What matters when evaluating a house — beyond how it looks?

I always tell my buyers this first:

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Seeing the house itself is about 30%.
The other 70% is in the paperwork — the disclosures and reports.

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Most buyers don’t start there, and that’s completely normal.

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When you first tour homes, everything looks nice. Houses are staged well. Furniture is thoughtfully placed. Lighting is warm. It’s very easy to fall in love with a house that shows beautifully, even if it has deeper issues. And it’s just as easy to dismiss a great house because of paint color, furniture, or something superficial.

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That’s why I give buyers a framework early on.

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When you walk into a house, the first thing to evaluate is what can’t be changed with money.
The architecture. The layout. The flow. The location and surroundings. How the house sits on the lot. How it feels to live there day to day.

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Those are the fundamentals.

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Everything else — finishes, paint, fixtures — comes later.

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What many buyers don’t realize at the beginning is that a large part of what matters isn’t visible during a tour. The true condition of the home lives in the disclosures and inspection reports. That’s where you learn what you’re really buying.

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Without this framework, buyers tend to react emotionally. They fall for staging. They overlook real issues. Or they walk away from solid homes because of surface-level details.

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Once buyers understand how to separate appearance from structure and condition, the process changes. They know what to expect. Emotions come down. Decisions become clearer.

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That’s when evaluating a home starts to feel grounded instead of overwhelming.