Buyer Beware…

There is a Latin phrase – caveat emptor – which essentially, in English, means “buyer beware”. The message intended in those two words is that anyone purchasing the item so labelled needs to be careful. The price may look like a steal, but ask yourself before you go any further… who is doing the stealing, and who is being stolen from? You may well find that if a deal looks too good to be true, the reason for that may be that it is far too good to be true.

What you need to be sure of before you sign off on any deal is that the money you have budgeted for the purchase, in addition to the money you have earmarked for any changes to the house, will be recoupable from the sale of the house. If you buy a house and then get inside the property to get a close look, the last thing you want is to see that there are problems which will cost a lot more to repair than you thought they might. Suddenly, your big profit is looking like a small profit, a break-even deal, or even a loss.

Before you buy a house as a “fixer-upper”, think about what needs fixed and do not just look on the surface. You may need to have a survey carried out on the property to make sure that it is not carrying other faults that could end up doubling what you have to pay to get the house up to scratch for the purposes of selling it