What I Am Looking At While You Are Looking at the Kitchen

Buyers walk into a house and look at the finishes. That is natural and it is not useless, because you have to want to live there.

But finishes are the cheapest thing in the house to change. Here is what I am checking while you are opening cabinets.

The ground

Cracks in the foundation, in the driveway, in the garage slab. Doors that stick. Floors that slope. Windows that do not close square. Individually explainable. Together they are a pattern and they mean the house has moved.

On the Palos Verdes peninsula I look harder, and in some areas I recommend a geotechnical report before anything else.

Water

Where does it go? Look at the grade around the foundation. Look at the downspouts. Stains on the ceiling, on the walls under windows, along the baseboards in the lowest room. Musty smell in a closet on an exterior wall.

Water is the most expensive problem in a house and the easiest to paint over.

The permit question

An addition with a ceiling height that does not match, a bathroom in a strange place, a converted garage, a bedroom that you reach through another bedroom. All of it says work was done, and some of it says work was done without a permit.

Unpermitted square footage does not appraise. If a third of the house is not on the record, you are paying for square footage the lender will not count.

I pull the permit history before we write. It takes a few minutes and it has killed offers that should have been killed.

The systems

Age of the roof, the water heater, the furnace, the panel. Not deal breakers. Line items. If the roof has four years left, that is a number and it belongs in your offer.

The street

I go back at a different time of day. Traffic, parking, noise, and light are all time dependent, and a Sunday afternoon showing tells you about Sunday afternoons.

Near LAX I go twice for the flight path specifically. In Hermosa I go on a weekend night. Near a school I go at pickup.

What I say out loud

All of it. I would rather talk you out of a house on a Saturday than watch you find these things in an inspection report after you are emotionally committed and have money at stake.

Call me at (310) 861-3459.