This article from bankrate.com has several good tips for homebuyers:
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/real-estate/when-dream-house-becomes-horror-home.aspx
To summarize the article – when buying a home, you should consider:
- Location – #1
- Schools – http://www.greatschools.org/
- HOA – solvent? controlling?
- Zoning – changes nearby?
- Crime report – http://arjis.org/
- Walkability – shops nearby?
- Neighbors – too many vehicles?
- Foreclosures – nearby? headlines?
- Sex-offenders – http://www.meganslaw.ca.gov/
- Social activity – too little or too much?
- Garage bands
- Barking dogs
- Speeding cars/traffic
- Trains/highways
- Landfill, smells
- Talk to neighbors
- Visit at different times of the day
- Talk to nearby shop owners
- Talk to mailmen/local police officers
An excerpt:
“To avoid potential short-term value depression, potential buyers should check local foreclosure rolls for an excess of pending defaulters in a neighborhood”, says Jim Klinge, owner of Klinge Realty in San Diego. But foreclosures aren’t always a stigma. Whether foreclosure buyers are investors or owner-occupiers, “they’re coming in solvent enough to qualify for full mortgages,” he says. “They’re also fixing up houses in disrepair and are usually smart landlords.” One big “must” for every buyer, says Klinge, is to check local sex-offender lists. “It’s a bummer when you find out later that the guy across the street is a peeper.”
In CA most of us have to live with blinders on as you cannot limit all of these factors anywhere. I think you have to pick and chose the poison of least pain!
Interesting that what I think of as factoring in to “location” shows up at the top “location, schools” and again near the bottom “trains/highways, landfills/smells”
Out of curiosity, I did a sex offender check on my address once.
I was surprised how many there were. There were about twenty within a mile. Perverts are everywhere!
Got a kick out of “Garage bands”!
You forgot renters and college students. Not all are bad, just the ones that don’t add value. In a few months your street can have any number of renters with no regard to the ‘hood’ due to their transitory nature.
Living near a school should (in theory) limit the number of sex offenders, since, in theory, they can’t live near schools. Although I don’t put too much stock in those lists. For one thing, they tend to include people who have moved away long ago. Also, some of the people on them are rapists and pedophiles, and some are people who had sex with their 17 year old girlfriend when they were 19, or were caught urinating in public. Plus, there are no “murderer lists” or “buglar lists”.
Here’s a couple more tips…
1. Lowest number of houses on the market in December
2. Sellers list high in spring
3. Highest number of houses on the market in June/July
4. Sellers list low in fall/winter
5. Homes sell in higher numbers right before the school year starts
6. Homes sell in higher numbers right after the school year ends
7. Realtors in general are flaky people. Jim is an oddity.
Good post, Jim, and congrats on the interview! “I knew him when…”
Here’s a good site for walkability: http://www.walkscore.com
Also, a shameless plug for my subjective home evaluation site: http://homeval.kwaping.com . Hope you don’t mind!
– Existing power lines and planned lines.
Great suggestions…
I suggest everyone check the Megan’s Law website for offenders even if they already own a home. It can help you stay informed if any move into your neighborhood.
http://www.greatschools.org/ is CRAP.
I checked my own neighborhood and ALL the info for the nearest school building is wrong.
It also shows a school nearby that a child living in the neighborhood would not be able to attend for geographic reasons.
And if it’s a short-sale you might need to look into any unpaid assessments.
I called an agent about the property at 373 Longden and there are $125k worth additional assessments on the property, which brings the total price up to $745k. Interestingly, the agent said “That’s actually a pretty fair price for the property”. I replied “If it’s a fair price, why’s it been on the market so long?”
There is a problem with talking to the neighbors before-hand. I did that with several homes I was interested in, and invariably the neighbor made a bee-line to the homeseller…the homeseller then thought they had me over a barrel because I was so interested that I talked to the neighbors.
I ended up walking from those homes and buying one where I was unknown to the neighbors…
Renters, for the past decade, have been more stable and better neighbors than “owners”, at least in my area!
Personally, I look for the lifted pickup trucks…
• Proximity to Ice Cream Trucks
Wow that list is awesome. It shows how messed up society here really has become…so much so that you have a huge list to avoid. People in California have lost total respect for each other IMO. It’s sad.
No one should be encouraged to “check the Megan’s Law” website. It is frequently out of date, people are on there for irrational reasons and it inspires community vigilantism. If we are going to catalog threats to our safety where is the listing of domestic abuse citations issued? How about registered gun owners. Drunk driver arrests? Former felons with violent records? Singling out one type of threat and ignoring the rest is BS.
“No one should be encouraged to “check the Megan’s Law” website.”
As a parent of 4 young children I disagree. If an offender moves on my street I want to know, and be aware. A couple years ago I lived in a nice neighborhood in North Carolina. An offender moved into our neighborhood (didn’t register his new location with the police, but that’s another matter that was taken care of). He was convicted of disgusting offenses with a young girl (under the age of 14), and spent many years in jail. No one knew his status when he moved in and he had already started trying to talk to kids in the neighborhood and had hired a young 13 yr old girl to walk his dog. Once his offender status was discovered the parents of the girl no longer let her walk his dog. As a community we were able to keep on eye on his activities around our children. He was not listed as an offender because of irrational reasons, but because he was a pedophile who had already hurt one young child.
Of course there is always the threat of the ones you don’t know about (think of Danielle Van Dam), but there is nothing wrong with being aware of any convicted offenders, especially with children.
“Singling out one type of threat and ignoring the rest is BS.”
I don’t see where anyone said to ignore the rest.
The Megan’s Law site publishes (in general terms) what each specific offender did. You can easily tell the difference between someone who had to pee really bad (peeing in public is a sex offense) and someone who did bad things with kids.
The Megan’s Law site publishes (in general terms) what each specific offender did. You can easily tell the difference between someone who had to pee really bad (peeing in public is a sex offense) and someone who did bad things with kids.
If kids are present, both are listed as lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14. Urinating in public by itself is not a sex offense, the way they make it one is by filing the child charges.