Episode summary
A lot of agents tour a house the way a used car salesman walks you around a 1995 Honda Civic — pointing at the stereo so you don't notice the caved-in rear bumper. This episode is the opposite of that. Dave spent years in construction before he sold real estate, and Nick handed him the wheel: how do you actually walk a house?
Water first. Roughly 80% of construction litigation in the Pacific Northwest comes back to water — and the main failure isn't exotic, it's bulk water nobody managed. Missing flashing. Gutters that were installed wrong, or that haven't been cleaned since the Bush administration. A downspout that kicks two feet and quits. Grade that slopes toward the house instead of away. The single most useful skill you can borrow from a builder is learning to think like water: stand in the driveway, watch it fall, and follow where it goes. And know this going in — concrete is not waterproof. It's porous. A pre-1980s foundation almost certainly has no modern water management on it at all.
Then structure, because it's the other thing you can't cheaply fix. A hairline crack on a flat wall is usually just drywall settling into its final resting place. A crack where the surface is visibly out of plane is something else. Bows, dips, humps in a ceiling where a wall used to be, doors that won't latch, undersized joists somebody swapped in because they were cheap — those are the findings that move a house's value by tens of thousands.
Then the systems, and the question behind all of them: does this look like a licensed pro did it, or does it look like Ted and his Honda Civic? Furnaces get about fifteen years now. Galvanized steel rusts shut from the inside until the top-floor tap trickles. Old copper fails at the joints. Three different materials in one plumbing system means nobody ever planned it — they just patched what broke. And knob-and-tube in an older city home is less a safety emergency than an insurance one.
Then, last, the part everyone starts with. Finishes are the easiest thing to change. The floor plan is the hardest. People talk themselves into a house and then spend ten years hating one quirk an architect added to save fifty square feet.
We also get into what AI is and isn't good for here: genuinely useful for what am I looking at and should I care, genuinely bad at what a repair costs. Dave got quoted $1,500 a window by ChatGPT, which is roughly a third of what anyone who warranties the work will charge.
The companion piece: we made a one-page Home Touring Checklist that follows this same order. It's free to read on the site, and there's a printable PDF if you'd rather carry it.
Hosted by Nick Aufenkamp and Dave Miller of The Tartan Team, brokered by Real Broker, LLC. Serving Clark County and Southwest Washington.
In this episode
- [00:00] Dave would like, someday, to be offered the intro
- [02:17] The listing agent's anxiety: what is that buyer's agent going to say?
- [03:12] The quality gap — "I love that dining table" versus an actual method
- [04:31] Why Nick hands the episode to Dave
- [05:21] Scope: detached single-family homes, and why condos are a different animal
- [07:13] Era of build — what each decade tells you before you arrive
- [08:35] The research that happens before you step on the property
- [09:39] Clark County GIS: liquefaction, floodplain, wetland, slope
- [12:08] Three materials in one plumbing system, and what that tells you
- [13:01] CPVC — not outlawed, just bad
- [14:05] Why agents steer buyers toward new construction
- [15:00] The owner-finished basement, and what's behind the drywall
- [18:04] Due diligence on work already done: who, when, permitted, warrantied?
- [19:03] Market conditions decide whether your list is leverage or just a budget
- [20:10] Bring a boilerplate home inspector sheet
- [22:24] 80% of PNW construction litigation is water
- [23:36] "Learn to think like water"
- [24:31] Gutters, downspouts, grade — where does it go once it lands?
- [25:31] Pre-1980s foundations and the myth of waterproof concrete
- [27:38] Siding by era: stucco, asbestos, T1-11, vinyl, fiber cement
- [28:45] Flashing where a roof meets a wall
- [30:08] The stone facade — pretty, and a seismic hazard
- [32:05] Window corners: where rot starts
- [34:13] What ChatGPT thinks a window costs, versus reality
- [35:11] Through the door: stains, and "Zillow can't smell the cat"
- [35:56] Animal smell versus musty smell — one is money, one is a cause
- [37:07] Floors: dips, bounce, squeaks, and undersized joists
- [39:13] The hump in the ceiling where a wall used to be
- [40:35] Which cracks matter: flat wall versus out of plane
- [43:04] Heading off the $30,000 surprise before you pay for an inspection
- [45:16] Mechanical systems: fifteen years on a furnace is a good run
- [46:28] Knob-and-tube, old panels, and why insurers care
- [47:39] Galvanized steel, old copper, and the trickling top-floor tap
- [48:50] Permits, unpermitted outlets, and what that actually means
- [50:08] Does the work look orderly? The vibes-and-feels assessment
- [51:08] Where AI helps, and where it badly doesn't
- [52:14] Panel capacity for EVs, heat pumps, and modern loads
- [53:31] Wastewater: sewer scopes, septic, wells, water quality
- [55:50] Do the research before the offer, not after
- [56:45] Finishes are easy. The floor plan isn't.
- [57:49] The 4,500 square foot house and the country-mile grocery run
- [1:00:58] The best way to learn this is to walk a house with us
Links from this episode
- Home Touring Checklist — the one-page version of this episode, free to read, printable PDF available
- Episode 13: Can You Buy a House Without a Realtor? — last week's episode, which this one follows
- How to tour a home without an agent in Washington — getting in the door in the first place
- Clark County GIS — floodplain, wetland, liquefaction, slope
- Book a Strategy Call
Transcript
Reconstructed from the dual-track recording and lightly edited for readability with AI assistance. Wording is preserved; speaker attribution in fast back-and-forth is approximate.
Nick (00:00): Hey, welcome back to another episode of Disclosures. I am your host, Nick Aufenkamp, along with my wonderful co-host Dave Miller. Dave, what's going on?
Dave (00:08): Not a whole lot. I was just wondering if I'm ever gonna get the opportunity to open the podcast.
Nick (00:13): Never. Absolutely never.
Dave (00:15): You're very vindictive about the introduction.
Nick (00:18): Here's the thing. We have a flow. A little while back we were like, you know, we should shoot some just get-to-know-you videos for the website. And it did not go well. It was like, no, are you gonna say the line or am I gonna say the line?
Dave (00:32): Yeah, it was painful. But it's not good for the working relationship. It made me decide that you can do the intro.
Nick (00:39): Thank you.
Dave (00:40): But it's not that I even want to do it. It's just that I want you to offer me the opportunity to do it. The fact that you have it hurts. It cuts like a knife.
Nick (01:01): Wow, this is turning into a therapy session really quickly.
Dave (01:05): Different type of couple.
Nick (01:07): Yeah, listeners, if you've got any recommendations for how we work through this conflict, let us know in the comments. That would be most appreciated. But apart from psychoanalyzing whatever's going on in your heart and mind related to the podcast intro — what are we talking about today?
Dave (01:22): We're talking about touring houses. Kind of hot off the heels of last week, where we talked about representing yourself. And the topic is near and dear to my heart, because a lot of agents show houses the same way a used car salesman would try to show you the features of your 1995 Honda Civic and get you to not notice the huge caved-in rear bumper.
Nick (01:48): You say that like you're speaking from some experience.
Dave (01:51): Screw you, Ted. Ted, I hope you get the message.
Nick (02:17): But no, you make a very good point. This is actually one of the quirks of real estate agency, right? You have this listing agent who, if they're good, they've spent potentially months — I've had clients that I've been working with for a year before the house goes live. And during that whole time, I'm learning as the listing agent so much about the history of the home, about the improvements that have been made. I've toured through it probably a dozen times before it's gone onto the market. So as the listing agent, I've got a pretty good idea of what's going on with that house.
Nick (03:12): And then I feel this as a listing agent, because some buyer's agent is coming through with their client, and all of a sudden that buyer's agent is supposed to be the expert on the home — but they're walking into it typically just as cold as the buyers are, sometimes in the midst of seeing four or five houses. So there's always this anxiety as both a listing agent and a seller: what in the world is that buyer's agent going to say? What are the things that they're going to look for?
Nick (03:40): This is where there's a huge quality gap in the industry, because there are some buyer's agents where all they want to do is highlight the things that are pretty. "Oh my goodness, I love that dining table. And are these Café appliances? These are the nicest appliances on the market." You know, that whole kind of thing. And then there are others that actually come at the tour with much more of a method — quality of build, mechanicals, the stuff that is far less sexy but far more important long term — so that they can actually advise their client on, hey, is this a solid home, a good buy, or not?
Nick (04:31): So that sets the stage at a high level. One of the things that I love about working with you is that because of your background in the trades, because of the work that you've done in construction, you have not only walked through hundreds and hundreds of homes from very entry-level to super high-end multimillion-dollar custom homes — you also have a very practical knowledge of, hey, here's what actually goes into a home that lasts. So I really want you to drive this episode: how does Dave Miller approach touring a house?
Dave (05:05): Hmm. That's a lot of pressure. All I wanted was the intro. I didn't want to have to drive the whole episode.
Nick (05:12): Well, careful what you wish for, my friend.
Dave (05:15): I guess so. No — if you're a listener and you're thinking, this seems pretty overwhelming, it can be. And the problem is there's so many different dimensions to homes and so many different categories that it can be really difficult to apply the exact methodology across the vast array of houses that you have.
Dave (05:40): And even for us, the Tartan Team, it's pretty safe to say 95% of our sales, whether listing or helping people buy, are detached single-family homes. But then there's the dimension of — are we talking about things to know about condos? Are we getting into taller buildings, and the type of assessments that come once you're talking about a building at scale, or complexity in the HOA?
Dave (06:21): So to not get too far down in the weeds, let's keep the conversation focused on detached single-family homes for today. And if you are looking at a condo or a townhome, especially something in a more commercial setting like a high-rise type building, just know there's another layer of complexity involved. There are markets like New York City where there are so many rules around all of that, which you and I couldn't really speak very authoritatively to, just because of different buildings, different local regulations, all those things.
Dave (07:13): Not to belabor the point, but to set the stage: it really depends on your category. So at a large scale it's, all right, what am I looking at? Am I looking at a single-family home? The next thing I'm going to be considering walking in — which seems a little bit obvious — is what's the age of the home? And it's like, okay, yeah, duh, we want to know how old the home is. But beyond that, because of my background I have the ability to draw on a really solid understanding of the construction methodologies I'm likely to see in a home based off of what decade it was built in, and any associated issues that come with it.
Dave (07:55): So if we're out here in earthquake country, anything before pretty much the late eighties, you're going to be looking at potential issues with meeting seismic code, and potentially looking at needing or wanting an earthquake retrofit — whether for peace of mind or because of insurance issues. You could say a similar thing if you're in a fire zone at the top of a ridge.
Dave (08:35): So there are a lot of factors that play in based off of the age of the house and the location of the house. And unless you've spent years walking multiple houses and assessing different houses on different lots, it becomes too much information to categorize. So you hit me with the question, what is the methodology? You have to go in — before you even get to the door of the house — with a solid understanding of what are, just pick, the five major potential issues with the house, and go in understanding the context of the age of the house and where the house sits in your given area.
Nick (09:20): So you're saying that even before you step foot on the property, there's already some research that you're doing ahead of the physical tour to understand: okay, if it's in this particular era of building, here are some of the strengths of that era, here are some of the weaknesses. This is going to set my expectations of things that I want to look for or verify while I'm in the house.
Nick (09:39): And then you're also looking at, like here in Clark County, the GIS — to look for, okay, what is the likelihood for liquefaction, or are we in floodplain or wetland kind of zones? Those sorts of things, to give you a sense of environmental hazards.
Dave (09:55): Yeah, environmental hazards. And I guess I'd say I'm not necessarily doing this for every property we look at or tour with a client before we look at it. But as it becomes more clear that a property is a serious contender, we need to have these questions answered.
Dave (10:15): As it relates to the specifics of the house — if we're talking about maximizing the time in the house when we're actually touring, I want to have those questions. I want to know the questions to ask before I walk the property. Am I going to look for signs of an earthquake retrofit, a seismic retrofit installation on this house that will give it some degree of earthquake resilience? Although that could be its whole own topic. And more so, it punches the ticket for insurance, right?
Dave (10:49): So what did that take? It took an understanding of: all right, I'm in Clark County in Southwest Washington, we are in a seismic zone. So I now know that there's a potential for an insurance issue with this house if it hasn't been updated, or higher insurance. And all these things — they're not necessarily deal breakers, but they're things you want to go in looking for so you can make the most informed purchase on your property.
Dave (11:30): So before I walked in — let's just say this house is a 1960. And I'm picking 1960 because Nick and I just toured a home the other day that had some complexities around it. It's an older house that's been updated throughout time, and some of the workmanship was not done in a start-to-finish cohesive manner. So you start to see these different mechanical systems that are kind of patched in and were worked as best they could be over time.
Nick (12:08): To make it very objective — it's not uncommon in a house to find three different material types in the plumbing. So you can have a galvanized steel pipe that goes into, what is it, CPVC?
Dave (12:24): CPVC. Pretty rare to see out here, but it was very common in the nineties.
Nick (12:32): Right — or is that when the lawsuit was?
Dave (13:01): Well, there's been several lawsuits for different pipe systems over the years. But I don't think CPVC is actually outlawed. It's just considered a very poor product. Poor-performing, susceptible to leaks at a higher rate than other methods. So you're going from steel, to essentially plastic PVC piping, to then copper or PEX.
Nick (13:25): And you can see, within one plumbing system, three or four different materials. And that's the kind of thing where it's like — this wasn't a cohesive, planned "let's update the entire system." This is a "we had a leak or an issue, or we wanted to add a sink here, and decided we'll just patch in this particular material."
Dave (13:45): Yeah. So to back it up — there's a reason a lot of agents prefer to steer their clients toward newer construction homes. And it's because the reality is, the newer a home is, the more likely stuff was done correctly, or at bare minimum it was done with modern materials.
Dave (14:05): And there's this really strong perception that all new construction now is just shoddily put together and slapped up as fast as you can. And in some cases that's true, but in other cases there is real craftsmanship that goes in. There's also a sense that our modern building codes have so many more constraints on them than they did sixty, seventy years ago, that even if you build a house that doesn't quite hit code, you can make an argument from certain mechanical and structural aspects that it's still going to perform better — or be a better home — than a house that was built in 1960 and then updated fifteen times over those sixty years.
Nick (14:50): Sure.
Dave (15:00): So a lot of agents steer people away from an older home, and understandably so, because it does take a real dimension of either experience or research to make sure you don't get bit on buying an older home. And in a real sense, there's only so much a person walking through can do if all the walls are closed.
Dave (15:25): The house we were in the other day has a basement, and the basement was all finished with drywall. And it wasn't a walkout basement — it was, not as common around here, a ranch-style house with a full finished basement with garden-level windows, is what we would call it back home. Which is a very common architectural style, or a floor plan, for certain parts of the country. Less so here in Clark County.
Dave (16:03): But the point I bring up is the basement that has been finished, oftentimes by a homeowner. These houses, when they get built, usually just the first floor is finished, and then the basement floor might get finished by the owner themselves over time. And a lot of the time that shows in the work — that maybe stuff isn't done. There's a real sense that you're assessing the overall quality of the finish, and does stuff feel a little bit off, or does it feel really dialed in?
Dave (16:40): And that's not a 100% metric that says definitively, if it's pretty, that means what's behind the walls was done well.
Nick (16:50): Yeah.
Dave (17:07): But the point is, it's a scary thing to buy an older house that you have no permit records on, that has been likely finished by a homeowner, or the homeowner's cheapest bid. All to say — not to belabor the point too much more — the older the house, the more risk you are going to be assuming, and the more things you're going to need to look at. As you mentioned, the plumbing system being disjointed. And as much as this house we toured, we were very lucky to be able to see the plumbing systems.
Nick (17:45): Nice thing with the basement and having exposed rafters, right, is being able to look up and see all the plumbing.
Dave (17:52): This is why we don't let me drive the episode.
Nick (18:04): Just real quick — so in general, the older the house, the more risks there are, perhaps unless there have been updates to those systems. But then it becomes really important to do the due diligence on who did the work, what was the scope of the work, was it permitted, how long ago was it done, are there warranties on it?
Dave (18:25): Correct. Yep. And a lot of it is back-end information you can find. And if you're walking into a house and something feels kind of off, that's a good cue to take.
Dave (19:03): It's funny, because your ability to look at the house and be really picky is really limited by what the current market conditions are. Like if it's 2021 and you're looking at the CPVC water line connected to the galvanized line and you're like, I don't know, that worries me, I don't know if this is worth what it's listed for — it's like, well, it doesn't really matter, because there's three more buyers who are willing to offer ten grand over asking.
Dave (19:35): So it gets to the point where the unfortunate reality is you have to take into account the whole context of what the market's doing, in terms of your ability to negotiate and leverage these issues that could come up in negotiation. It might be more that you're looking at this just as an eyes-wide-open entrance into the purchase.
Nick (19:55): Yeah — know your true cost of ownership. Be able to budget for, all right, in the next five years or so, probably going to need to do that.
Dave (20:10): Yeah. And so I guess, maybe back up and say, all right, do the tour real quick, and I'll try to give the high level. It would be hard to really give a comprehensive list of every single thing I'm doing when I'm walking a house, because with the experience I have, I'm looking at it almost more as a home inspector than I am as a real estate agent. And there's just things that you learn through experience in construction.
Nick (20:40): Caught, not taught.
Dave (20:42): Yeah. And what I would recommend is, if you're either representing yourself, or your agent isn't really experienced with the mechanical side of the home — the overall condition of the systems, and the majors like the siding, the roofing, any of the interior finishes — if you're working with an agent and it's clear to you that that's not their strong suit, I would recommend getting a boilerplate home inspector sheet. You can get a lot of these offline. Just take it with you. It helps you look through things and check things off and make notes, and it helps you get in your head to look at things that you might not think of otherwise.
Dave (21:12): And your agent — this would be my little soapbox — whether or not they should be educated in these things and have an eye to warn you about them. Not that anyone expects agents to be home inspectors, but to have a better understanding than "wow, I think the granite countertops are beautiful, look at that," right?
Nick (21:35): Like, we want you to go in eyes wide open to the purchase.
Dave (21:40): So I guess real quick I'll just run through, and then stop me. Does that sound good?
Nick (21:45): Yeah, absolutely.
Dave (22:24): So, one of the major things to consider, especially here if you're in the Pacific Northwest: 80% of all construction litigation — and that's primarily remodeling and new home construction — has to do with water. That can be in several ways. There's vapor transmission, but the main way that shows up is failure to manage what is called bulk water. So that's, you didn't have flashing details on the exterior.
Nick (22:55): Correct.
Dave (22:57): You didn't have gutters installed, or they were installed incorrectly, or if we're talking an older house, they no longer function because they haven't been cleaned.
Dave (23:36): Water's the number one killer of buildings. If there's one thing I could tell you to take away from this podcast, it's that. So much of being a good builder is learning to think like water. That's what a lot of the people I follow and learn from, who are in the performance building space — that's how they talk. That's what they say. Imagine what the water's going to do once it hits.
Nick (24:00): 'Cause if you're in the Pacific Northwest, for about eight months a year, it hits a lot of water.
Dave (24:08): Continually. So if you're thinking as I'm walking up to a house — those are my first thoughts. What's the gutter situation look like? What's the roof situation look like? Hopefully most houses here have gutters. What do the gutter and downspout situations look like? Where that water falls from the sky, can it get into the house immediately? If it's coming off the roof properly, where is it going?
Dave (24:31): And with that, I'm looking at the grade of the yard. Once the water hits the ground, is it flowing toward the home or away from it? We want to catch as much of that water off of the roof and get it dozens, if not hundreds, of feet away.
Dave (24:50): And if you're in a newer subdivision, you more than likely have an underground stormwater system that ties into the city's stormwater system. So that's great. That goes back into the context of how old is my home. If you're in an older neighborhood, you might not have a stormwater collection system provided by the municipality. You might just have a downspout that kicks a foot or two.
Dave (25:10): And that might not be enough, depending on what your grading is. If your house sits at the top of a hill, that two-foot downspout might get it far enough away from the foundation that now that water's off to the races down the hill. But if you're on a really flat lot, that two-foot downspout might only take it far enough away that during a heavy rain it saturates and creates a little pool that grows and works its way back toward the foundation.
Dave (25:31): Which, back to our example house — this split level that has the finished basement, a house that is built, let's just call it, before the eighties — likely had no modern waterproofing done to the foundation, unless there was some sort of retrofit. So what that means is there's more than likely just a concrete wall. Maybe they slapped a little bit of tar on it, if we're talking sixties or seventies, but not what we would consider a modern water management system that's going to keep that basement dry.
Dave (26:10): So as I walk up I'm thinking, all right, is it an older house? If it is — how well is the water managed, if it has a basement? If your house is on a crawl space that's unvented, the water management risk if you have water coming in near the foundation is still high, but it's not like you have living space down there with finished organic materials like wood and drywall or laminate flooring.
Dave (26:45): And that water — people think, concrete, you know, it's tough. It's like, concrete is not waterproof.
Nick (26:52): No.
Dave (26:53): It's a porous material. Water can migrate through it.
Nick (26:57): Correct.
Dave (26:58): Okay. So — any questions? Is that clear?
Nick (27:02): Think like water. Think like water.
Dave (27:06): So walking up to the house, once you've assessed the water situation — that's the first major concern as I'm walking up. I'm also looking at just, obviously, the general state of the house. What's the siding look like? And these questions all become a lot easier the newer the house gets, right? And that's once again why a lot of agents prefer to sell new construction houses.
Nick (27:30): Sure. Well, even on siding though, right? Back to what you were saying on the eras.
Dave (27:38): Yeah, in many ways. You can kind of tell the era of a home based upon the siding material. We don't have much stucco out here, but there are some stucco houses, to the asbestos siding, to the vinyl, T1-11 —
Nick (27:55): Yeah, anything that's been built in like the last ten or so years, fifteen years, is the cement fiber board, Hardie plank.
Dave (28:02): Yep. And I mean, more than likely, unless you're in construction, you're probably not qualified to really assess whether the install of your siding is done well. A really obvious thing you could look at is anywhere where you have a roof pitch change that meets — so a roof is the, let's call it horizontal, pitched plane. That's the top part of the house.
Nick (28:25): The top part, yeah, that's right.
Dave (28:27): You're with it.
Nick (28:28): I'm a good agent.
Dave (28:45): And it meets a vertical wall. You're going to want flashing there that keeps the water from running over the edge of that roof and then down onto the siding.
Nick (28:55): Yep.
Dave (28:57): And a lot of this stuff is — maybe you're an experienced homeowner and you're like, a lot of this is pretty basic. It's like, well, it's basic if you're experienced. But that's the point. It's still worth picking up that list and checking these things as you're walking around.
Dave (29:15): And once again, back to the leverage you have given the market situation — it could just be that this is all for your knowledge, things to think about. Or if enough of these things add up, it could really be a disqualifying issue.
Nick (29:35): Disqualifying, or really strong for negotiation.
Dave (30:08): Interestingly, back to our example house — this one-story 1960s — it has this really cool stone facade on it. Not quite like a limestone, but something like that, some sort of local stone, I'm not sure what it was. Made it look kind of mid-century modern. It was interesting. I noticed when we were walking the outside of it that the stone was actually starting to gap a little bit off the wall. Because, as is the case, the back side of the house was shaked asbestos cement siding, but the front had this stone facade. So you could see that the stone was just starting to pull away a little bit.
Dave (30:45): And interestingly enough, going back to what I was saying earlier about your bigger context — out here in earthquake country, stone facades on buildings actually can be some of the most dangerous aspects of having a home that hasn't been updated to seismic code. And not that adding seismic protection on the inside necessarily saves you, but that's something to know.
Dave (30:57): You can think of that whole front wall — it's actual rock. It's stone. It's a sheet of rocks that are tied together with mortar, and they're probably just held with little — they're called masonry ties, brick ties — nailed back to the house. Well, if an earthquake happens, a lot of these facades, especially in older houses, they will peel right off the front of the house and they can fall on whatever is in front of them. Hopefully not you or any of your loved ones.
Dave (31:35): And so back to thinking about our context and knowing where we are and what the hazards are — yeah, that is pretty low odds, but it's something worth knowing if your kids play in the front yard by the front kitchen window. That, hey, this sixties house, this stone might be coming down if there were ever an earthquake.
Nick (32:05): Yeah. Everybody always said the conventional wisdom is, during an earthquake you get outside. And that's actually primarily because people in earthquakes tend to get hurt most by furniture falling over, more so than building failure. But if you're on the outside and you have a two-story brick facade and you're standing in front of your garage waiting for the earthquake to finish, that brick could hit you in the head. Anyways, I digress.
Dave (32:35): But the point being, know your hazards, know your context.
Nick (32:40): Yeah.
Dave (33:22): So we're looking at the siding, we're assessing general condition, we're keeping an eye out for water. I'm going to do extra critical assessment around the lower and upper corners of windows. That's where typically, if a window is installed poorly or improperly, or the flashing hasn't been done right, or the caulking has failed — that's where you're going to start to see softness in the material, and rot.
Dave (33:50): Granted, if you're in a newer house with fiber cement, the fiber cement can actually retain a lot of its strength, and then the wood behind it is what actually rots. Which is an unfortunate situation. But checking around the lower and upper corners of windows and doors is a good thing to do.
Dave (34:13): Assess the window situation. How new are the windows? Does the overall craftsmanship look good, or — if it's an older house that got updated with an insert — does it look haphazardly caulked into place? Is it bug-eyed? That creates its own issues with water management.
Dave (34:35): And it's funny, 'cause windows and doors and siding — that stuff is all sneaky expensive to repair. I was even having a fight with ChatGPT just the other day, as I was doing a property evaluation, and ChatGPT was quoting about fifteen hundred dollars a window for replacement.
Nick (34:55): Yeah. In what world?
Dave (34:58): And especially if you're going to do a proper install with it. Anyone who's going to warranty the work — you're minimum two to three times that. Per window.
Nick (35:08): Uncle Ted and his ninety-five Civic. He'll do it for fifteen hundred.
Dave (35:12): With the caved bumper. You can't buy me, Ted.
Dave (35:16): No. So — exterior site assessment, that's the main thing to know. Water is the biggest killer. And once again, we're not going to be able to tell you every single thing to look at on this podcast, but get that inspection report. So let's keep it moving, hit the big ones.
Nick (35:35): Going through the door — obviously, is there any water staining on any of the surfaces inside the house? The ceiling drywall, any of the walls?
Dave (35:45): That's the — always keeping your eye out for that. Every room you're walking, you're looking for stains, and you're looking for the critical, like on the floor: is it a stain from a cat or a dog? Or is that water that dripped through the ceiling onto the floor?
Nick (35:56): Yeah. I'm also just thinking, oftentimes one of the first things when I open a door to a house that will hit me — or clients — is smell. How big of a deal is that?
Dave (36:08): Yeah. Pretty big. It can be, right? Your buddy Greg — his famous line is "Zillow can't smell the cat," when he was talking about doing CMAs.
Nick (36:20): Shout out Greg Robertson. That's right.
Dave (36:25): So what is the smell? Is it an animal smell from just poor maintenance — which is obviously its own issue — or is it like a musty smell, like there's a ventilation issue smell? Both of those are not good. But the animal smell is something that can probably be fixed with enough money and tearing out enough carpet. If it's a moldy or musty smell coming up from the crawl space, that's something to really take pause on.
Dave (37:07): And so yes — just as on the outside, we are on the inside, both with smell and visually, looking for signs of water, because as we already said, that is the biggest killer. Moving beyond that, but keeping that in mind with all the rooms we're walking, we're also looking and listening for any potential structural defects.
Dave (37:30): Do the floors feel good? And this starts to play a lot more in older houses. Like this sixties house we walked had some floor joists replaced with joists that were two-by-sixes instead of — they were probably two-by-tens in the original. So it's a smaller joist, it has less bearing capacity. And that's an example of a repair that was probably done by the homeowner, because they either didn't know any better or they were cheap.
Dave (37:55): But we're walking rooms and we're saying, are the floors flat? Do we feel any dips in them? We're listening for any squeaks. Most floor squeaks are the subfloor — so that's the board underneath whatever your finished material is, whether that's wood, laminate, carpet. Regardless of what finished material you have, the subfloor-to-joist connection can squeak if it was installed haphazardly, or if it's just really old.
Dave (38:07): And funny enough, that's a bit of a personal pet peeve. That sort of stuff drives me nuts. But we also have clients who — that can make a really big difference to them. You walk around and you hear squeak, squeak, squeak the whole way through the house.
Dave (38:30): So looking at the floors, and then also looking at the ceilings. Back to our example house — it appeared that somebody, you know, we looked up on the ceiling and there's a little hump right vertically in line with a half wall that was below it that used to enclose a staircase. And the people who had done the work did a rather poor job of blending the new drywall to fix the four-and-a-half-inch hole in the ceiling that ran down where they took this wall out.
Dave (39:13): And it really opened up the space. It made that whole space feel a lot better. The potential issue is, once you start taking walls out, if you're not confident that they're not load-bearing, you can create a situation where eventually you're going to get sag in the ceiling, or in a really terrible case, have a structural issue with the bottom chord — the ceiling joist is what it's called — that helps hold up parts of the roof rafters in a house of that age.
Dave (39:50): So we're assessing walls, floors. We're looking for bows, we're looking for anything that looks like there may be movement. A lot of the time a good indicator is if you have major drywall cracking, or if you're in an old enough house you could have even plaster walls.
Nick (40:10): How would you define "major"? Because this is one where I think a lot of folks kind of know, like, I should be looking for cracks — but not all cracks are created equal.
Dave (40:20): Yeah, it's a good question. I'd say most new houses — if we're talking ninety on — and you see a crack in the drywall, more than likely it's a benign crack. It's that the drywall, not even necessarily the house but just the drywall, has finally settled into its final resting place, and that mud joint broke.
Dave (40:35): What I was referring to in my previous point is signs of structural movement. Anything that's indicating that we're having foundation settling issues, or a joist got replaced and now it's starting to bow because it's undersized for the floor load that it's carrying. Those are things that, to be honest, might start to push the average person's ability to really make an assessment, unless you're an engineering type, or you have a background in structural work.
Nick (41:10): Sure.
Dave (41:39): But the more-so point is, even if you're not an expert and you're walking in and you're seeing that floors have bows in them, or ceilings have bows in them —
Nick (41:50): Yeah, to maybe make the point really clear: a drywall crack isn't necessarily indicative of a major structural issue. But seeing a major dip in a floor or a ceiling, in most cases, is. And if the ceiling dips and you see a crack — a crack with a dip, where you can actually see that the wall or the ceiling or the floor isn't straight — that's more indicative of a more major structural issue, as opposed to if you see a crack on a flat wall. That could be a settling issue, but more than likely we're not talking about something that is —
Dave (42:25): Foundation failure, or something. Yeah. It's not something that's going to continue to get worse.
Nick (42:35): Yeah. That's the question. No, that's helpful in really calling out what to flag in that walkthrough. And not that you're going to have every answer, but like you said earlier, it's really about knowing what questions to ask, so that in the process of determining if you want to make an offer — or if you get under contract — what sort of due diligence process you're going to need to do, with what experts, to get answers to these questions.
Dave (43:04): Yeah. So water, structural issues — those are the ones that are really hard to fix. And that's kind of how you have to think about this, right? Most of the time you're going to walk into a house and a lot of people are like, I hate the color in the office anyways, I'm planning on painting it. So the benign drywall crack can be spackled right before you paint.
Dave (43:30): We're walking and we're looking for: all right, is this a major issue that, let's just call it on the tens of thousands — is it ten, twenty, thirty, forty thousand dollars that moves, in my mind, the value of this house?
Nick (43:50): Yeah. That could save you the time of, all right, we're going to go under contract, we're going to get our inspection window, and then I'm going to pay to have a home inspector out, and then he's going to tell me that there's all these issues, and I'm going to think, oh my gosh, that's going to be twenty, thirty thousand dollars and I just don't think it's worth it. Better to try and head as much of that off before you've spent seven hundred bucks on an inspection as well.
Dave (44:02): Exactly. And that's really where I think we as a team bring a lot of value to our clients — is both of our experience in construction, yours more so in new construction and mine in older homes and renovations. But we're looking for the majors.
Dave (45:16): And so with that, once again, newer homes — you have a better bet with the three mechanical systems: HVAC, plumbing and electrical. Those are things that everyone kind of knows. HVAC is going to need to be updated. Equipment lasts — you know, we used to say twenty-five years. All my friends in the HVAC industry now say, yeah, fifteen years for a furnace, you're getting pretty lucky.
Dave (45:45): But also, the electrical and plumbing are not systems that never need updating. And if you go far enough back in time — I'm talking now houses that are 1900, 1900s-tens, 1920s — a lot of those electrical systems are completely outdated. So if you're in like the heart of Portland you might hear about knob-and-tube wiring.
Nick (46:10): And even in downtown Vancouver.
Dave (46:12): Yeah, absolutely, or in downtown Vancouver. Those sorts of systems can be unbelievably costly to replace in their entirety. Or — do they need to be replaced? In a lot of cases, in terms of "is this going to continue to function," the answer is most of the time yes. Most of what drives, specifically on the electrical side, those systems being completely retrofitted, is insurance. They will no longer cover homes that have —
Nick (46:28): Because there's a heightened danger of fire. An increased likelihood of electrical fire.
Dave (46:35): Correct. But the same thing with water lines. You mentioned galvanized water lines. I had a buddy — we were renovating his house, and it was a very tall three-story house that had galvanized water lines from like the 1930s. And on the inside, because they're steel lines, they rust slowly from the water. And at the top floor, the lines had rusted on the interior so that the interior diameter of that pipe continued to shrink, so much to the point where he had no more water pressure. You turned the tap all the way open and just a little trickle would come out.
Dave (47:39): So I say that to illustrate the point: these systems don't last forever, and you need to once again look at the context of how old is the house, what were the materials that were installed. If you have copper that was installed sixty or seventy years ago, copper is a really good system. The insides of the pipes don't corrode the same way a steel pipe does, and copper systems can last a lot longer. Although it's also worth noting that copper tends to start to have more failures fifty years on — failures in the joints, because the metal they use to join the pipes together is a different metal from the copper itself, and those joints can start to corrode.
Nick (48:20): Exactly.
Dave (48:50): And so, all to say, when we're walking in, we're going to assess: all right, what's the electrical look like? With all these systems, we're going to assess what is the general age and condition. And then also we're going to seriously look at, does it look like they were installed by somebody who was licensed and knew what they were doing, or does it look like a homeowner did it?
Dave (49:15): And permits are really helpful — to search your permit record and know. The reality is, most houses, if they're more than thirty years old, they're probably going to have had some update that was done without a permit. Now that doesn't mean — just because a permit wasn't pulled, that doesn't inherently mean that it's a hazardous install. But the reality is, if you call an electrician out to add an outlet five feet up on your wall so you can plug in a TV and not have the cord hang low, the reality is that electrician's probably not going to pull a permit. Whether or not he should, whether or not that's what the law says — the reality is, if he charges you a hundred and fifty dollars for the job, he doesn't in a lot of cases want you to pay an additional hundred dollars for the permit.
Nick (50:00): Yeah.
Dave (50:08): And so that's just kind of the nature and the reality of living in houses that are older over time. But an overall assessment of: does this look like Ted in his Honda Civic did the work, or does it look like somebody who actually knew what they were doing, and there's an orderliness to the work? If you're not a technical person and you don't have the experience, the best way you can go about trying to make an assessment is — does the work look orderly? Does it look like it was done with craftsmanship?
Dave (50:45): And that's a really sort of vibes-and-feels way to assess it. But the reality is you can't be an expert in everything, and if you're listening to this, you probably just want to buy a house. You don't want to become an expert in all these things. And you should become an expert, as we already said, inasmuch as it might save you the seven hundred dollar home inspection.
Nick (51:05): Not that we would ever recommend not having a formal home inspection.
Dave (51:08): Obvious issues you can save yourself from. Just, yeah, I'm probably not interested in that. Or you can try and negotiate those things up front and then verify them later in an inspection.
Nick (51:20): Different strategies.
Dave (51:22): Yeah. I could keep waxing on, but the gist of it is: be curious. If you don't understand what you're looking at in a home, grab your phone and take a picture and research it later. Like if you don't know what the water softener is, or what it's supposed to look like, go take some pictures. And if you're not sure, hopefully get a good friend who's an electrician, one that's an HVAC guy, and one that's a plumber, and have somebody you can snap a photo to and be like, hey man, is this a major issue? Is this something to be concerned about?
Nick (51:55): And I know I kind of dissed on ChatGPT earlier —
Dave (51:58): I do find that the AI tools are not great when it comes to estimating pricing on repairs. However, they are really good at, when you take a photo and upload it and say, hey, what's going on here — at least getting a high-level breakdown.
Nick (52:14): And again, when it comes down to knowing the questions to ask, that's where some of those tools can be really helpful. So that then, if you do call a contractor or a friend who has some expertise in this, you know what questions to ask and you can speak intelligently about the issues.
Nick (52:35): And the electrical, I think that's such a huge one, especially when you're looking at older homes. One, you talked about knob-and-tube wiring — there's also certain panels that insurers and appraisers are looking out for. But even just with the modern power loads, whether it's electric vehicles or new appliances, or if you ever wanted to convert from a furnace to a heat pump system — all of those things demand so much more power than a typical 1960s house would have been built for.
Nick (53:05): And so there can be some real surprises of, not even just "can I improve the panel," which is typically a pretty straightforward job, but actually, do I need to increase the amount of power coming from outside to the home?
Nick (53:31): And then we didn't really touch on wastewater either. And this one, of course, when you're doing an initial walkthrough, is harder to determine. But this is another big area where, if it's on public sewer — bellies in the sewer line, or roots and intrusions and things like that. Or if it's an older home, those pipes underground — again, we never think about this stuff, but it's not built to last forever. And usually the homeowner is responsible for any of those runs from their house to the main line. So having an idea of what kind of material is down there, what kind of issues there could be, the approximate distance — all of those can be hugely costly.
Dave (54:10): Age of a septic system, if you're on septic. Age of a well, water quality.
Nick (54:15): Yep.
Dave (54:31): And so that goes back into what I tried to bring at the open of the podcast, which is — you just brought up a lot of good points. As I was talking about this, I was talking in the context of the home we were in. And you brought up a lot of good points of, hey, if you're out in, let's say, Battle Ground, somewhere more rural, you might be on a septic and a well. Those come with all their own challenges in terms of hard water, in terms of do you have location to add a new septic if the old one fails? What does the percolation test turn up for the septic — do we have multiple places that we could put this if the existing tank fails?
Dave (55:10): So it really does come down to understanding the context of the types of homes you're looking at. And if you're looking at wildly different options — like if we're saying, okay, I'm looking for something on two acres and more rural, it's like, all right, well, you can probably assume you're going to be on septic, and you're more than likely going to have a well, and you probably won't have natural gas service. And then the electric question becomes really big. If you're in the city, you might be on natural gas, and so the need for more electric demand is lower.
Dave (55:45): So it really is context. And as you said, the AI bots can be super helpful. And I would also caution that AI is getting a lot better, but it is still possible for it to make mistakes or miss things, and so a set of experienced human eyes on it is a very valuable thing. But take the photos of things you don't understand.
Nick (55:50): If you're just kind of kicking tires, maybe you wouldn't look up the sewer connection, try to figure out who the power provider is, where's the water coming from. Maybe you won't do all that. That can all be stuff that's done after you walk the house, but before you make an offer. But the more of these questions and things you can understand walking in, the more of these things you're going to have in your head as you're walking the property, to look out for.
Nick (56:45): And I think that it's really interesting that just as important is the stuff that you didn't bring in — which is, not too concerned about lighting fixtures, not too concerned about the particular type of appliances or countertops, or the things that can be so flashy but generally are much more about personal preference, and also much easier to change down the line.
Dave (57:10): The finishes are absolutely one of the easiest things to change. Not always the cheapest, if you really want to change. But assessing a floor plan is a pretty big deal too. And that gets down to a less hard-facts and more artistic, I guess you could say, interpretive — it's a very personal thing, right?
Dave (57:35): Like, we were walking a Parade of Homes house the other day and you were like, Hilly — Nick's wife — would not like this house, because the primary bedroom is nowhere near any of the kids' rooms.
Nick (57:49): Yeah, the other bedrooms are a half a mile away.
Dave (57:52): And so the context, to paint the picture, is this is like a forty-five-hundred-square-foot house that's all on one level. So the other bedrooms are like a country mile away. And so it's like, well, okay, that is your preference. I don't have any kids, and so the whole primary suite on its own wing by itself — that appeals to me.
Dave (58:15): So once again, those are things that hopefully your agent is taking into account and thinking, all right, well, what really works and suits your lifestyle? And those are things you also are hopefully thinking about.
Nick (58:34): That's part of the reason new construction can be really fun — is you can kind of set aside a lot of these harder questions about, oh my gosh, am I going to need to drop twenty grand on replacing two electrical panels, and you can spend more time focused on, well, do I like that the primary bedroom is next to the two guest bedrooms, and how do I feel about the granite countertops or quartz or what have you.
Dave (59:00): But I guess, to maybe hammer it home — the floor plan is something that is also incredibly difficult to change. So spend some time walking around and thinking about that. And that's a bit of a "yeah, duh, Dave, everyone thinks that." But you would be surprised how many people buy a home and, because of one quirk of a floor plan that maybe some architect put in to save fifty square feet, they end up absolutely hating how the home lives for them — how they live in the home — because maybe they don't want to have to walk down a super long hall into their kitchen, because they're big cookers and they cook most of their meals in the home, and they have three or four kids, and so they're constantly carrying their Costco grocery run a country mile.
Nick (59:51): There's so many dimensions to this. Hopefully your agent, or you, are really trying to be critical and not getting swept up in the beauty and the excitement of the house. Not that a little excitement's not allowed, but — yeah, all of that matters. It just needs to be triaged. And I think that that's really the role that we try to play as good agents: hey, here's the things you're probably not thinking about that are really important, and the potential costs thereof. Here's floor plan considerations, light considerations in terms of natural light and how the home lives — all of that.
Nick (1:00:35): So, you know, it's funny, we could probably double this episode.
Dave (1:00:40): Absolutely could keep going.
Nick (1:00:42): The best way to really learn how we tour a house is to tour a house with us. And so — another shameless plug.
Dave (1:00:52): I love it. It's not even shameless.
Nick (1:00:58): If you or somebody that you know are thinking about buying a home here in Clark County, we would love the opportunity to talk with you, to get to work with you. And even if you're not — do subscribe to the channel. We appreciate you listening in. Let us know what questions you've got, or anything that you feel like we missed. We'll circle back to it in a future one.
Dave (1:01:20): Yeah, we definitely missed some things, but that's okay. It's a very complicated process to buy a house, and there's a lot of things to know. So try to shrink that pool of questions down to what's applicable to the house you're actually looking at.
Nick (1:01:40): Yeah.
Dave (1:01:42): And Ted, if you're listening — I'm coming for you.
Nick (1:01:46): All right. Thanks everybody. Catch you in the next one.
Dave (1:01:50): See y'all.
