Investing in a home is one of the biggest financial decisions of your life. You might have different expectations when you are looking to buy a property. One of the best-loved homes is the one that faces a lake or a water body. Waterfront homes and lake homes sell like hotcakes because of their unique construction quality, good returns on investment and the impeccable beauty of nature that surrounds them. You might have seen many advertisements for lake homes for sale in Missouri.
It is a common misconception that lake homes are higher priced than other types of homes. Yes, the process of buying them, and the various factors that you have to consider before purchasing a lake home are definitely different when compared to the steps you would follow while buying other types of properties. However, that doesn’t mean that buying a waterfront property is something that you can only dream of.
Today, there are lots of interesting lakefront homes for sale in Missouri. All you need to do is to know your requirements and follow a set of detailed steps to ensure that you get a good deal of your dream lake home. Here, we have mentioned some of the basic tips that will guide you in buying a lake home that is perfectly right for you. As you pass by the homes near Truman Lake in Missouri, you don’t have to experience a pang in your heart anymore. One of these homes could be yours!
Here are the key points that you have to keep in mind if you want to buy a lake home that suits your budget & other constraints:
- Get a professional inspection done
Assessing the quality of the property that you are about to buy is definitely one of the first things that you would do before investing your hard-earned money in it. However, when it comes to buying a lake home, you should pay extra attention to this point. A lake home is prone to damages because of the water conditions and the moisture in the air. Therefore, it is very important that you have to get the property inspected thoroughly before you make a decision.
Appoint a professional, who has a lot of experience in the field of inspecting lake homes, in particular. He will know the crucial areas to watch out for. The wood, stone and metal areas of the property are prone to repairs due to the changing water conditions of the lake. Therefore, an expert & experienced home inspector, specializing in lake homes, will exactly know the parameters that he needs to assess to check the repairs, degradation or the overall quality of the property.
- Purpose of purchase & location of the property
Before buying a lake home, you need to ask yourself, why you need that property in the first place. Are you going to stay in this property permanently or are you going to stay here during weekends or vacations? If you plan to live here, you need to ensure that you choose the lake home in a location, where you will find the basic amenities easily. Hospitals, markets, schools, banks, etc. should be located close to the lake home, so that you don’t face any hassles in your day to day lives.
Even if you want your lake home to be your holiday home, you should pay a lot of attention to the locality. You don’t want your property to be in the middle of nowhere, which makes you drive for one or 2 hours, even if you want to go to the nearest hospital. Driving for a long time even for the basic amenities can make you frustrated easily.
- Check the quality of the lake
All lake homes aren’t the same, in terms of their durability and quality. This is because the lakes are prone to a lot of variations with the change in seasons. Here are some points to consider while assessing the quality of the lake:
- Type of shoreline that the lake offers – is it sandy, messy, or rocky? This will impact your decision-making to a large extent.
- What type of animals and birds lives on the lake? Are there chances that they could bring any disturbances to your property?
- What kind of activities does the lake offer you? Some of the common water sports activities that you should expect are kayaking, water skiing, swimming, scuba diving, boating, fishing and snorkeling.
- What are the chances of the lake flooding? Check the history of the lake to ensure that you don’t face any problems in the future.
- Is there an organization that controls all the activities of all the lake homes located on this lake? If yes, speak with them to understand the rules of the organization to know if you can live there.
Understand the legalities that involve the lake that you are looking at. Sometimes, the local laws may restrict activities within close proximity to the lake as part of its conservation policy. In other words, choose a lake home only after you have completely analyzed the history of the place and studied the future potential of the place.
- Choose the right agent
This is easier said than done. A good realtor, who has enough experience in dealing with lake homes, will help you strike a good deal when you look for lake homes for sale in Missouri or anywhere else. When you have an experienced agent to guide you in the process, it makes it all the easier for you to find a property that caters to your requirements. Here are some points that will help you find the right real estate agent:
- Get the quotes of at least 3 to 5 realtors, and then have a personal discussion with each one of them to understand more about their experience.
- While realtors have experience in all kinds of properties, you should choose the one that exclusively deals with lakefront homes only.
- Choose a realtor who is patient enough to hear out your requirements and is transparent in his dealings. His only aim should be to help you get a property of your choice within your budget.
- He should be pleasant and approachable, so that it makes your lives easy during the deal. Also, he should possess enough knowledge about lake homes to ask the right questions to the advertisers or sellers. This will help you understand if you are paying the right price for the property that you are interested in.
It wouldn’t be wrong to say once you have chosen the right agent, you have crossed almost half the bridge in the process of finding a good lake home for yourself.
- Have an eye on the additional costs involved
A lake home operates quite differently from other properties when it comes ot the additional costs such as insurance, maintenance and others. You should have a fair idea of the costs that you have to incur for heating and insulation purposes so that you can make the home comfortable for all seasons. Also, with lake homes, your insurance policy can get quite costly when compared to a normal home.
As an owner of a lake home, you will have to take additional policies such as wind policy, flood policy and other policies to protect against general hazards. Unless you have proper policies in place, you might not feel safe in your own home. So, you need to be aware of the costs of these policies that are in addition to the actual cost of the property itself.
When you are conducting an inspection of your property, you should have also prepared a list of the hidden costs that are involved with the purchase. Some of these costs could include the maintenance fees that you have to pay the organization for taking care of the septic tank, sewer and the like. Sometimes, you also have to pay a certain rate for taking the boat in and out of the water, as part of dock charges.
Before putting your hard-earned money into a lake home, you should be prudent and make an exhaustive list of all the costs – the direct & not so direct ones. This will help you decide if the lake home that you intend to buy falls within your budget or not. If the property overshoots your budget by a large margin, you have to move on to looking for other properties that are suitable for you. Never go beyond your budget, even if you like the property a lot. This will put you in a financial mess in the long run.
Next time, when you see lake homes for sale in your area, you should know that there is more to the property than what meets the naked eye. Therefore, start your detailed research right now to know if one of these homes would suit your needs. As we already told you, lake homes sell like hotcakes because of the view they offer. So, you need to act quickly to get the home of your choice.
