in the corner will cover the thermostat you will be annoyed, or if there are no outlets in the corner where you want to put the TV you will end up with cables all over the floor. etc.
 - Pay attention to what is behind or around the room you are looking at. If its over the garage you will hear the garage door opener and it will be loud. If its near the kitchen it will smell like food, and be hot in the summer when cooking.
 - Dual zone AC? This is important if its two story since the upstairs will be hot without it (heat rises.) Look for thermostats. Ideally there is 1 or more per level.
 - Rooms on the front of the house will hear street noise (cars going by, children playing, etc). Which rooms face the front?
 - Extensions. If a part of the house looks like it doesn’t “belong”, i.e. the doorway in could have been a wall and the whole extra part could have not existed then be careful. Often times extensions can “corrupt” the construction of the original house. For example, they can screw up drainage, cause leaks in the seams with the roof, or generally just weaker construction. Make sure you look up who built the house, and who did the extension.
 - Converted garage? If there is a front room that seems like it is right where the garage should have been it might be a converted room. These are often drafty rooms that have really hard floors and can be strangely noisy due to the household equipment like water heaters or furnaces hidden in them.

 Electrical:
 - Smoke detectors? They are required, but newer houses wire them in so that they all go off during a fire. This is ideal as it means less battery replacements and better alerting. If you test one do they all go off? Houses older than the 90;s will not have this feature.
 - GPF in bathrooms, near sinks? This is a sign of modern electrical wiring.
 - 2 prong outlets? This is a sign of old wiring which can cause problems and make it hard to plug various things in.
 - Circuit breaker’s properly labeled? This will just save you time when you need to power things down and generally indicates that the previous owner maintained things.

 Siding:
 - Wood, Vinyl, Metal? These will last varying amounts of time before being replaced. Wood needs painted and maintained every 5-10 years. Vinyl doesn’t need painted (and can’t be) but lasts much longer, 30 years is common. Metal lasts even longer, and typically doesn’t need painted either.
 - Rot, paint chipping, etc? This can be a sign of things happening behind the siding.

 Water:
 - Low pressure at a sink, or shower? Check all the sinks.
 - Hot water tank, capacity, fill rate? Small tanks or low BTU means that you will run out of hot water frequently. This is annoying.
 - Soft water? Take a small bottle, fill it with 1-2 cups of water and then put 4 drops of dish soap in it. Shake 4-5 times. If the soap foams up a few inches then the water softener is working. If it doesn’t foam up much (like less than 1”) then the softener could be failing or you will need to buy a softener. This can be a few hundred dollars and often is overlooked by home inspectors.
 - Gas/Electric water heater? Gas is cheapest and easiest to maintain. Check the efficiency to ensure that it is in the 80% range or higher. Electric is expensive but good, ensure that its 100% efficient. Propane will require regular propane tank fills which is annoying and often expensive, and oil is extremely expensive.
 - City water or Well? Check the price for city water, its usually more expensive than you expect. For wells, ensure that there is a bladder (big tank) which is what is used to hold pressure. In either case check that the sings are not pushing air out anywhere.. This means that there is a leak somewhere which will be expensive to fix.

 Media:
 - In-attic antenna? Saves you having to have an ugly antenna on the roof. Not an issue if you plan on having cable, but in an emergency having antenna access can be valuable.
 - Coax cables for all relevant rooms? Nice for putting TVs up since you will need antenna or cable access. Though this is slowly getting less important as things move to wifi.
 - RJ45 in the house? Where does it go?
 - Wired for audio (speakers in the ceiling?). This is nice as it hides the ugly 5.1 surround sound cables.

 Crawlspace:
 - Standing water? Run away! There is a leak, or a drainage issue which will basically destroy the house a little at a time over time.
 - Rotting in the wood? Run away! This is extremely expensive to fix.
 - Too small? Sometimes when they put these in they make them 24” which is really, really hard to work in which can limit your ability to fix or maintain anything yourself.

 Garage:
 - Concrete cracked anywhere? Fixing cracked concrete foundations is expensive.
 - How many cars? Remember that a “2 car” garage will fix exactly that, so if you want storage space as well aim higher.
 - Ballard’s to protect to the equipment? This is not strictly required but can be valuable, especially with younger drivers.

 General conditions:
 - Mold or black spots anywhere? Mold will ruin a house super fast, its best to not get involved if there is mold anywhere in the house.
 - Water stains on the drywall? This can be an indication of a leak somewhere in the attic. This can be extremely expensive to fix.
 - Windows fogging up due to a vapor breach? This can be expensive to repair, $200-$500 a window.
 - Anchors, screws, or other such wall damage? These can be annoying to fix and generally make your walls look bad, especially when painted over a few times.
 - Pait on all the outlet covers? That is usually a sign of lazy home maintenence.
 - Tile looks great, but it is often times installed by people  who do not know what they are doing. If you open a floor vent you should see tile on top of a backerboard of some sort. The tile should not be attached directly to the 1" floor boards at all.
 - Well laid tile should go under the base boards. If the tile ends before the baseboard then it might not be installed very well.
 - Cracked tiles, or missing grout can be time consuming to replace, or impossible if the tile can't be identified at all.

 Outdoors:
 - Irrigation? This is good, it can vastly reduce the cost of watering your lawn. If you want a green lawn, look for this.
 - Trees on top of the underground water or sewer lines? The roots will destroy the lines eventually which will cost a fortune to fix.
 - Busy street? This means lots of noise, and will keep your kids from playing in the front yard.
 - Shade? If the house has huge trees then it will be shaded which keeps it from heating up in the summer. No trees means that it will be hotter. Same is true for winter though. Pick the season you want to deal with better.

 Neighborhood:
 - Property line. Look at what is just over the property line. Any trees are going to get much bigger and you can’t do anything about that. Fields will be full of weeds that will get into your yard. Terrible looking houses will get worse, etc. You can not change or fix this, so are you willing to live with it?
 - HOA. Does the home have covenants? If so what are the dues? What do they restrict? etc. Know what you can and can not do before buying.
 - Look for bad neighbors. These will make your experience much worse. Things like broken down cars in the lawn, run down houses, etc.
 - Go by at different times of the day. Sometimes the badness only comes out at certain times.
 - Distance from the airport will establish how loud the airplanes will be when flying by. Also get on google maps. If the runway “points” at the house it will be much worse as they will fly right over top.

 Other:
 - How much are the utilities? Ask for recent bills. How much did the house cost them to run? That is an indication of how efficient it is.
	Layout:
	- Be wary of staging (the furniture/decorations that are in the house when you see it). Often times smaller stuff will be used to make rooms look bigger than they are. Take a tape measure, and have a list of the sizes of the stuff you own just so you can visualize yourself.
	- Pay attention to ports, outlets, thermostats, windows etc. If putting your bed in the corner will cover the thermostat you will be annoyed, or if there are no outlets in the corner where you want to put the TV you will end up with cables all over the floor. etc.
	- Pay attention to what is behind or around the room you are looking at. If its over the garage you will hear the garage door opener and it will be loud. If its near the kitchen it will smell like food, and be hot in the summer when cooking.
	- Dual zone AC? This is important if its two story since the upstairs will be hot without it (heat rises.) Look for thermostats. Ideally there is 1 or more per level.
	- Rooms on the front of the house will hear street noise (cars going by, children playing, etc). Which rooms face the front?
	- Extensions. If a part of the house looks like it doesn’t “belong”, i.e. the doorway in could have been a wall and the whole extra part could have not existed then be careful. Often times extensions can “corrupt” the construction of the original house. For example, they can screw up drainage, cause leaks in the seams with the roof, or generally just weaker construction. Make sure you look up who built the house, and who did the extension.
	- Converted garage? If there is a front room that seems like it is right where the garage should have been it might be a converted room. These are often drafty rooms that have really hard floors and can be strangely noisy due to the household equipment like water heaters or furnaces hidden in them.

	Electrical:
	- Smoke detectors? They are required, but newer houses wire them in so that they all go off during a fire. This is ideal as it means less battery replacements and better alerting. If you test one do they all go off? Houses older than the 90;s will not have this feature.
	- GPF in bathrooms, near sinks? This is a sign of modern electrical wiring.
	- 2 prong outlets? This is a sign of old wiring which can cause problems and make it hard to plug various things in.
	- Circuit breaker’s properly labeled? This will just save you time when you need to power things down and generally indicates that the previous owner maintained things.

	Siding:
	- Wood, Vinyl, Metal? These will last varying amounts of time before being replaced. Wood needs painted and maintained every 5-10 years. Vinyl doesn’t need painted (and can’t be) but lasts much longer, 30 years is common. Metal lasts even longer, and typically doesn’t need painted either.
	- Rot, paint chipping, etc? This can be a sign of things happening behind the siding.

	Water:
	- Low pressure at a sink, or shower? Check all the sinks.
	- Hot water tank, capacity, fill rate? Small tanks or low BTU means that you will run out of hot water frequently. This is annoying.
	- Soft water? Take a small bottle, fill it with 1-2 cups of water and then put 4 drops of dish soap in it. Shake 4-5 times. If the soap foams up a few inches then the water softener is working. If it doesn’t foam up much (like less than 1”) then the softener could be failing or you will need to buy a softener. This can be a few hundred dollars and often is overlooked by home inspectors.
	- Gas/Electric water heater? Gas is cheapest and easiest to maintain. Check the efficiency to ensure that it is in the 80% range or higher. Electric is expensive but good, ensure that its 100% efficient. Propane will require regular propane tank fills which is annoying and often expensive, and oil is extremely expensive.
	- City water or Well? Check the price for city water, its usually more expensive than you expect. For wells, ensure that there is a bladder (big tank) which is what is used to hold pressure. In either case check that the sings are not pushing air out anywhere.. This means that there is a leak somewhere which will be expensive to fix.

	Media:
	- In-attic antenna? Saves you having to have an ugly antenna on the roof. Not an issue if you plan on having cable, but in an emergency having antenna access can be valuable.
	- Coax cables for all relevant rooms? Nice for putting TVs up since you will need antenna or cable access. Though this is slowly getting less important as things move to wifi.
	- RJ45 in the house? Where does it go?
	- Wired for audio (speakers in the ceiling?). This is nice as it hides the ugly 5.1 surround sound cables.

	Crawlspace:
	- Standing water? Run away! There is a leak, or a drainage issue which will basically destroy the house a little at a time over time.
	- Rotting in the wood? Run away! This is extremely expensive to fix.
	- Too small? Sometimes when they put these in they make them 24” which is really, really hard to work in which can limit your ability to fix or maintain anything yourself.

	Garage:
	- Concrete cracked anywhere? Fixing cracked concrete foundations is expensive.
	- How many cars? Remember that a “2 car” garage will fix exactly that, so if you want storage space as well aim higher.
	- Ballard’s to protect to the equipment? This is not strictly required but can be valuable, especially with younger drivers.

	General conditions:
	- Mold or black spots anywhere? Mold will ruin a house super fast, its best to not get involved if there is mold anywhere in the house.
	- Water stains on the drywall? This can be an indication of a leak somewhere in the attic. This can be extremely expensive to fix.
	- Windows fogging up due to a vapor breach? This can be expensive to repair, $200-$500 a window.
	- Anchors, screws, or other such wall damage? These can be annoying to fix and generally make your walls look bad, especially when painted over a few times.
	- Pait on all the outlet covers? That is usually a sign of lazy home maintenence.
	- Tile looks great, but it is often times installed by people who do not know what they are doing. If you open a floor vent you should see tile on top of a backerboard of some sort. The tile should not be attached directly to the 1" floor boards at all.
	- Well laid tile should go under the base boards. If the tile ends before the baseboard then it might not be installed very well.
	- Cracked tiles, or missing grout can be time consuming to replace, or impossible if the tile can't be identified at all.

	Outdoors:
	- Irrigation? This is good, it can vastly reduce the cost of watering your lawn. If you want a green lawn, look for this.
	- Trees on top of the underground water or sewer lines? The roots will destroy the lines eventually which will cost a fortune to fix.
	- Busy street? This means lots of noise, and will keep your kids from playing in the front yard.
	- Shade? If the house has huge trees then it will be shaded which keeps it from heating up in the summer. No trees means that it will be hotter. Same is true for winter though. Pick the season you want to deal with better.

	Neighborhood:
	- Property line. Look at what is just over the property line. Any trees are going to get much bigger and you can’t do anything about that. Fields will be full of weeds that will get into your yard. Terrible looking houses will get worse, etc. You can not change or fix this, so are you willing to live with it?
	- HOA. Does the home have covenants? If so what are the dues? What do they restrict? etc. Know what you can and can not do before buying.
	- Look for bad neighbors. These will make your experience much worse. Things like broken down cars in the lawn, run down houses, etc.
	- Go by at different times of the day. Sometimes the badness only comes out at certain times.
	- Distance from the airport will establish how loud the airplanes will be when flying by. Also get on google maps. If the runway “points” at the house it will be much worse as they will fly right over top.

	Other:
	- How much are the utilities? Ask for recent bills. How much did the house cost them to run? That is an indication of how efficient it is.