"HOMES" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barry Dave)

"This is the hall bathroom , he'll say, showing you a bathroom in a hall.
Then he'll watch you very closely, trying to gauge your reaction to this
bathroom, and you'll feel obligated to compliment him on it.

"Very nice!" you'll say.

"This toilet seat was installed quite recently," he'll say.

"Huh!" you'll say.

"It's padded," he'll say.

"Bang," you'll say, shooting him in the forehead with your small-caliber
revolver. This is why many real estate brokers these days use tranquilizer
darts to subdue hyperactive sellers right in the foyer, before they have a
chance to become too Helpful.

HOW MANY HOUSES SHOULD You LOOK AT? Most experts recommend that, for
maximum effectiveness, you should look at forty-five or even fifty houses per
day. Experienced home shoppers often reach the point where they can leap out
of the real estate broker's car, look at a house, and get back into the car
before it reaches a complete stop.

if you follow this procedure, by nightfall your brain will be tightly
packed with hundreds of thousands of bits of important real estate
information, and you and your spouse will be able to have useful
decision-making conversations like this:

You: I kind of liked that contemporary with the fireplace in the kitchen.
YOUR SpousE: No, the contemporary had fire damage in the kitchen. You're
thinking of the split-level, the one where the garage floor had a
Rust-Oleum stain shaped like the Virgin Mary.
You: No, that was the colonial, remember? With big white pillars out front
and no toilets.
YOUR SPOUSE: No, you're thinking of Monticello. Remember, We went there on
vacation in 1979?
You: No, it was 1978.

Using this logical elimination process, you'll begin to narrow your list
down to the three or four dozen houses that you are truly interested in.
These are the ones you should go back and inspect in a thorough manner, using
this convenient checklist:

HOME INSPECTION CHECKLIST

the Roof

This is a "must." There is an old German expression that goes: "A house
without a roof is like a machterstrassefurtermorgennachtdankeschoen without a
gutsprechenbuchlungwiegehtvolkswagenporsche." If anything, this is an