[blparent] Advice: buying a house

[Peggy]

You can pay a little extra to have an inspector come out and inspect your 
house, I recommend doing this!!  They are working for you and not the 
realitor so they will tell you every little thing that is wrong with your 
house ... which can be discou some of them are just little things that don't 
even need fixed.  But others might be big things and he will tell you, 
require the seller to fix before buying, like our deck had to be reenforced, 
a window replaced and an outlet replaced.  But there was a small place where 
the wood on the stairs doesn't match up exactly, he pointed it out, but you 
know we could fix it but it's really not that important.  I think it cost us 
about $300 for the guy to do the inspection but it was well worth it 
especially since I couldn't see and my husband's terrible on details.



-----Original Message----- 
From: Jaquiss, Robert
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2012 8:29 AM
To: Blind Parents Mailing List
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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