After watching a questionable amount of real estate films, we finally considered ourselves prepared for the actual thing.
We knew that we needed to check the quality of the cooling and heating equipment and other installations before signing up.
The first house we saw had a furnace similar to the one in our rental and based on the trauma we’d experienced when it failed us several times. We almost had to beg the property manager to send a heating specialist for heating repair in ungodly hours. The house looked good, and we’d have loved it, but for its heating device. The next houses had incredible HVAC installation, but we didn’t like them. It took another three months before we finally got a call from the realtor that he’d found the house for us. Part of why he thought we’d love the house is the electric heater in the fireplace which had been newly installed. He turned it on and showed us the realistic flame feature that gives it an exotic look we’d seen in the expensive houses in one of the shows we watched. It also had a thermostat separate from the rest of the heating in the house that would let us control it, plus the overheat protection, so we were sure the glass cover wouldn’t heat up and break. The realtor was so ready for our questions that he even received a receipt from the heating dealership that had installed the equipment two months prior. My husband arranged for an HVAC professional from the same heating company that did the installation to come to be satisfied that it was in working order, and we took the leap and closed the deal. The house was ok, and the next time we saw the heating technician was during the annual heating maintenance visit.