Tips From an Architect to Buy a House

Buying a home, either as an investment or as a future home in which you will live, is always a delicate process and involves a significant investment of time and money.

Many times we do not pay attention to some aspects that are very important apart from the typical ones (location, price, condition of the house, etc). If you want to buy a home with all the good aspects then “Apartment for Sale in Abu Dhabi” is a right option for you to consider.

Here are 5 things that we often overlook but that are very important when making the decision to buy a home.

1.Know your Future Neighbors

Keep in mind that, if we are buying a flat in a block of flats, we are not going to live alone. It is highly recommended, for a future good coexistence, to try to establish a previous contact with the neighbors even before buying the house.

Neighbors are an invaluable source of information that can be very useful before making the purchase, ask them about problems that may be in the building, expenses, neighborhood relationships, etc.

It’ll be better if the longer they have been in the building. If you plan to reform, it will also help you to know what kind of neighbors you have (next door, above and below) in order to avoid typical problems due to noise, dirt, etc. inevitable in this type of work.

2.Air Conditioning and Insulation

It is true that if a home meets our expectations for location, size and price, it has many ballots to buy, but we must not neglect to look at other very important aspects.

What type of heating or air conditioning system do you use and what expense does it entail? Is it in good working order? And, something very important, which will save us money and give us well-being, does the building have good thermal insulation?

If a home convinces us but fails in one of these two aspects, we must bear in mind that, in view of our well-being and quality of life, a significant investment in facilities and in the correct insulation of the home will be necessary so that it does not trigger. energy expenditure on air conditioning.

3.Orientation

Although it may not be a decisive factor when buying a home, it is good to know where our future house is oriented (especially the facade in which we have more windows):

• A south orientation will be very bright and will save us a lot of money on heating, provided we also have good windows and correct thermal insulation.
• If the majority orientation is north, we will have dimmer but more uniform lighting throughout the day and we will spend more on heating the house in winter. Although it is true that, in summer, we will suffer less from solar radiation.
• The west orientation will bring direct light into the late hours of the day, which can be very uncomfortable and reheats the house after all day with the heating on or with the sun warming the facade.
• With the orientation this happens the opposite, the Sun will enter our house in the early hours of the morning, something that can be pleasant since it helps to heat the house after night.

In summary, the best orientations are the south and the east. The north orientation will make us spend more on lighting and air conditioning and in the west we will lose comfort late in the day and it will be advisable to place awnings or slats.

4.Heights

The height of a home is important, and not just for the mere fact of having high ceilings.

Many times, especially when buying a second-hand home, we will plan to make a reform, for this, nothing better than having high ceilings where we can hide, installing a false ceiling, and new facilities.

We must look at pre-existing beams or installations that can make us lose height or that can hinder the passage of more voluminous installations such as a ducted air conditioning system. The higher and more continuous the ceilings of a house, the better.

5.Indoor or Outdoor? It Depends;

They will always tell us that an exterior floor is better, in fact they tend to be more expensive, but in reality this depends on several factors.

In many noisy and crowded areas of cities, an interior floor is preferable to an exterior one. And it is not only the noise, many times the interior courtyard of the block where our building is located is wider than the street itself, another case in which an interior floor will be better than an exterior one.

In general, the interior floors are quieter and the exteriors are brighter, but later, as we have already said, will depend on the width of the street and the size of the interior patio. For interior flooring you can turn to Kahrs Flooring Special Offers available online to begin.

Tips From an Architect to Buy a House

Almost everyone, throughout their lives, has to face at least once the difficulty of finding a future home. Because it is an activity that most people do once or twice in their entire lives, it is very common to ask for advice from those who are more involved in the real estate world.

Of course, architects, like us, do not have anywhere near the knowledge about mortgages, market values, interest rates, types of charges, contracts, etc. that a real estate agent has.

For this reason, in this post, we are not going to talk about those topics, in fact we are going to focus on what affects the construction of the house, a topic that we handle much better.

The first decision we must make when we want to have a new home is whether we will choose to buy an already built one or whether, instead, we will acquire a plot to build a house to our liking. Here, you can look at “Apartment for Sale in Abu Dhabi” if you are interested in buying a house with all good aspects.

Square Meters

It seems obvious that when looking for a house we look at the square meters it has, but this task is more complex than it seems at first glance. This is mainly because the square meters that we want to know are not the ones that we usually get.

In pages such as idealistic or photo houses, the square meters that we see listed next to a house are the meters built, including common areas! The latter is especially important to know, since it is not uncommon to find houses with 20 or 30 square meters of common areas, which makes an important difference.

This point is much easier to understand quickly in single-family homes since there are no meters corresponding to community areas, although we will have to differentiate between built meters and useful meters.

The Air Conditioning System

The second key point that we should look at is the home’s air conditioning system.

In case you are looking for a flat, the system may be centralized, these systems are usually more efficient and economical in the long term than the individual ones, but they have a major drawback, they cannot be freely controlled, you depend on the time at which the community you decide to turn the system on and off.

Individual systems allow us to control them completely, but usually involve a higher monthly expense. One of the quickest ways to know how efficient a home’s air conditioning system is through the energy certificate. This certificate is mandatory in every home purchase and sale, so you have every right to demand it.

The Windows

This is a subject that is especially striking to me on a personal level both as an architect and as a buyer who has been looking for a house for a long time.

I could assure, without fear of being wrong, that in more than half of the visits I have made to homes with the intention of buying, the real estate agent or owner has pointed out to me that the windows are Climalit.

This is something that everyone who has looked for a home to buy or rent will have heard more than once.

The most curious thing about all this is that Climalit is, simply, a brand of glass, a good brand, but nothing more than that, a brand.

With this, what we mean is that as much as the glass is Climalit, the window can be terrible, not only the profiling can be very bad, saying that the windows are Climalit is like being told that the lights are Phillips, you thank them for the information, but you have stayed the same as before.

If you really want to know if the windows are good, there are two things you can do: first, ask in what year they were last changed, since any date over 15 years should already be enough clue to know that they will have to be changed.

And, second, touch the glass and the window profiles inside and out, if you notice a significant difference in temperature is that they are good windows.

Natural Light

This point is quite linked to the previous one, that of the windows, but there is an even more important factor than that to take into account, the orientation of the house.

If you take a quick look through some real estate portal, as an idealist, you will see that in the descriptions they usually mention the orientation of the house and it doesn’t matter where you look at the house that will always be accompanied by the typical phrase “it has a lot of natural light”.

Unfortunately, it is often a lie since orientation affects, a lot, the amount of natural light that a home has. In addition to the orientation, we must take into account whether the house is interior or exterior, or if there are buildings in front that will constantly shade us.

The Year of Construction

When we go to buy a home we look at everything, doors, floors, kitchen, electrical installation, plumbing… but it is not easy to assess the quality of all these products and facilities at a glance, therefore, the most reasonable and efficient is ask (or consult in cadastre) the year of construction of the house.

It is also advisable to ask when the last reform has been carried out, if it has any. Thanks to the date we can get used to the idea of ​​the quality of the materials used and, above all, we will know what the house facilities are like, since they cannot normally be seen with the naked eye.

Regulations and Legality of Housing

Many people look for a house with the aim of radically changing it, not only making a comprehensive reform, but making extensions or changes to the facades, windows or terraces.

If we want to know if this type of work can be carried out in the house before making the purchase, the most advisable thing is to approach the town hall of the municipality where the house is located and make a consultation in the urban planning area.

CONCLUSION

Finding a house that suits all our needs and tastes is very complicated, many times it is best to find a house that is in the area that we like and that has an adequate price, and then transform it into the house that we really want with a comprehensive reform.

If that is your case, and you need help for the future reform, do not hesitate to contact us.