Home Buying for the Cyclist
Ok, I guess this is a bit of a rant...
My wife and I have been somewhat-casually house shopping for the past several months. We currently rent a great 2-bedroom flat in a house owned by a longtime friend, with a new basement garage, generous storage space, and even an entire basement room set up as a bike workshop. I'm somewhat loathe to give all that up, but I think we've both reached the point in our lives where we want a home that's ours -- a place that we can configure to suit us and something that feels (mostly) permanent. At any rate, I think we're looking for something to buy that's fairly similar to our current place.
A major issue for me/us in our house-shopping endeavours is obviously storage space for multiple bikes. Unfortunately, real-estate listing services (MLS) seem to generally indicate that a property has so many bedrooms/bathrooms, maybe the total number of rooms and square footage, any parking and whether it's tandem or independent...and if you're lucky they'll mention any additional storage. However they never indicate the size of the storage! The only way to find this out is to go to the open house and do some poking around. A couple of places we've looked at have had really nice partitioned storage rooms that are actually large enough to store a few bikes plus set up a workshop in. Other places simply have a too-small closet sectioned off by plywood or fencing. Or worse, there's no additional storage at all!
I just wish this information was included in the property listings...it'd certainly help us narrow down the choices and make better use of our time as we do the "Sunday Mad Dash" trying to get to as many open houses as possible between 2pm and 4pm.
My wife and I have been somewhat-casually house shopping for the past several months. We currently rent a great 2-bedroom flat in a house owned by a longtime friend, with a new basement garage, generous storage space, and even an entire basement room set up as a bike workshop. I'm somewhat loathe to give all that up, but I think we've both reached the point in our lives where we want a home that's ours -- a place that we can configure to suit us and something that feels (mostly) permanent. At any rate, I think we're looking for something to buy that's fairly similar to our current place.
A major issue for me/us in our house-shopping endeavours is obviously storage space for multiple bikes. Unfortunately, real-estate listing services (MLS) seem to generally indicate that a property has so many bedrooms/bathrooms, maybe the total number of rooms and square footage, any parking and whether it's tandem or independent...and if you're lucky they'll mention any additional storage. However they never indicate the size of the storage! The only way to find this out is to go to the open house and do some poking around. A couple of places we've looked at have had really nice partitioned storage rooms that are actually large enough to store a few bikes plus set up a workshop in. Other places simply have a too-small closet sectioned off by plywood or fencing. Or worse, there's no additional storage at all!
I just wish this information was included in the property listings...it'd certainly help us narrow down the choices and make better use of our time as we do the "Sunday Mad Dash" trying to get to as many open houses as possible between 2pm and 4pm.
posted by jim g at 11:15 AM
1 Comments:
I agree, the house we just bought has a BASEMENT that was NOT mentioned in the real estate listings. It also has a huge 5-6 bike size lockable outdoor storage closet next to the car port. Not mentioned. Due to the geography here there are very few houses that have basements, you would think that that would be mentioned? It really was the clincher for this house. Good luck on the crazy bay area real estate hunt...
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