Basement or No Basement?
August 19th, 2008 Categories: Alexandria Dirt, Arlington Dirt, Falls Church Dirt, Home Buying, McLean Dirt, Reston Dirt
I just received an interesting question from a reader – he has found a house that he really likes and it is built on a crawl space (the 3 ways homes are built are on a concrete slab, on a crawl space or on a basement – or some combination). He’s been advised by a family member who is out of state to be leary of any home that’s not built on a full basement. The reasoning was that it’s less than a full house. So he asked me what my thoughts are.
My initial words of wisdom to him were just to be sure he’s comfortable knowing what he’s getting into. A lot of people WANT that basement as overflow space – rec rooms, play rooms, home office, guest rooms, etc… Some want it for just storage – in which case, an attic or a well built shed would suffice. Also it depends on the area – for example in an area where half of the homes are basement and half are basement, it might not matter. But it’s not something that can EVER be added – so what you get is what you get.
I decided to do a little research. We know anecdotally that here in Northern Virginia most homes do have basements – so I took a look through the active listings for detached single family homes in the various surrounding counties to get a sense of what percentages have basements vs. not… Here are some statistics on homes WITHOUT basements compared with the total available home market (at least as of today).
So, this is just good info to keep in mind in terms of market expectations. There is a home buyer for EVERY home – a lot depends on what the market conditions are at the time of trying to re-sell. But that’s a topic for another day.
If you’d like to see homes with OR without basements, I’d love to hear from you. I’m experienced either way!
Happy Tuesday
Jennifer
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Jennifer,
Interesting. In Connecticut, we don’t have too many homes without basements either so when I took a listing for one, I did research just like you did. Not only did I look at stats, I talked to one of the neighbors who was the original owner of his home. With facts and a personal persective, I was able to counter any concerns buyers had.
Great idea for a post…I may borrow it:)
Jessica Beganski
http://CTRealEstateUnleashed.com