I spent 15 years building and renovating houses before I started selling them, and here's what that taught me: the scary-looking stuff is usually cheap, and the expensive stuff is usually invisible at first glance. Ugly kitchens don't sink budgets. Water does. Here are the ten things I check in the first ten minutes of any showing.
The ten checks
- Stand across the street and look at the roofline. A straight ridge is a good sign. A sag in the middle means structural work — framing, not shingles — and that's a different conversation entirely.
- Follow the water. Downspouts that dump against the foundation, soil sloping toward the house, a patio pitched the wrong way. Bad grading is the root cause of half the basement problems I've ever been called to fix.
- Go to the basement corners first. Efflorescence (white chalky residue), fresh paint on just the bottom three feet of wall, a dehumidifier running in every room — the house is telling you something.
- Read the foundation cracks. Hairline vertical cracks: normal settling, almost always fine. Horizontal cracks or stair-step cracks in block walls: the wall is moving. Walk away or price it in — big.
- Open the electrical panel door. I'm looking for the brand and the amperage. 100 amps minimum for modern life; certain old panel brands are an insurance problem all by themselves and mean a $3,000–$5,000 replacement.
- Find the date stickers. Furnace, AC condenser, water heater — they all carry manufacture dates. All three past 15 years old? Budget for replacement, not repair.
- Drop a marble on the floor. Old houses lean and that's fine — but a floor that slopes noticeably toward the middle of the house can mean a main beam or sill issue below. Cosmetic upstairs, structural downstairs.
- Press the tile around the tub. Soft floor at the toilet or tub, loose tile, spongy grout — water's been getting behind there for years. Bathrooms rot from the inside out.
- Look at window corners and stains on ceilings. A brown ring under a bathroom is a leak; a brown ring under nothing is a roof. Either way, the drywall is the cheap part — what happened behind it is the question.
- Judge the previous owner's DIY. One crooked outlet cover is nothing. But wavy trim, doors that don't latch, and paint on the hinges tell you how the stuff you can't see was done too.
Cheap vs. expensive — my rule of thumb
Usually cheaper than buyers fear: kitchens and baths that are dated but dry, wallpaper, paneling, floors under old carpet, landscaping, even a roof at end-of-life (it's a known number).
Usually more expensive than buyers hope: anything involving water intrusion, foundation movement, undersized electrical with DIY additions, cast-iron or galvanized plumbing, and any load-bearing "open concept" dream in a house with a bad main beam.
The pattern: surfaces are cheap, systems and structure are not. A house with terrible surfaces and healthy bones is the single best deal in real estate — most buyers can't see past the wallpaper, so you're not bidding against them.
None of this replaces an inspection
The walkthrough tells you whether the house deserves an offer. The licensed inspection tells you whether the offer survives. In competitive situations where buyers feel pressure to waive inspections, this ten-minute screen matters even more — it's how you decide which risks you're knowingly taking, instead of hoping.
