[blparent] Advice: buying a house

Wed May 9 15:18:19 UTC 2012

        Jo Elizabeth makes a great point.
You can and should have an agent of your choice or if you don't go the agent route get a real estate lawyer to attend the closing and review documents with you.

I suggest a lawyer because they know the business. Plus, I'm not partial to having just anybody help with stuff like this.

As an example, I think my daughter's preschool teacher is a neat lady. It doesn't mean I want her to know about my purchase or that she would be qualified to assist in that matter.

-----Original Message-----
From: blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Jo Elizabeth Pinto
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2012 11:12 AM
To: Blind Parents Mailing List
Subject: Re: [blparent] Advice: buying a house

Hi, Jan.  Congratulations on buying your house.  If you have a good realtor
and/or mortgage broker, he or she will explain every single piece of paper
you are signing.  Don't let yourself get rushed into signing anything that
you don't completely understand.  The closing may take a little longer than
it might for someone sighted, but the realtor and the broker are both there
to work for you.  It isn't essential that you have a sighted person with you
at the closing, but I fel tmore comfortable, just for myself, having someone
I trusted to look over my shoulder and make sure everything looked as it
should.

Jo Elizabeth

"How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young,
compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of
the weak and the strong.  Because someday in life you will have been all of
these."--George Washington Carver, 1864-1943, American scientist

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Jaquiss, Robert" <RJaquiss at nfb.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2012 7:29 AM
To: "Blind Parents Mailing List" <blparent at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [blparent] Advice: buying a house

> Hello:
>
>     Over the years, I have bought and sold four houses and one mobile
> home. It is fairly typical for a real estate agent to drive his/her
> customers to see a property. My advice is to pick out the bus routes that
> work for you and tell the agent to look for houses near the routes. You
> might get a friend to drive the bus route and try and spot for sale signs.
>
>     As for the mechanics of buying a house, I would advise having a
> trusted sighted person look over the property. Hopefully, you have a
> trustworthy agent, but some agents are more conscientious than others. A
> very thorough building inspection is very important. My wife and I bought
> a house and the inspection missed some major flaws resulting in us having
> to spend thousands of dollars to correct them. Its very wise to get
> insurance such as American Home Shield. This type of policy can insure
> against roof leaks, appliance break downs, plumbing problems etc. When my
> wife and I bought a house in Louisiana, we had AHS and it was a good thing
> since a heat pump failed a week after we moved in and it had to be
> replaced. When you make an offer, you can add a clause such as, "The house
> needs to meet the approval of xxx." This is a good backup in case you miss
> something and need to back out of an offer. My last piece of advice is to
> take your time and don't get rushed into a decision.
>
> Regards,
>
> Robert
>
>
> Robert Jaquiss
> Access Technology Specialist
> National Federation of the Blind Jernigan Institute
> 200 E. Wells Street at Jernigan Place
> Baltimore, MD 21230
> Phone: (410) 659-9314, Ext.2422
> Email: rjaquiss at nfb.org
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of jan wright
> Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2012 7:53 AM
> To: blparent
> Subject: [blparent] Advice: buying a house
>
> Hi All,
> First, I want to thank everyone who responded to my questions about
> bottles and johnny jumper things.
> We have a pretty consistent group of parents and child care providers
> who --- may not always agree, but give wonderful advice for each season of
> our lives. And, we are as diverse as any other parent group:
> from spiritual to not; from crunchy to progressive (those might not be
> opposites, but you understand what I mean); from babies to adult children;
> from stay-at-home parents  to working parents; ... etc.
>
> So, I thought that I might post here about our "house buying" and ask for
> any tips and advice. I have done research, but, there isn't much from a
> blind person's prospective. Maybe there doesn't need to be:
> because maybe it is not any different from sighted people buying a house.
> But, I did have a couple of questions:
> 1. How did you choose your realtor? We have one of these, already, but
> wonder if we  shouldn't have looked farther. DH's boss said that his
> realtor would transport him to and from the prospective houses. Is that
> normal??? We find that this is one of the most difficult things to do
> because paratransit takes so long, we can only see one house per day.
> 2. Public transportation is not very good here in Indy. People from other
> cities have commented on how fragmented it is. And, there aren't many
> sidewalks in residential areas or down busy streets and ... ... a good
> shoulder is hard to find. [ARe those words to a country song?????]
> (smile) But, we are trying to find a house that is close to a bus stop ---
> and a bus stop that would take DH to work and us downtown. Sometimes we
> find a house close to a bus stop, but the wrong bus stops there.
>
> Any other advice????
>
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