If you could do it over again,

[greekislandgirl]

what would you change/keep the same about the house you purchased?

DH and I are very seriously considering purchasing our first home. It will be a small apartment that we can buy in cash or borrow absolute max €10,000 for (but definitely will try to cover it completely in cash). That means we will be looking at small spaces and will not be able to demand the moon on this one.

Our plan is to rent in the area for about 1 year during which time we will of course decide for sure if we want to live there!, do the househunting / market research, and go through the house purchase process. If we have second thoughts about staying in the town for 10 years, we'll keep renting.

The market has apartments (1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, open floorplan kitchen/living/dining area, 1-2 balconies) that we are looking at. I've looked at a bunch of ads online but we're not actually in the city yet so can't look at them in person yet. This summer (July/Aug) we'll do the rental-apt hunting, so I will get a chance to see a lot of what's available.

What would YOU demand / refuse to have in a place you were buying?

We would both be first time buyers so need all the advice and warnings we can possibly get. Some of the ideas I have so far are:

- not close to a gas station
- not close to big power lines
- heat must be controlled by apartment (not central to whole building)
- must be above 1st floor (flooding issues)
- living area must be shaped in such a way that kitchen can be expanded/remodeled (I am big into cooking)
- if above 3rd floor, must have elevator

What would you add/change?

[2ndGenGranola]

If I were to get a new house, it would have 1 level only. I love the separation of company/family area but would find another way to do it.

I would have a bigger lot and not on a busy street. Our street wasn't busy when we moved here but they cut through in several directions.

Those are the big things I would change. We pretty much like the house but these things would make it more likeable.

[pollypurebred39]

If I could go back in the time machine when we bought this place, I'd have suggested we look into a house on one of the mountains out here. Land is FAR less expensive there as is the houses. We could have gotten a home in perfect condition with A LOT of land, with property taxes being a tenth of what we pay now for the exact same price we paid for a money pit of a fixer upper on a little over an acre and a half of land.

[shoiji]

I would also think about not living above or near a bar or touristy area. It would depend on the noise level you would want to live with both during the day and night.

[Debbie-cat]

Look for storage space!!!! We don't have enough.

[nuisance26]

~We bought a very small house in a great neighborhood and very near a top school. Our home has appreciated at a faster rate than surrounding areas. So even though we've had less space than we could have for our money 10+ years ago, we'll be able to pull more out of this house when we sell it than other locations.
Other good things about our house:
-Sunlight-we can heat many days with passive solar energy- Make sure the place you decide on is oriented for maximum sun benefit whether that's to heat or cool
-Size-small is easy to take care of
-Benefits of city water and sewer, trash-leaf and brush pick-up. Check municipal services by area
-masonry block construction- extremely efficient for heating and cooling purposes!
-location where highest quality of phone lines, etc were available
-Location where it feels apart from chaos but still close enough to shopping/library that I could ride my bike

My only regret is that we didn't get immediately to know the neighbors. All this time and I've only met 3 of our 5 neighbors and speak to only two of them occasionally. Of course they've made no effort to get to know us either but I don't like it and it seems like too much time has passed now. All these years and I could have had a close friend by now or at least a trusted neighbor to borrow from and lend to.
When looking at any house I would refuse a place that smelled of smoke, pets/urine, rodents/waste, or mildew. I refuse corner lots and narrow lots. I refuse tiny living rooms especially when the living room is smaller than the main bedroom. I would live in a side-by-side duplex but not a multi-floored apartment building. I've heard too many horror stories about those from my sister and SIL's experiences. I won't live in a trailer unless it was my only choice. If I had known that every one of my immediate neighbors owned giant dogs I would have reconsidered our purchase. I don't like being barked at by dogs who weigh more than me while I try to enjoy my own yard. It's especially disturbing when they bark at my small children.
The only things I really remember demanding when we were house hunting were:
-Decent set-backs from neighbors houses(30+ feet)I didn't want to hear their conversations
-Move-in condition. We didn't have the skills or money to improve anything.
-Safety. I wanted the best neighborhood we could afford
-Gas heating. Heating was likely to be our biggest utility expense so I insisted on the least expensive system.

Hopefully these will give you some ideas when you apply them to your area and situation.~

[mndtrp]

I'll just second what nuisance said, since it's similar to how things went with me. The only difference is I met most of my neighbors within the first year, as well as any new ones withing a month or two of them moving in. We regularly spend time with a few of them. My wife is at a BBQ with some right now, as I work all night.

[3tomboys]

I have to agree with Debbie-Cat about storage. That is the one thing I feel we drastically overlooked especially cabinet space in the kitchen.

[waterbaby77]

I found a great apartment in an industrial area. It is close to public transportation, surrounded by factories and warehouses, yet relatively quiet. Cheap and better than our old one in terms of space. Found it through an old coworker. It's all electric with poor insulation because the building is all wood with old windows and electric baseboard heat. I would agree with the posters above about a) seeking out a concrete masonry building and b) gas heat, because when we had that our winter heating bills were very low.

[greekislandgirl]

About gas heat: does that mean natural gas coming through an established infrastructure in the city? The city we're moving to does not have natural gas in any area. The closest city with natural gas is 3 hours drive away.

Are there other (cheap) options I should know about? Propane and other bottled gas seems like it would be difficult living in an apartment building since I wouldn't own any space nearby to put a large tank outside. I could see using bottled gas to power a gas range in the kitchen but I don't see how it could work to heat even a small apartment. I also don't know if small bottled gas would be economical or not vs. electric. I will have to look into that. The rate for electricity is very high here.

Most older buildings use a liquid heating fuel that resembles gasoline in appearance and price. We call it "heating gasoline" here and I'm not sure what that is in English. I don't know if that's the same thing as heating oil in the US.

This is a big consideration for us because we will be in the cold part of the country where it does go below freezing and snow and all that. (Snows up to 2" or so, not major storms.)

All the buildings are concrete masonry here to meet earthquake code which is extremely strict.

[TheRootedNomad]

I'm not sure it applies to you since you have the concrete building code but we would look for a house with a basement. Moving from up north to down south "tornados" weren't really something you thought about when house hunting. We also thought they were really rare here. Not true. They are frequent enough that we should have been at least thinking about them. Also when we go over friends houses and they can send all the kids "downstairs" away from the adults. I find myself thinking "that must be wonderful" every time.

[zakity]

In a way, I wish we would have bought the other house we were looking at. It was bigger and had another bedroom. It also had a little more land with it. DH could have had a shooting range on that property. It also had a cool wooded area. The people who bought it logged the wooded area and made dirt bike trails. It was also more "rural".

Another property we were looking at, well, we are so glad that we didn't buy it. The neighbors moved a (crappy looking) mobile home right next to the property line. The rest of the neighborhood went downhill also. It was a shared well between that neighbor and the property. I wasn't so keen on a shared well.

Here, well, we really could use another bedroom. The house is only a two bedroom. We make it work though. We do have a huge yard (property is over an acre) and DH has a huge shop (it is bigger than the house). This house was sort of rural until the town we are near got huge and has surrounded us now. We are an "island" of county with a few of our neighbors.

[frugalfriend]

Stay away from busy streets. We used to back to a busy street and I remember our agent saying that with the windows closed you can't hear a thing. Yeah, right! The front of the house was on a quiet cul-de-sac but the back was awful. We really hated the traffic noise, and the dirt settling on everything. We built up our back fence high enough so at least we couldn't see the traffic. Now we live in a very peaceful place and I was amazed for a long time how quiet it was and LOVE it!

[Paws]

I'm not sure it applies to you since you have the concrete building code but we would look for a house with a basement. Moving from up north to down south "tornados" weren't really something you thought about when house hunting. We also thought they were really rare here. Not true. They are frequent enough that we should have been at least thinking about them. Also when we go over friends houses and they can send all the kids "downstairs" away from the adults. I find myself thinking "that must be wonderful" every time.

I second the finished basement thing...not only for it being our safe place during severe storms/tornadoes, but also for storage.

[greekislandgirl]

Here there are no hurricanes or tornadoes, but we do get flooding and earthquakes - both of which it's very bad to be low and much safer to be up high! But anyway, some of the places I've seen ads for include a sizeable storage room in the basement and I think this would be very useful since our apartment would be so small. I'll definitely add that to the list! Thanks.