Tag Archives: house hunt

Finding An Inspector

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With a conditional offer in hand, our next challenge was lifting said conditions. A rural property is fairly similar to an urban one in terms of offering: they are usually conditional on finance, insurability and an inspection. Additional conditions are added that require the septic to be pumped and testing of the well water, and that pretty much covers things off.

An inspection of a 150 year old property, however, is not the same as the inspection of a new house in a subdivision that was built a few years ago. They didn't have building codes in the 19th century. There were conventions, to be certain, but there have been good builders and bad builders since the dawn of time. And 'caveat emptor' has been a commonplace expression since Latin was in regular use.

Given that we were making a significant investment in a building that had aspects constructed in several different periods, I wanted someone that knew what they were doing. Finding that someone, however, is much easier said then done.

Home inspections is an industry that is rife with abuses. Not that this is exactly a unique situation, mind you. But pretty much anyone can put out there shingle and call themselves a home inspector. And many apparently do. This, in fact, is one of the reasons for the popularity of the show 'Holmes Inspection' on HGTV. We get to watch episode after episode of disasters uncovered post-inspection, inevitably followed by Mike Holmes' crew gleefully ripping down drywall.

The problem if qualifications is apparently particularly rife in Ontario, where the provincial association responsible for the development of standards was pretty much ignoring this responsibility. A good summary of the issue is summarized in this article. While there is now a national certification body, however, and an active provincial organization, distinguishing the really good from the merely competent is a struggle.

Early in my research I found one inspector that I really, really wanted to inspect the house. Cam Allen has a great deal of experience in inspections, particularly in terms of heritage properties, and writes a regular column on the subject for the Kingston Whig Standard. Sadly, he's based in Kingston, and our house isn't; hiring him for the job wasn't going to happen, but he does provide a huge array of resources in his columns and web site for anyone looking to buy a heritage property.

Following on the success of the television program, Mike Holmes actually has his own inspection company, Mike Holmes Inspections. If you watch his show, he reinforces time and again the importance of checking qualifications. Making sure the person you hire is experienced. Checking references. Great advice that I would reinforce to anyone hiring a professional, regardless of discipline.

Given the apparent credibility (and the significant premium his company charges) I decided to check them out. And I have to say that while the show is great, and Holmes has written a really solid book on home inspections that I would recommend to anyone, I am less than impressed with the company and their approach to customer service. Calling for more information, I first got a recording that said to wait on the line to book an inspection, and otherwise go to their website for more information. For someone who had read the web site and had more questions, there wasn't another option offered.

Waiting anyway, I got a call centre agent that was happy to book an inspection, but had minimal information by which to qualify who the person would be that would do our inspection if we chose to proceed with them. Inspectors aren't assigned until after an inspection is booked. While there are general qualifications for their inspectors, they don't share individual names, qualifications or references. Do they have inspectors qualified in the inspection of heritage properties? No. Right, then. Time to keep looking.

I did call around, and talked to several different people. Questions I recommend asking: What is your experience? What are your qualifications? What is your professional background prior to becoming a home inspector? What is your process for conducting an inspection? What tools do you use? What is your experience in inspecting heritage properties? Can I have references for inspections that you have done in the past at heritage properties? The range of detail, and the range of willingness to even answer the questions, was telling unto itself.

A big point of dissension currently is the use of thermographic imaging. Anyone who has seen an inspection on Holmes Inspection has seen Mike pull out his trusty camera, and show an area with massively varying levels of surface temperature. Which is exactly what (and only what) these devices measure. I talked to inspectors that dismissed their use as irrelevant (and didn't have them, relying on their eyes, nose, screwdriver and ladder to do the job). I talked to inspectors that didn't have them, but were certified in their use, and were willing to subcontract someone to do a thermographic inspection if that is what I wanted (and that planned on getting a camera eventually, when prices came down a bit more, provided customers would pay more for its use). I talked to inspectors that said that they had value, in specific contexts, to probe for more information where the presence and source of a problem wasn't obvious.

I finally talked to one company (after calling nearly 10) that exuded confidence and competence. And, probably as a result, was booked for at least a week solid. The partners had done nearly 10,000 inspections each. Both were engineers. They had significant experience in heritage homes. They don't try to compare heritage homes to current building standards; they ask whether the property was in the condition that it should be for when and how it was actually built. They call a spade a spade, and aren't afraid to highlight a major problem if they find one. They have a thermographic camera, they use it in situations where it is required, and they don't charge extra for bringing one along.

And so, finally, we had a house inspector. Unfortunately, their availability and mine meant that our appointment isn't for another week, and it will only give us a few days afterwards to satisfy any concerns about the property. But I would rather wait longer for a good inspection, rather than getting a shoddy one done quickly. We'll see where we are in another week.

Noise, Noise, Noise

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While we were at a short list of one, there was still a question of whether the other property would work for us. The space was great, the buildings seemed to be in good condition, and the grounds were gorgeous. But, in keeping with typical farmhouse construction, where travel by horse meant keeping distances short, the house is closer to the road than we would desire.

While the road isn’t a major secondary road (it doesn’t really go from anywhere to anywhere) it is certainly the main road from town through to the main highway, which means it gets its share of traffic. And visiting the house the previous day highlighted the amount of road noise while standing outside. So, while everything else about the property worked, the noise was a major sticking point.

Boo Manor – From the street

We currently live in downtown Toronto. Noise is an ever-present reality, but one that you just have to expect if you choose to live in the thick of things.  It’s a bonus to be so close to pretty much everything, but you have to  learn to accept the noise – and to largely ignore it. It had become quickly clear to Dianne, however, that for our place in the country, silence (with the possible exeption of crickets) was to be much preferred.

This meant that, for all that we loved the house, if we couldn’t figure out something to do with it, it was going to drop off the list. We briefly settled on a plan: go back to the house and listen again, and meet with a landscaper to figure out what we could do.

Dianne, resident queen of the Internet, also did some searching, and found some great resources. In particular, an episode of ‘This Old House’ had actually dealt with a problem very similar to ours, of an old farmhouse right on a road, and explored in detail what they had done to alleviate the noise. In essence, there are two options: abatement and mitigation. Figure out a way to reduce the actual noise, or find a way to hide it.

In terms of abatement, the optimal option is a wall. A tall, thick, solid wall. This can come in a number of forms – there are custom solutions involving two panels stuffed with insulation, and various different types of fencing. What these options must have in common, however, is a solid structure with no gaps. Cracks, holes and spaces let noise through. A four foot high solid wall can reduce noice by 6dB (or in practical terms, it cuts noise in half; every increase of 6dB is a doubling of noise). A five foot wall will reduce noise by 10dB, or almost 75%.

Mitigation means, essentially, fighting fire with fire. Making noise to reduce the noise. In particular, water features are great for creating a constant background level of white noise that masks the more intermittent (and therefore more annoying) road noise of cars and trucks passing on the street.

Certainly, a wall would be in keeping with the character of the house. Particularly a stone wall, with periodic columns and maybe some ornate light fixtures. In fact, they would make an already pretty impressive entrance lined with yew trees that much more spectacular. The downside, however, is expense. By our estimate, we’re looking at somewhere between $40 and $50 per square foot for a wall. At 5 feet high, and about 200 feet long, that could be an impressive number.

The result of our investigations, however, meant that we had a solution that we could live with, even if it would be a couple of years or so before we implemented all of it. Given how much else worked for us about the property, we had found enough information to be confident that we could make the space work for us. It was time to make an offer which, after a relatively straightforward negotiation, was accepted.

Boo Manor – Facing the entrance and great room

The One That Got Away (Well, Got Let Go…)

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Faced with trying to make an objective selection, we considered the usual decision making techniques. We made plans to list the likes and the dislikes, to highlight the concerns and to summarize everything that we would want to change. Then we invited my mother along to do an objective review of both properties, and to check whether we were being completely insane about our choices.

There are probably many who would consider inviting their mother (or their mother-in-law) on a house hunting trip to be an activity normally confined to one of the outer circles of hell. We both actually quite like my mother, however, and she’s bought, renovated and sold many a house in her time – so we were quite happy and grateful to have her along.

The properties on our shortlist had a lot going for each of them. They were both acreages, they both had three car garages, they both had the potential for office space over the garage (and one was in fact finished) and they had both started life as stone farmhouses in the mid-1800s.

From there, the similarities began to diverge fairly quickly. The one with the finished office above the garage had an absolutely fantastic great room (that is arguably larger than our condo downtown) and a kitchen that could be made to work with a minimal amount of fuss; it might not be an optimal layout, but we could both at least live with it. There was space for a decent size pantry, a formal dining room and a den for me. Upstairs, though, was more of a challenge. The house was a 1.5 bungalow, which meant angled rooms where walls met roof, and little space for bookshelves or a canopy bed. Moreover, the en suite bath was quite small, as was the master bedroom. Some storage issues could be accommodated by taking over one bedroom as a walk-in-closet, and two additional bedrooms meant that we would be able to either have a guest room and a den for Dianne, or two guest rooms.

The other property had a lot going for it, although there would still need to be some work. The space above the garage was only partly finished, and would need a good deal of work before it could ultimately be used as an office. Dianne was not a fan of the kitchen, neither of us were overwhelmed by the master bathroom, and the guest bathroom needed a complete overhaul. On the other hand, it also had a large great room (not as big as house 1, but still spacious), a very nice sun porch, enough rooms that we could each have a den, there would still be two guest bedrooms, and we could build a very nice and quite large master suite. And the dining room was spectacular. There was also room for a media room downstairs, and space to consider building a wine cellar. On the downside, the house is close to a busy road, and traffic noise had the potential to be a show stopper.

So how to decide? One the one hand, there was property with a great great room and a number of other compromises. On the other hand, a property that ticked most of the boxes, but certainly would need renovations to make it ultimately work for us. Or there simply recognizing that we had just started our search, and we might want to find out what is behind Door No. 3.

On the drive home, however, we came to the difficult realization that the one with the finished office and the awesome great room simply wasn’t going to work for us. For all that we loved the great room (and Dianne really, really loved the great room) there were simply too many compromises to make it work. There was very little storage. The lawn needed significant work. Half the property was given over to a paddock and horse barn that we would never use (although there was brief consideration of storing the motorcycles in the barn, one per stall). And most importantly, the bedroom spaces would have been a significant compromise in terms of space, not to mention furniture.

And so, we were down to a shortlist of one. But one with some noise issues. We weren’t down to a decision yet.

Needles In Haystacks

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So how do you find a house when you can live pretty much anywhere? Or at least, anywhere within a 90-ish minute radius of Toronto?

We figured we would find a buyer’s agent to help us with the search. Except that isn’t actually as easy as it sounds. Our criteria were clear (if not simple): a unique character home, on at least an acre of land, with mature trees and enough space for us to live and work. It needed to not be in downtown Toronto (for reasons of price) nor in the suburbs (for reasons of preference). And ideally, it would be off the beaten path in terms of commuting (for reasons of traffic). Really, how hard could this be?

As it turned out, the resulting search area extended from Mono and Mulmur in the east and north and to Stratford in the west, with little preference for being north or south of the 401 (aforementioned criteria notwithstanding). This encompasses seven separate and distinct counties and since agents mostly specialize is specific regions (at most, 3 or 4 counties), it was impossible to find one that would cover all this ground.

In the face of this little challenge, Dianne took on house hunting with a vengeance, diligently working through pretty much every property in each area, to come up with a list of 35 candidates. We subsequently whittled that list down to a dozen extremely strong candidates, which lost another two that were already sold. Cue an intense (insane?) weekend tour of Southern Ontario that took us to 10 houses, and put about 1,000 kms on my car. At the end of this, we had learned a great deal (especially about reading between the lines of realtor listings and house pictures) about what was out there, and what was not. And we had whittled our list down to two immediate candidates.

Making a choice between these two, though, would not be easy. While there was a lot to like about each, Dianne and I both had clear preferences going in. But the good news was that there were actually two really good options.

Saying Goodbye And Starting Over

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Home is an important concept. As I have found over the past year, it is a particularly important concept to me.

When Dianne and I made the decision to move back to Toronto, we left behind the house we had built in Edmonton in 2006. The house of our dreams, we had expected to live in it for at least 10 years, if not more. By the time the wheels of our relocation were put in motion, we had not yet lived there for five years.

What followed was a frustrating exercise in attempting to sell the house. We loved it. Everyone who visited had loved it. We had received offers to buy it even while we were building it, and knew of several friends that coveted it. How hard could selling our dream home be? Pretty hard, as it turned out.

Combine a challenging economy, a higher-end home and an extremely unique layout, and you have the recipe for a very long sales cycle. We knew someone would eventually fall in love with it, but we certainly didn’t expect it to take as long as it did. Fortunately, 15 months after putting our beloved home on the market, it found a new family to love it. And we were able to finally get on with looking for a new place of our own.

Cue the house hunt.