Real Estate Tips From a New Homeowner

There are a lot of other features to look for in a home for sale other than appearance and number of rooms. Although a beautiful home is certainly an important, valid desire that many people can focus on for their purchase, if your work and personal life needs other features--no matter how seemingly small or simple--you may end up miserable in a beautiful house if you're not choosing carefully. For tech households, keep a few of these home features and local amenities in mind.

Inspect Electrical Wiring And General Tech Infrastructure

Any home you choose must have an electrical inspection. Unless you're looking for a challenging renovation project or need the cheapest house on the market, you could end up paying a lot more than planned without an inspection.

Depending on how bad the electrical problem is, you may need to hire a team to tear down walls and completely overhaul the wiring. It could be as simple as pulling out a few specific wires that may not be a huge cost, but if you wait until after you move in and notice a problem, you'll have to move furniture out of the way.

It's a scale of huge costs to slight annoyance, and it's better to just handle the issue ahead of time. Along with the inspection and repair suggestions, consider asking for a discount on the home or asking for the repairs to be made before you move in at no cost to you.

If you're handling the repairs yourself, consider installing network cabling in the walls before you move in. This will make it easier to set up a computer or other devices on dedicated network wiring instead of relying on wireless, and you won't have to drag cables across the floor and around walls.

Internet Service Options By Neighborhood And House

Although some people still cling to the idea that internet is a privilege, being without the internet is a huge disadvantage if you're not independently wealthy or working at your dream job that doesn't require internet. Bill payments, research, schoolwork, and work from home arrangements are all vital tasks.

That's not to diminish the importance of enjoying yourself with everything that the internet has to offer. There's nothing wrong with wanting a home in a neighborhood that has decent internet options that won't cause Netflix problems or rampant disconnects from your favorite online games.

The neighborhood part is the most important. When Internet Service Providers (ISPs) install their cabling, they have specific contracts and goals to cover specific areas. Although some ISPs may have a de facto monopoly over a small town or parts of a city, there could still be a few homes or apartments just beyond where the physical cables are installed, or outside of metropolitan Wi-Fi (wireless internet).

Be sure to look up which ISPs are in the town, then call each ISP and verify your housing option's address down to the house number and even apartment/suite number. This includes national services such as Spectrum, Cox, AT&T, Google, Verizon, Comcast, and local ISPs.

It's not always simple to install new cabling just for your home. Best case scenario, an ISP can create a quick cable across telephone lines from the next closest home or service pole. In many situations, digging into the ground requires a contract and expensive digging that the ISP won't do without multiple customers to justify the costs.