Check out the neighborhood!
You found your dream house, but before you close on it, make sure it isn't in a nightmare of a neighborhood.

Buyers in a hurry often are tempted to finalize a property purchase quickly. No one wants an appealing house and good mortgage deal to slip through their fingers BUT if the home you want to buy turns out to be sitting on the major route to the town dump, you could end up feeling very sorry!  Here are some ways to try and determine whether or not the home you're thinking about buying is truly in a location you can live with.


You're buying more than a house
In most cases, you can check out your new neighborhood at the same time you're taking a closer look at the house itself.  Drive by your home-to-be at different hours of the day to get a sense of the community and spend some time walking around the neighborhood. Then drive to your job or to the school your children will attend.

Talk to your potential neighbors. They can tell you whether the area's on the local airport's most-direct flight path. Or, if the city plans to widen the road, whether you'll wake up one day to a huge chunk gone from your front lawn. And current residents, as well as your community's police force, can fill you in on crime rates for the neighborhood.


Zero in on zoning
Don't stop with the neighbors and the police. Check in with the local planning department. Is that house you have your eye on, on two and a half acres at the edge of town, going to be surrounded by a huge subdivision next year? The planning folks can tell you what sort of zoning your prospective home is in. Out west, wide-open spaces usually mean little or no government oversight. So the rancher nearby could put in a smelly pig farm or the failing neighborhood restaurant might be able to become a strip club!  In rural properties in counties without strict zoning, what you see is not always what you get - it may be wide open to any type of zoning. What you have to understand is that if it's in the middle of nowhere it may NOT be like that forever.

In addition, mineral rights may not convey with rural properties. In these cases, if someone else owns the mineral rights and decides to lease them, you could end up with an oil rig in your backyard with little or no say in the matter. Ask a real estate salesperson who's totally uninvolved in the proceedings to give a realistic appraisal, not of the house, but its location. Find a good broker that you're not working with.  Buy an hour of his time and ask him to 'Tell me everything you think I should know about the property.'


Differing disclosure laws
Why go to the added expense of hiring a neighborhood inspector? Because state laws differ on how much a seller needs to disclose to a potential buyer. I recommend a one-page form which asks sellers for any and all information they have on changes in local zoning, noise pollution, airport proximity, road widening, waste treatment and other possible residential nightmares. The document would then become part of the purchase agreement.

If your agent doesn't offer such protections as a matter of course, ask for something similar for your home purchase. Such disclosure documents should give purchasers a fair picture of what they're buying. For the most part, sellers do not deliberately deceive people into buying a home under fraudulent circumstances because they realize they'll face legal action.  A home buyer in a state with less purchaser-friendly statutes might face an uphill battle if the home turns out to be a lemon. So to prevent unexpected surprises after you move in, carefully inspect your new neighborhood as well as your home before you sign the contract.


Content source Bankrate