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Buy
the right house.
Size
matters.
Buy the
largest bungalow that you can afford rather than a two-story house.
If you're
trying to add value to a property by increasing its living space, it
make sense to buy the house with the most unfinished living space.
With a bungalow, whatever living space you have on the main floor is
mirrored in the basement. In a two-story, the basement is only a
fraction of the above-ground space.
Buy
high and buy dry.
If you have
to duck your head to get into or around the basement, move on. The
attractive finished basements have headroom and feel light and
spacious. Low ceilings and bruised foreheads are for torture
chambers, not houses.
Finishing a
wet basement is like taking your date on a romantic ride in a leaky
rowboat. A good home inspector will find the dampness behind the
drywall. He'll also help you detect damness in the concrete and be
able to tell you when to buy and when to move on. Use one!
And
then there was light!
Dinky
windows only appeal to dinky people.
All of the
basement windows should be large enough to crawl out of if there is a
fire. That almost never happens, but knowing that the buyers are
looking for lots of light helps you pick the winners when you're
buying. Picking windows that you could fit through helps define
"large" and "small."
Walkout
basements are king. If there is a door to the outside, that's an
exit. If the door opens onto level ground, instead of a stairway up
to the backyard, that's a walk-out moneymaker. If the door opens onto
the lawn and is a light bright patio door, or french door, or garden
door, that's heaven. Buy that house.
Where's
the furnace?
When you
walk down the stairs and stub your toe on the furnace or
water-heater, go back up the stairs and find another house.
You need a
house where the services are tucked away in the corner and you have a
wide open space to work your magic on. |
