Thousands Regret (Buying a House)...Here's Why!

If someone shared with you a checklist that would save you from one of the biggest financial disasters of your lifetime, you'd probably use it, right? So many people buy houses every single year, tens of thousands, only to regret the home after they purchased it. You may be one of those or so give me a thumbs up. But why is that? You see, people purchase houses and it's simply overlooked mistakes. They put too much emphasis and too much trust in their home inspector. In today's video, I'm going to share with you the 10 ways to guarantee you never buy a bad house before even having the home inspected, before even signing on the dotted line. So listen, if you're thinking about buying a house in the next six months, this may very well be the most important video you'll watch all year long. Now I say 10 things, but it's probably going to be 12 or 13. I get to walk around a house and things just kind of start coming to me. I kind of go off the list and most of this stuff is memory. I just pulled up at this house, never seen this house before in my life, but I can tell you just walking up to this home right here, you can look and see that gutter right there is missing an elbow. It needs to have an elbow, meaning that when the water comes down off the roof, it's going to shoot away from the house. And it even helps to have a splash block, not just a block there, because the splash block pushes the water away from the foundation. You don't want the water settling on the foundation because when you have water consistently pouring into the foundation of the home, it makes the ground soft. When you make the ground soft, you have settling. And not only when you have settling, you have cracks. Let me show you something else. This caught me off guard when I bought a house one time. It cost me a whole lot of money. Just walking around this house, can you see that? That's a tree growing in the gutter. There's no gutter guard up there. And a home inspector will look at that and they'll simply say, hey those leaves need to be removed. A good inspector will say those leaves need to be removed, and a good inspector will pull those leaves back and look and see if there's any wood rot underneath those shingles. I can assure you if you have leaves right there, those leaves absorb water and the plywood decking underneath those shingles act as a sponge and water will wick up. So rest assured if you see gutters that full, they don't need to just be cleaned out. They need to be pulled back and lift up the shingles just a little bit before you make that purchase. Because if you don't, you're going to have to replace a whole lot of plywood that cost you a whole lot of money. Now while I'm on this side of the house, I want to bend down and show you a couple of things. I'd mentioned foundation cracks and see you have to know here's another gutter that's going straight down and that concrete is open. So rest assured you've got heavy concrete, heavy corner of a house. You're going to have water going down into here. Now this actually looks really good. It's a good solid foundation and it hasn't done any damage to the outside of the house yet. However, you may be able to go inside and see unleveled floors and you always want to look for that. Now a good home inspector will actually put a device, a machine, that can show you the distance and the level and the fall of the floors so you can get a good understanding. Oftentimes you can just walk from one corner of the house to the other. So when you're walking through a house, whether it's built on a slab like this home or it's a raised home on a raised foundation, you can walk around and just kind of go from the door to the corner, from the corner to the door and see if there's been any settling. Now something else people often miss and need to look for is a fireplace. When you have a fireplace, the home inspector will not inspect that fireplace. They'll look around the roof and they'll make sure that the fireplace is not leaking anywhere. However, it's not a bad idea to have that fireplace clean because you don't know how often it's been used. A lot of people don't realize, but if you burn pine in a fireplace, that soot and that stickiness that you find on a pine cone or pine leaves builds up in your flue and the next time you light a fire, that can catch fire. Now one of the best things you can do and it's quite simply free, a lot of this is free, is just looking around. One of the things I always tell people is you want to use your nose. You want to walk through that house and you want to take good smells. You want to go in the bathroom and make good smells, good smells. If you smell anything that smells mold, mildewy, musty, especially if it's on a raised foundation, oftentimes plumbing gets disconnected from underneath the house, underneath the bathrooms. Quite simply, it can just happen over time. So you have a sewer drain or a plumbing drain that's going out to the main sewer line and it gets disconnected. Now what's really bad is when those lines get disconnected and this is all stuff you can do before you even pay for a home inspection. If those lines get disconnected and the dryer vent is running up underneath the house and the dryer vent gets disconnected, I've seen it happen many times, the whole entire crawl space gets filled with mold. Now you want to know that before you even make the offer instead of after because it saves you time and money with the home inspection. Now keep in mind it's not the end of the day. It's not the end of the world. It can be remediated. The seller can have it done. I can tell you I've sold many homes where that has happened. The seller had no idea because how often do people even go around in their attics or their crawl space? Those sellers will remediate it, save you time, save you money. But at least you know that in the beginning and not the end so you can make the decision whether or not you want to purchase that house or move on to the next one. So really quick, do you find this information helpful? So give me a thumbs up, like the channel, subscribe if you haven't subscribed. I welcome you here. We've got almost 1.5 million followers across all platforms. I'm a big believer in you learn it, you master it, and you teach it. I've been in the real estate business for 30 years and I want to share that with you so you can have the confidence knowing that what you learn from me is from actual real life experience, boots on the ground. I've helped thousands of people and a lot of people say, Wayne how do I reach out to you? How do I get help from you? Because we have agents all around the country, some of the top best real estate agents. So we vet those agents so you don't have to. It saves you a lot of time, a lot of stress, a lot of headache. Same thing with mortgage lenders. There's no cost and no obligation whatsoever to use anybody we recommend. We just say we're here to help. You can go to contactwayne.com if you have questions or concerns and most importantly if you're looking to purchase a house within the next six months, we're here for you. It's contactwayne.com. So let's jump in, there's a lot more. Now so often you won't smell anything but one way to look for rotted wood and it happens most of the time around bathtubs and commodes because that's a wet area, right? So you get overflow from a bathtub, kids play in the bathtub and I always tell people walk in a bathtub, especially if the house is a raised home, if it's not on a slab because that raised home can have wood that will absolutely start deteriorating and rotting. You can find that around toilets, commodes and also around tubs. Now it's one thing that it's nice to walk into a house before you even make an offer on it and step around those floors because typically those soft floors mean there's sub-flooring that needs to be replaced and it's just one of those things where it's not the detriment to buying the house, it just saves you a lot of money going in and most importantly gives you a little bit of negotiating power when you're making that offer. As you're walking around the outside of the house, one of the most obvious things is the roof. You see that as soon as you pull up. Now the roof on this house is in really good shape. It looks like it may be brand new or no more than three to five years old at best. Oftentimes people don't see the mildew on a roof and that's simply nothing to be fretted or worried about because if you'll look in some areas and I'll show you, more than likely, and it's an overcast day, but more than likely right here where you see that vinyl siding, that's just a little mold, a little mildew, a little algae growing and it's right there on the roof as well. You've probably seen those houses where it's all over the entire roof. Now when you see that, it can simply be cleaned by a solution. They'll come out and spray a solution on the roof of the house and when the next time it rains, all that washes off and it makes the roof look brand new. So if you see a house that you really like and it's got those streaks and it's got that mildew on the roof, you can simply say, hey I want to purchase your house. You can make an offer to purchase, but just ask them to have the roof cleaned before you do an inspection. Another costly thing are windows. A lot of people are like, Wayne, the windows are broken. Well, it's one thing if it's a cracked or broken window or if it's simply a broken seal. You've probably seen where you walk up on a house and it looks like it's fogged. You can't see out of the window. They can replace the individual pane. So this can be replaced. Now it depends on where you live. It runs anywhere from $125 to $200 to replace that pane. Oftentimes you can get the window itself, the entire window replaced for $300. You just need to know that, that it's not too crazy expensive, but if you see a fogged window, that means that the rubber seal, that gasket has broken and it's allowed air to get in there. And when you have cold days outside, the house is warm inside and then vice versa, you'll start getting those fogged windows. This house looks really good, but you also need to walk around a home and look at the foundation. You see, when you have leaves piled up around the foundation of the house, it's easy just to walk around. Even if you're looking at houses, take some tools with you, some rakes and things like that. Most of the time the homeowner's not here. You can pull back a little of that stuff because where you see a lot of leaves like that, that's where you'll have wood destroying insects such as termites. And it's better to catch them. They'll have a little bitty tunnel running up the house and then they'll get behind the wood and mess up the wood. You'll want to know that going in. Most homeowners don't want to live with those things, so they're gladly to repair or fix those items. And you're not going to be able to get FHA loan or even a conventional loan. They know the house has termites, so that's something that the homeowner can address and take care of. But it's nothing to be too awfully concerned about. However, you have to know that where there's termites, there may be interior damage. And a good home inspector can have probes and meters that they can actually put into the wall to determine whether or not that's a soft spot or it has termites. Now one of the biggest mistakes you can ever make when you own a house. You're buying a house, you're looking at a house. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is planting a tree within about 10 feet of the house. People do it and they think it's just a little bitty crepe myrtle or it's just a little bitty sapling of a tree. However, 7, 8, 10 years goes by and that tree gets big. And when the tree gets big, the roots spread. And I can't tell you how many homes I've seen, sold, looked at, bought that had foundation issues. And quite simply, it's the tree. And it's not as easy as just removing the tree. Because when you remove the tree, you kill the tree. And guess what you do? You kill the roots. When you kill the roots, the roots are going to deteriorate. When they deteriorate, they're no longer taking up that soil. And so you get even more falling to the house. This is a prime example. There's no trees around this house. But can you see this right here? So when you walk up on a house and you say, well wait a minute, Wayne. This is a whole concrete slab right here. And that's concrete. That concrete looks different. And it's cut right here. Now I just walked up on this house as I mentioned to you. But I can assure you there's been foundation work on this home. Now whether or not it has a warranty behind it or anything like that, you just don't know. Another sign to know that you have foundation. You can see that, right? That means they literally cut that out and had to raise the house up. Now you can also see there's a crack. Now that's a good crack. That means there's been some foundation repair on the house. You'll see step cracks. When you see cracks in the brick like that, that's something that's happened pretty quick. Not so much over time. Another concern is bubbled paint. You see when you look and you see paint that's bubbled like that. See that? That's soft. That means that they're, see how soft that is? That means that's damaged. Damaged. And so you got to look for things like that because you never know how damaged it is. But I can tell you all this area up through this house has that damage right there. And not just there, there's other spots. So when you see bubbled paint, more than likely you're going to have rotted wood. Now just as a reminder, a good real estate agent that's working for you is going to pull the property condition disclosure. If you've ever purchased a house before, if you purchased a home really in the last 30 years, there's a property condition disclosure. And that disclosure is required by law that every homeowner fill out. And it's typically around 11 to 13 pages, depending on the size of the font. But it asks a lot of questions of the seller. Have you ever had any foundation issues? Have you ever had any termites? Has there been water settling? Has the house ever flooded? All of that information. And you just hope to goodness that the homeowner is truthful and forthcoming with that information. But unfortunately, when you buy a new house, you get a warranty so you don't have to fool with that. If you buy a house where the owner of the home has never lived in it, it's an estate sale, for example. In other words, they inherited the home. They don't have to fill out those disclosures. If you buy a foreclosure like this one that I've been walking around, they don't have to fill out that disclosure. They've never lived in the home. They've required the home by a state of foreclosure. So it's important to look around the house to always have them inspected. Now when you're buying a foreclosure or any house, for example, that the utilities are not on, you can require the utilities to be turned on. This is what's really important that people miss. You never know how long that home has sat vacant before the bank took ownership. See, when a bank takes ownership in a house, don't have the plumbing winterized. They basically put an antifreeze solution. But even doing that is not the proper way to do it. The proper way is to blow out all the lines with compressed air to make sure there's no water waking in those pipes. And when you blow out all that water, then you put the antifreeze in. The issue with so many people when they buy a foreclosure is they don't know how long the house has sat vacant. That's why it's so important to get a plumbing inspection on any and every home that has sat empty for more than six months. Something else that you always want to look for is door jams. When you're inside of the house, walking around the house, or on the exterior of the house, if a door doesn't open or close properly, and there's more than one of those doors in the house that doesn't open or close properly, typically you have some sort of shift in movement in the house. Now sometimes the doors will open and close just perfect, and there's no issue with them. But it's not a bad idea, and it's a good idea actually to step back and look at the door frame. And if the door frames are a little cockeyed this way or the other, you know that chances are someone has adjusted those hinges a little bit so the door actually opens and closes properly, but the frame itself is a little off. And when the frame's off a little bit, chances are foundation's been off a little bit. I hope you found this information helpful. So be sure and share it with anybody that you know that's looking to purchase a house anytime in the next six months. I promise you it will save you a whole lot of time, a whole lot of stress, and a whole lot of money. Until next time, thank you. My ultimate goal is to learn things, master them, and then teach them, and then pass that on to someone else that you think may benefit from it. Until next time, thank you, and may God bless you.