- In this video we look at the top five things to check before buying a house.
That's coming right up.
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to you by Brookfield Residential.
Hi everyone I'm Karl and welcome to another
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anything. So today I'm joined by Jessica McKnabb, area manager with
Brookfield Residential, and the question we're gonna answer today is—actually,
what we're actually gonna talk about is things to check before buying a house. So
Jessica, what are some of the top I guess, five things that you should check—or
first-time homebuyers to check when they buy their home?
- For sure. So a key thing
for a first-time homebuyer is to get in touch with either your bank or a
mortgage specialist. I would always
recommend to at least reach out to a
bank and a mortgage specialist and then
you can come up with kind of a criteria
or list of what your budgets are, how
much you want to spend on your house
versus how much maybe the property
taxes are in that area. So there's a lot of
different items that you might want to
cover with the mortgage specialist. And
then your second thing that you want to
keep in mind is when you're actually out
and about looking at new homes and
you're going show home to show home
where you're working with the realtor, is
actually looking at the size of home. Do
you want to have a bigger home? Do you
want to have a garage in the back? Do you
want it to be attached? So to come up
with a list with your family of a
criteria even before you set out looking
or some time while you first set out
looking. Because buying a home can be
quite overwhelming as I'm sure you can
imagine. The third thing is you want to
kind of narrow down your area so
community. Because you'll be driving all
over the city otherwise so if you can
narrow down the community maybe
there's a school nearby for your children
or maybe the commute time to work,
that's something that would be important.
So after you've narrowed down your
budgets, your community, the home size
that you would like, then you've—you're
going to narrow down probably the style
of home. And then once you've done
that and you've actually chosen your
specific home, you want to look at the
foundation and the bones of the home
because the actual interior of the home
might be things that you could change
after the fact if you're buying a resale
home. But it's actually the
foundation you want to check to see if
there's any cracks in the foundation, to
look at the exterior, to look at the grading of the land because you want to
make sure it drains properly.
- Is that something you'd probably hire a home
inspector if you're buying resale to take a look at that?
- Yep. Yeah that's an important point actually.
You'd always—we always recommend that if you are buying
a resale home to have a home inspection done on the home. If you are buying a
new home however, it will fall under our warranty program in which case it goes
through six checkpoints of a city inspection in which case you don't need
to have an inspector come through because it's already been verified by
the city that it passes all inspection.
- And make sure if you want to know more
about the home warranty, check out our video above, in the description below. I
just actually want to go back. How many times should you actually view a home or
view a show home before you actually buy?
- That's a great question. I guess it's
subjective to every individual I mean if you are purchasing a resale home you'll
likely be with a realtor. You can go in with that realtor and perhaps you can
put an offer in right then and there. Some people with new homes for example
like us seeing people in the show homes, sometimes people will come by five, six,
even seven times, bring their family. So it's—everybody's different.
- Okay. And if you want to know more
about visiting a show home, watch our video above, in
description below. Do you actually need— so you talked about a realtor, do you
need a lawyer to buy a home?
- You will need a lawyer with the end—with the closing.
So just before you take possession of the home with title
transfer, because it's such a large amount of money being transferred, you
will need to have a lawyer in place with a resale home. You'll likely pay these
fees on your own so it'll run you typically between 1200 and 1600 dollars
for lawyers fees and then if you are going to be buying with a builder, those
fees are typically covered.
- Okay. Is it easier—
well maybe not easier—you need a lawyer for both resale and in a brand new home?
- You will.
- Is it easier with the resale or is it easier with the Builder?
- So the title transfer would be the same,
it's just a matter of whose paying the cost.
- Oh okay. And then what are some things that I should do after buying a
home?
- So that's a great question. When you are first moved into your home,
if it's an for example, you're going to meet with
your warranty coordinator and that's an important key point because they're
going to be your main point of contact for that 1 to 10 years after the fact, so
after you've met with them they're going to give you a criteria of things to
check. If it's a resale home, you kind of just—you do your own due diligence or
maybe you have your home inspector come through to do this criteria with you.
So things on this criteria to check that are really important, something as simple
as running your bath fan just before you take a shower and after you take a
shower to maintain the humidity levels, a lot of new homes actually come with an
HRV system. It's kind of like the lungs of the house. So homes are built
really airtight and they don't have a lot of circulation to and from so this
HRV system needs to actually have its filter replaced twice a year and there's
a winter and summer setting so these are things that if you're buying new that
will go through these things with you. But resale of course perhaps it doesn't
have the HRV or you can go through with your inspector to come up with a list.
- I also want to let you know about the video we did on house settling
again up above, in the description below. In terms of house settling, how how long
do you need to wait for a new build home to actually make sure the house is set?
- That's a great question. So typically within that first year you'll
see the most settling. It is normal to see some cracks in the walls and the
foundation to a certain limit and within that one year timeline is where things
can be fixed. And with a new home you'll have the warranty at that one year time,
you'll go through a walkthrough and come up with the list and they'll fix these
items for you.
- Perfect. So do you have anything else to add?
- Yeah actually. So there—
with home settling there are times where your house may be built and
a year later the next house may be built next to you so when you're digging the
foundation on the second home your home can actually still settle after that
one year. In which case the warranties still do cover these.
- Oh it does?
- It still does.
- So, and what about let's say you're the first house and then it
like say, another house the next year builds behind you, and one beside. Does it
still continue to cover as long as new houses are being built around?
- So the warranty guidelines, I'm sure you've done another video on warranties
but there's usually a guideline specific to these questions about you know one to
five and ten years on the warranty. So in terms of the structural component you do
have the five years for this piece.
- So the question of the day I have for you
is, how did you prepare when buying your first home? Let us know in the comments
section below. And remember if you enjoyed this video or found the video
helpful, hit the thumbs up button, remember to comment, and remember to
subscribe. Thank you and we'll catch you next time.
- That's another edition of
Homebuyer's School. Tune in next time
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