04-10-2011, 06:19 PM
My only other advice would be to take the listing pictures with a grain of salt. We saw some places that looked like palaces online, but were dumps in real life. And look carefully at the pictures..if there is dirty laundry scattered about or dishes in the sink (can you believe folks and their agents would allow these kind of pictures to be posted???) then be highly suspect of those places. We looked at probably 50 houses over a two year period, and I'd estimate only about 10% were accurately represented by the pictures. A few were nicer than they appeared online, but most were much worse. If there are windows in the pictures, look out the windows to get a sense of the yard. If you're purchasing a house and the listing ad shows mostly pictures of the landscaping, that's another red flag! Oh, and be sure your friends know about "permitted " vs. "un-permitted" houses -- we fell in love with one house, and it wasn't until we were writing up our offer that the agent told us the house was un-permitted, and therefore had to be purchased with cash. That's when we stopped using that agent...