Score what cannot be changed, separately
The characteristic mistake in house hunting is not missing a defect. It is letting a new kitchen outweigh a flight path.
A flat scoring sheet encourages exactly that, because it adds a five for the worktops to a two for the commute and produces a number that looks objective. So this sheet scores in groups, and the groups are ordered by how permanent they are:
Cannot be changed — location, commute, noise, light, orientation, the ground, the lot, flood risk. Score these hardest, and score them before you have walked into the kitchen.
Expensive to change — layout, size, storage, roof, HVAC, windows, plumbing, electrical, foundation. Possible, but each of these is thousands of dollars and weeks of disruption.
Cheap to change — kitchen and bathroom fittings, floors, paint, appliances. These are the things that sell houses and they should be scored last and lightly.
Running costs — price, tax, insurance, utilities, fees, and the work needed in the first two years.
When the totals come out, the useful moment is not the winner. It is noticing that the house you liked came third on the group you cannot do anything about.
Fill it in on the driveway
Not that evening. On the driveway, before the next viewing.
By the fifth house in a day, people are reliably remembering house three through the impression left by house four, and the one with the smell of fresh coffee scores half a point higher than it should on everything. This is not a failure of concentration; it is how memory works under a sequence of similar experiences.
Two minutes in the car, per house, is worth more than any amount of trying harder to remember later.
Ten things to do while you are standing there
Most of these take seconds and none require permission:
- Run a tap and flush a toilet at the same time. Watch what happens to the pressure.
- Open and close every window and exterior door. Sticking windows tell you about the frame, the sashes or the movement of the building.
- Look at the electrical panel. Brand, amperage, whether every slot is full. A full panel means any addition needs an upgrade.
- Read the water heater’s age off its serial number. ENERGY STAR treats ten years as the point to plan a replacement, and a storage tank’s published life expectancy is around thirteen — so this one number tells you whether a replacement is in your first few years.
- Look at ceilings for stains and at corners for cracks, particularly above doorways.
- Look under every sink.
- Check the phone signal in each room.
- Stand outside and listen for a full minute. Noise is the single most under-noticed and most regretted factor in a purchase.
- Look at the neighbouring houses, their gardens and their cars.
- Note which way the back of the house faces. It determines the light in every room for as long as you live there.
What to ask before you offer
- Twelve months of utility bills. The cheapest and most informative question you can ask. It tells you about the insulation, the windows and the running cost in a way no viewing will.
- The age of the roof and the HVAC, and whether there is paperwork.
- What work has been done, and was it permitted. Unpermitted work becomes your problem at resale and sometimes at insurance.
- Why are you moving. Occasionally answered honestly, and always worth asking.
- An insurance quote, before you offer rather than after. Flood zones, roof age, and claims history on the property can all move a premium enormously, and finding that out during closing is late.
A viewing is not an inspection
Nothing on this sheet is a substitute for a professional inspection, and it does not try to be.
A viewing decides whether to make an offer. An inspection decides whether to complete, and at what price. What a disciplined viewing actually does is save you the cost of inspecting houses you were never going to buy — which, at several hundred dollars each, is the real financial argument for a comparison sheet.
Go back at a different time of day before you offer. Traffic, light, noise and the character of a street all change between a Sunday afternoon viewing and a Tuesday at eight in the morning.