Buying a home is a big investment. You should use a checklist
when sizing up potential homes. In this article, we cover a home
buying checklist for paint and stucco.
Paint and Stucco
The exterior of a home typically makes the biggest impression
when you first view a potential buying opportunity. Many
homebuyers, however, often make the mistake of looking at color
plans as the principal issue. In truth, a close review of the
exterior of the prospective home can tell you a lot about the
quality of the structure.
A person selling a home is not stupid. Before putting a home on
the market, they are going to take steps to spiff it out to
raise buyer interest and the rate you are willing to pay. There
is nothing devious about such conduct. It is natural to want to
put your best foot forward and a person selling a home isn't
going to act differently. This is why you want to take a close
look at the exterior paint and stucco on a home.
1. The first thing to look for is peeling or flaking of paint on
the exterior walls. If you see this in an obvious place on a
wall, run for the hills because the house needs a total repaint.
Typically, you are not going to find such obvious problems.
Instead, you need to poke around behind bushes, up under roof
overhangs and in nooks and crannies. If you find problems of
this sort, it tends to mean the paint job on the home was not
applied correctly. Once these problems start occurring, you can
count on them getting worse over time.
2. The second thing to look for is stains around perforations in
the paint. For instance, look for an area where bolts or nails
penetrate a painted surface. If you see rust around the hole,
you may be seeing an indication of poor maintenance. Even worse,
you may be seeing an indication of a water drainage problem.
Investigate such occurrences very carefully.
3. With stucco homes, you are typically going to find some
cracking do to earth movement and temperature changes. As long
as these areas are relatively small, you shouldn't have problems
patching them for a nominal price. The bigger problem, however,
is if you find stains or soft spots on the bottom section of a
stucco wall. This can mean there are problems with the drainage
screen behind the stucco wall and water isn't getting out. If
water isn't getting out, the stucco will continue to degrade and
you may have a mold problem at some point. Both situations can
be very expensive to fix.
When checking out perspective home buying opportunities, the
exterior of the home should be looked at very closely. In this
case, the merits of the home all come down to the details.
More Information:Visit
http://www.fsboamerica.org/ for more details.
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