What to look for at a house viewing

• Charged phone
• Tape measure
• Flashlight
• The shortlist
• Your questions, written down
• Water and something to eat

• Which way the ground slopesGround falling toward the house is the most common cause of a wet basement, and one of the cheaper things on this page to fix. Ground built up above the level of the foundation is a worse sign. The diagram under this list is what the two cases look like in section.
• The downspoutsFollow each one. A downspout discharging against the wall, or disappearing into the ground into an old clay drain, puts water exactly where you do not want it.
• The roof, from the sidewalkCurling or patchy shingles, and any sag along the ridge line. You are not estimating its remaining life from the street. You are deciding whether to ask its age.
• The windowsOriginal wood, mid life aluminium and recent vinyl are three very different budgets. Look for fogging between the panes, which means a failed seal.
• The parkingIn Toronto a front yard parking pad needs permission from the city, and plenty of existing pads never had it. Ask whether the parking is permitted rather than assuming a driveway carries the right to use it. Mutual drives, common in the older parts of the city, come with their own questions about access and maintenance.
• The trees, including the neighbours'A large tree close to the foundation is a roots and eavestrough question. In Toronto, a tree over a certain trunk size is protected by bylaw whether it is on your land or not, which limits what you would be allowed to do about it.

• Staining at the bottom of the wallsA horizontal line, a chalky white bloom, or fresh paint on the lower part of the wall only. That bloom is water moving through concrete, and a strip of fresh paint is somebody's answer to it.
• Your noseMusty is not cosmetic. It means water, now or recently, and it is one of the few things staging cannot fully cover.
• A sump pump and a backwater valveAsk whether both are there. Toronto runs a subsidy that covers part of the cost of installing a backwater valve, a sump pump and a severed disconnected drain, which tells you how common the underlying problem is in this city.
• Ceiling heightIf the plan is ever to finish the basement or add a unit down there, height is the one constraint you cannot negotiate. Measure it rather than eyeballing it.
• The floor drain and the cleanoutFind them. A finished basement with no access to the drain or the cleanout is a future demolition, and the finishing is what pays for it.
• How the finished part was finishedFraming straight onto a foundation wall with no gap, or laminate laid on concrete with no subfloor, is a renovation somebody will have to undo.

Whether these questions are worth asking depends almost entirely on where you are looking. Close to thirty per cent of Toronto's housing predates 1961 and under two per cent of Vaughan's does, so the same twenty minute viewing needs a different set of questions in each.

• The size of the electrical serviceA 60 amp service is a real obstacle: some insurers will not write a policy on it, and lenders take an interest. Find the panel, read the rating on the main breaker, and note whether it is breakers or fuses.
• Knob and tube wiringCeramic knobs and cloth covered wire, typical of houses built before about 1950. Many insurers refuse it outright, or require replacement within a set window after closing.
• Aluminium branch wiringUsed in houses built from roughly the mid 1960s to the late 1970s. Not automatically dangerous, but it needs the right connections and insurers will ask about it.
• Kitec plumbingOrange and grey plastic pipe with brass fittings, put into a lot of GTA houses and condos from the late 1990s into the late 2000s. It fails, the class action settlement fund is closed, and replacing it is now the owner's cost. Look under the sinks specifically for it.
• The age of the furnace and water heater, and whether they are rentedRental and lease contracts on water heaters, furnaces and air conditioners are common in Ontario and they stay with the property. Find out what is owned, what is rented and what the buyout would be, because you take the contract on when you close.