Purchasing Property - Your Property Buying Tool Kit

Your Property Buying Toolkit. As with any task in life, it pays to be prepared and have the right tools to hand when evaluating prospective property purchases. So what do you need in your property assessment tool kit? Here is a list of basic tools that will be helpful.

Have a good Pen or two, you need to make notes.

A Notebook is better than loose-leaf paper, it keeps your notes together.

A Clipboard helps when making notes in difficult places, it is best to get one with a cover in case you are out in wet weather.

Some kind of distance measuring device; a tape measure is good, but if you can afford it the laser or sonic measuring units make the job a lot easier. You will need to know the size of the rooms to estimate any refurbishment costs.

Have a Spirit Level along too, even a small pocket size one will do. You should know what surfaces are not level or true and might need further investigation.

A Damp Detector is an essential piece of kit as most kinds of internal damp will point at a potentially large problem elsewhere. These pocket size units are not expensive and could save you a lot of money.

A Torch is a good idea for poking around the loft or basement and when visiting properties in the dark that may have no external lights or even no current power supply.

A Calculator is also very helpful in case you need to work out figures on the spot to make an offer, work out commissions or estimate repair costs.

A Camera can be useful to record any problems or simply as a memory aid, if you view several properties in one day they can sometimes all blend into one memory. A photograph of the outside will at least distinguish between the different properties. A digital camera is ideal so you don't have developing costs. Polaroid cameras are very good too, so you can get an instant photo on the spot.

Utility Tool. Something like a Swiss Army Knife or a Leatherman style multi-tool can be very handy if you need a screwdriver, knife or some other implement to complete you property examination.

Gas and Electric Meter Cupboard Key, it can be helpful to check what kind of meter is installed and what the current readings are. Some properties have Pay As You Go card meters.

To tie all these tools together you should have a comprehensive Homebuyer Report or some kind of Checklist. It is easy to miss things when walking around a new property, make sure you check as much as you can on your first visit and note it down in a format that means you can compare it with other properties that you have assessed.

The above list is just a suggestion of tools that may be useful when assessing any property for purchase. You never know what you are going to run into so it pays to have a good toolkit along every time. There may well be other tools that you like to carry or have found useful in the past, but it pays to make your toolkit as compact as possible, so that you aren't lugging a huge toolbox around with your all the time. Buying and Selling Checklist

Once you have decided on your purchase things can get pretty exciting and everything starts to move very fast.

Several months down the track there will be a lot of information that you will need and no one else is going to collect it for you, some of it may even have disappeared or changed by that time. So it is important to know right from the start the information that is going to be needed later on and make sure you collect it as soon as possible. It is even more confusing if you have a number of properties being bought and sold at the same time, so make sure you have an effective filing system and make us of it.

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