Landscape Thoughts for the New Homebuyer | Audio Edition

Get the Homebuyer’s Landscape Checklist + Audio Walkthrough here: https://www.youryardcoach.com/homebuyers-landscape-checklist/buy

Buying your first home is exciting… and a little blinding.
Realtors point to the shiny kitchen and fresh paint — but the big money problems are often hiding outside the four walls.

In this episode, Coach Matt shares what first-time (and even 10th-time) buyers need to look for in the landscape before they sign on the dotted line:

🔍 What to inspect outside the house that most home inspectors skip
💧 Irrigation systems – signs of old, neglected, or expensive-to-fix setups
🌧 Drainage, grade & slope – how water can quietly destroy foundations
⚡ Outdoor electrical – the “DIY specials” that can be dangerous and costly
🌳 Greenscape health & placement – trees, roots, and plants that spell trouble
🧱 Hardscape issues – cracked driveways, patios, and what’s really causing them
💵 And a real-talk warning about debt, priorities, and not letting the house (or yard) own you

If you’re a first-time homebuyer — or helping someone who is — this episode will help you avoid expensive surprises and walk into homeownership with eyes wide open.

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🧠 Want help planning a smarter DIY landscape after you buy?
Head over to YourYardCoach.com for tools that simplify the process:

📘 Landscaping Simplified eBook
https://www.youryardcoach.com/landscapingsimplifiedebook

🎓 Homescape 2.0 DIY Landscaping Course for Homeowners
https://www.youryardcoach.com/diy-landscape-course

📝 15-Step DIY Landscaping Project Checklist
https://www.youryardcoach.com/15-step-diy-landscaping-project-checklist

📋 Seasonal Landscaping Checklist
https://www.youryardcoach.com/seasonal-landscaping-checklist

📹 1-on-1 Video Consultations with Coach Matt
https://www.youryardcoach.com/yard-coach-consultation

🏡 On-Site Landscape Consulting and More
https://www.youryardcoach.com/on-site-landscaping-consulting

⸻

🎥 Prefer to watch instead of just listen?
Catch the video version over on the Yard Coach YouTube channel.

To your landscape — and homebuying — success.

00:00 – Welcome
01:04 – Today’s Agenda
02:28 – Mandatory Issues to Look For
05:24 – Systems to Look At
06:21 – Irrigation
15:38 – Drainage
23:27 – Grade & Slope
26:02 – Outdoor Electrical
31:16 – Health of Greenscape
39:50 – Hardscape
42:11 – Coach’s Thoughts

Hey everybody, welcome. Coach here. Hey, hope you’re having a decent week and a decent month. Man, we’re just right around the corner from the holidays, aren’t we? Hey, I am talking about firsttime home buyers and potential buyers and how the landscape enters into buying decisions. So, without further ado, let’s get going. Hey guys, just a brief break in this week’s podcast here and an invitation for you to go over to youryardcoach.com and check out the products and services that we offer there. For most people, DIY landscaping on a medium to larger level can be very, very intimidating. And the book and the course and some of the checklists that we do offer really streamline the process and bolster a DIYer’s confidence. So, I invite you to go over there, check it out, and if you have any questions, you can always always email me at [email protected]. Now, let’s get back to the podcast. Here today, we are talking about things to look for, things to run from, and solutions to minor issues as you start your house search and ownership journey. You know, in my lifetime, I’ve owned a total of, I believe, seven residential homes in my adult life. To sum things up easy, I have probably looked at 50 properties to boil down to these seven. Only one of those was a brand new home. That was out in Valo, California. Yeah, not a fan. The rest were obviously existing homes. And you know, over the years, I have gained some experience in what to look for and caution against when it comes to those things outside the four walls of the house itself. Let’s go over some of them and why and what could happen negatively if you overlook or ignore questionable situations. those situations where you kind of your subconscious almost says, “Hey, dummy, pay attention to this.” And you go, “Oh, but it has such beautiful kitchen appliances.” Well, we don’t take a look at the problem that your sixth sense is going, “Pay attention.” Now, in no particular order of importance, let’s look at some of the mandatory issues you should look for when inspecting properties for your first or your 10th residential property. Whatever it is, you can’t skip. You got to look at some of those things outside. Take a look at all the questionable posts all over various platforms and the ones that I get email form and in comments on YouTube where they ask questions about certain elements of their landscape and man I go didn’t you see that or didn’t you even look for it when you were searching and touring and inspecting because as a rule I’ll I’ll tell you This home inspectors will focus and concentrate 90% of their efforts on the dwelling itself and not too much. I know this from the inspector that looked at Brooken Pond. He didn’t uh bless his heart, man. He was an older guy, semi-retired, and man, there was there was some things that you just don’t know until you get into the house. Now, let’s get the disclaimer aside before we move on. First, I must say I am not a professionally licensed home inspector. I’m not trying to be. I have met some of these professionals and have great respect for what detail they look for. Others that I have met, they’re freaking borderline frauds who passed a test and hung a shingle. Let’s just call it what it is. But in the landscape realm, I do consider myself above many and can identify many issues that home or house inspectors overlook because like I said, their main focus is on the dwelling and attached systems, not so much landscape. For me, I look at some of these systems and landscape elements that cost new home buyers and buyers, period, hundreds or thousands of dollars or more because they missed it. Period. And the reason I’m focused on first-time home buyers is because they’re noobs and they honestly they’re so bugeyed and excited that sometimes realators will massage their buyers into thinking that everything is good. You know, look at the kitchen appliances, look at the view, look at this, look at that. And those are all fine, but they realators will tend to focus on the lipstick of the pig and not some of the meat and potatoes. Okay. All right. First first systems to take and have looked at irrigation. Another one is drainage. A big one is grade and slope. Another one is outdoor electrical. Another one is the greenscape. All the plant material that is on this property and that is from the smallest flower to the biggest tree. The greenscape health and the placement and we’ll get into that. And lastly, the hardscape placement condition and grade. So these particular areas of interest, these items should be scrutinized just as much and in some cases more because they can affect the living spaces and the property values in the mid and long term. Our first one, irrigation. For those of you who live in areas where irrigation systems are not only present, but in some cases mandatory in order to have any form of a green world outside your home, these systems all have basically an expiration date and are always in need of inspection, operation, and repair and replace as needed. I’ve been hired many times back in the earlier part of this century. God, that sounds weird. I was hired by various realators and stuff to come in and inspect the irrigation systems, which were the ones I was asked to inspect were a little more than the two valve drip systems. They were much larger systems that served larger residential yards or larger country properties. Even though advertisements by the selling realators say that there was auto irrigation systems or present and oftent times they never stated what the conditions of those systems were in. You know when touring you should ask to see the operation and judge the performance. Now, if you get the from the opposing realtor or a seller and they go, “Well, I don’t know. Uh, hasn’t been on in a while.” You know, and you get the song and dance. You know, you need to dwell down on that. Just a heck of a lot more. You know, just some simple inquiries like, “You mean you can’t turn it on or is it broken or you know, whatever.” You guys are smart people. Ask about the system maintenance. Ask about the line sizes, the number of zones that they currently have, what is covered by the irrigation system, and just as important, what is not. When done asking your questions, you know, kind of give it a give it a grade to keep it simple. A, B, C, D, or F. give it a grade and then make a note in your phone notes or somewhere at 123 Main Street that we looked at irrigation and this and that were questions. It’ll help you make decisions down the road as far as when and what you purchase and what might be needed if you become the homeowner of that and you’ve got to address the questionable irrigation system or any other system on the property. You know, for many in colder regions, determine if winterizing maintenance was done. Now, most of the time, I would say 90% of the time, people know about winterizing irrigation in zones 8, 7,654, three if they have it at three. And then what did they do during spring startup and individual head cleaning and clearing? And what is the age of the system? Is it as old as the house? And you’re looking at a 40-year-old house. So, do you have galvanized pipe for irrigation and not PVC anymore? Or what exact is the system that takes care of the greenscape out there? You know, most systems are PVC plastic sunlight exposed and prone to cracking and leaking. And if they didn’t winterize it or they didn’t winterize it, well, you might have crack splits and the valve assemblies. These things tend to, how should I say it? I have met some first-time home buyers and they basically, “Yeah, we saw it, but we didn’t think it was that big of a deal. It was just a wet spot in the yard.” And you get that mental minimization of the problem. And then when I was called in to fix them, it’s a cracked pressurized line that’s only being held together by the soil that surrounds it. And as soon as you loosen that soil up, va voom, all of a sudden the pressurized line lets loose and you have, you know, you got to shut it off at the house, shut it off at the street, you know, depending on how complicated it is. So it’s something to pay attention to. You can throw it into the category of plumbing if you want to look at it that way. But irrigation is an expensive thing to dig up and fix, to modernize, to repair and replace. So if your seller does say, “Sure, let me turn it on.” And all of a sudden you have geyser heads at individual sprinkler heads, broken heads that are mainly hit by mowers or edggers, etc. They’re kind of an easy fix and should only be 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there, provided that the pipes down underneath did not get fractured. The threads and the nipples that hold things together. It’s why we don’t use nipples anymore, guys. We use what? Swing arm assemblies. The system should work from the timer, not just have a seller go over and turn it on at the valve. Make sure if it’s an auto system that it actually works from the timer because the electrical side of those systems are one of the first generally because of rodents one way or another the first to go ary and all of a sudden zone 4 doesn’t come on anymore when it’s supposed to come on after zone 3. Why isn’t zone 4 coming on? Well, it could be chewed wires. It could be deteriorated solenoid wires at the solenoid. It could be uh spiders and stuff inside the timer, which is an easy fix if it is that. You know, you take it apart and vacuum things out and back in good working order. And it could be an overall timer issue. You know, you’ve got some old mechanical Rick Dell pins and gears timer in there and maybe one of the pins is gone on zone 4. So pay attention to those kinds of things. Not too costly to update stuff like that. Now, drip systems. Drip systems are a little more difficult to gauge the function, mainly because they’re so hard to see and hard to find. But what you want to do is if the settler allows you to turn things on, ask them, “This appears to be a drip system. Where does it terminate at?” Oh, it terminates uh just behind the vegetable beds up there at that X plant. Okay. So, you turn it on and the thing that I would do is always go to the terminal end of it. It’s generally clamped off or screwed with a cap on it. Undo it. See what comes out. If you got a lot of gunk that comes out of there, but it does come out, then you know that things weren’t blown out really well and taken care of. And then find your first emitter at the end of that line and see if it is emitting water. Gives you an indication that if water can get all the way to the end, that the pipe itself is sound. And if the emitter is dripping, the drip, you know, probably okay, but it should be blown out at least twice a year and then opened up and left open during the winter time and then back on sprinkler wiring. Diagnosing wire as far as the problem goes can be a bit of a a booger. You really can’t because if the wire is run underground in trenches, you don’t really know if there is a break where it could be in the system. There’s way to trace it and ways to find it. But for the average first-time home buyer, no, you’re probably not going to know where it’s at. And if it’s not buried in the ground, maybe it’s run under the house, through the basement, under a crawl space and comes out through a a ventilation to the crawl space area through the little screens or whatever it might be, it’s kind of hard to diagnose. And what I used to always advise first-time home buyers, if they have a problem with the wiring that isn’t activating the the sprinkler heads or the sprinkler valves, just run new wire. Just run a new wire, whatever it is. It’s not It’s more expensive than it was, but it’s certainly a heck of a lot easier than trying to track down where a break in one wire might be. and I’m talking about doing it yourself. So, there’s kind of an overview of irrigation systems and what to look for and what to ask about. Now, let’s move on to drainage. Oftent times, drainage is one of the biggest and most expensive repairs that are often missed in inspection and in the landscape element. Hands down. Countless posts all over the internet beg for answers on drainage issues. What can I do about X? You know, what can I do about this? What can I do about that? My foundation appears to be falling apart. I got water in the basement. I got water in my crawl space. What can I do? How can I fix this? Drainage literally starts at your roof. Now, some people have contested me on this, but it really does. You know, does your home that you’re looking at have a gutter system? I don’t care what zone you’re in. There’s ways to avoid snow slippage and other stuff from ripping your gutters off, like some people say. You have snow guards and other things that you can put on a roof that can hold snow at bay a little bit. And then the gutter systems during the rainy season or the melt season or whatever. If you don’t have them, then you have water that is dropping off of your roof line at your drip line and saturating saturating the area directly below, which could be very close to your foundation, maybe 12, 18 in away from your foundation. It could be dropping onto your deck, onto your patio. gutters were invented and they’re a very good tool and you should look for them and if if they’re not there ask about how come and and check just hey you got a shovel or bring a shovel with you and check to see how wet it is around the foundation. One real big indication there could be something of a problem is during a dry spell when you’re looking at houses and yet you have this perennial green spot in the lawn where everything else is kind of brownish and it’s not thriving because it’s been really hot and not a lot of rain. You know, you could have issues with irrigation, but you could have issues with drainage as well. Maybe that bright green spot out there is where ponding and pooling happens when it does rain. And look around the foundation and the garden beds. Now, where I’m at, there’s not a lot of garden beds. People put maybe the twoft foundation bed in and that’s about it. But not everybody has gutters up here either. And so with a lot of the older homes here having basement, I can imagine what kind of water gets down in there during the the melt during the rainy season and then during the the winter freezes and expands and pushes water into and through the concrete foundation wall. And that’s where you get all that efferescence inside on the inside walls of your your basement walls and maybe even so much as a crack in the foundation. Then you have water. Reminds me of my first house in Hayward, California, where they had deliberate weep holes in the foundation into the garage and where I learned that there was water problems on the uphill side of my foundation and water would pour through those weepholes into the garage and then find its way out through the garage door and then down the driveway. What an asinine drainage system that was. And for a first timer, because it was my first home, I’m like, and it’s like, what the heck? So, learned about French drains in a hurry when you’re walking around. And here’s a here’s a classic example is just our previous home at Weed Patch Ranch. There was no way of knowing the drainage problem that was there when we were inspecting it. We were we were looking we toured it in like I don’t know October which is a dry part usually a dry part of the year out there in the central valley. And when we took ownership in January it was still kind of dry. It was kind of one of those end of the drought years type of thing. And then about five weeks after we moved in, the heavens from hell opened up and poured on us. And all of a sudden, I had learned that the small slopey topography of our area sent water down that slope, right through the neighbor’s orchard, right into our property, right across the backyard, and right into the raised foundation of our home. I’m talking like a freaking river where I took off the skirting of the modular home that we had and I had water running underneath the house. But you could not have known that initially and there was no disclosure. And after we moved in and you start doing some laser measurements of various things, our garage was higher than the house. My shop was higher than the house and the house was probably six inches lower than these other buildings. And so once again, jumping on Kanga, French drains went in in a hurry. Sump vaults went in in a hurry. As soon as it dried out just enough where I could trench, French drains went in, sumps went in, pumps went in, and tragedy averted. Never would I go through that again. But hey, when you’re looking at it, it’s like all big, glassy eyed. Wow, I got two houses on here. I could rent one out. Look at all the landscape room that we have. But I missed a critical thing. I didn’t I didn’t bring a freaking story pole out there with a laser and checking heights and depths and of where things rested. I just saw what I saw. So even the experts can kind of make a mistake. Now on the positive side of drainage, minor drainage issues are solvable and are a DIY friendly for the most part. Digging ditches, getting gravel, uh sle pipes, creating slope, creating slope in your drainage system is very important. But having to go back in and create slope from your house may be a much larger issue at hand. Very big issue. If you find that you have a negative slope that uh maybe your house is down below the roadway and your front yard slopes towards the house, if there isn’t any sort of system in place to capture and divert water away, that water that comes down and hits the house stays there on top of the ground and underground and then fills up and find its way out somewhere. where, but you may have some ponding and pooling. So, consider that if you look at a house like that, which takes us to our next landscape element, which is grade and slope. Look for grade and slope that pitch towards the dwelling. These issues, those negative slope issues are big jobs to correct. either installing full-on drainage systems or literally excavation. You know, like if you buy a brand new house, congratulations. Brand new home on a 1acre lot. Oh, wow. But the builder and the site work company maybe didn’t do a really good job as far as where the grading goes. You should have a a minimum of a 1% pitch in all directions from the house itself. 2% is probably industry standard. Now you get beyond five or 10% now you’re talking about, you know, you’re now you have a lot of slope, almost too much slope, but better to have some than have a negative slope towards the house. Although not super critical, positive slope away is a good thing and corrected much easier than a negative slope. Imagine if you have a negative slope and you got to come in with machinery and literally retilt the land away. That that’s a big job. Or putting in fancy drainage systems like I did at Weed Patch. You know, when you think about it, the number one damage that insurance companies and insurance industry state is water damage to the house and dwelling. Water. It’s such a necessary thing, but can be so damaging if not managed correctly. And besides, usually there are always solutions. All it takes is money and time to correct it. But you really got to you really got to do some soularching. If you find these things, you love the house, but you find these problems, it’s decision time. Do you have just gutters to put on the house and it should be okay? Even if you have downspouts and run it into corrugated pipe and run it 20 feet away from the house. Okay. All right. That’s a solution. Plain and simple. or do you need to go in with uh bobcats and and excavators and totally redo everything? Something to think about. So, let’s move on to the next one. Outdoor electrical. Probably the most abused DIY installs that can be missed and not repeat, not disclosed to you as a buyer. using the wrong wire, using the wrong gauge wire, the wires put too shallow, no conduit was ever used. You just have Romex under the ground and inoperable and not disclosed to you only to be found by accident and hopefully not an accident later on after you’re putting your personal touch to the front yard and you didn’t realize, oh, hey, there’s a there’s a 120 volt wire 4 in underground that runs parallel to my driveway that I just hit with a trencher and I step off the trencher or I let go of the trencher and all of a sudden there’s a shock value that might be in there. Ask me how I know this. That’s right. I have come across these issues where my customers have hired me to do things. They come in and you find these wires and instantly everything gets shut down. What is this? Where does it come from? Where does it go to? 50% of the time my customers didn’t even know that something like that was there. And now I’m having to get out and put multimeter probes into the wire to see if they’re live. Some were, some were not. Some were broken, some were not, some were certainly not in conduit. So something to pay attention to. If you see the proverbial greeting light out at the end of the front walkway near the sidewalk, always ask the question, “Hey, where is the electrical connection between that light out there and the switch that’s at the front door?” Or if there’s a light in the shed in the backyard, how does the electricity get there? Where is it located? If your seller was the one who put it in, chances are they will know. They will also know with their fingers crossed behind their backs if they didn’t put it in correctly. And just ask, tell me about the install of that. What route did you take? What conduit did you use when you put that in? Oh, you didn’t use conduit. I see. Now you’re disclosing it on the disclosure form. You didn’t say anything. Talk about red flags. So sellers should but often don’t tell you or have honestly forgotten if it was 20 plus years ago. They kind of forgotten or they bought the place in the same condition and they don’t know lights where lights to the shed go. They they don’t know where the wire is. They may know where the switch is, but they don’t know where it is or how it is. Some other electrical outdoor issues that you have to pay attention to are already mentioned driveway ornamental lights, low voltage landscape lighting systems, where’s the transformer? Where’s the cabling? If you know, how old is the system? Another one, and it’s a big one, is pool electrical. If you’re buying a home that has a pool, there’s always going to be a timer that kicks on. the mechanicals of that pool and electrical is going to be pulled from the panel because it’s a designated circuit in 90 plus% places. And where does that go? You will find often times the electrical will be meshed in to all the plumbing trenches for the pool itself. It’ll be a 1- inch schedule 80 gray line from the panel and drop down into a trench and then into the trenches and made its way all the way to a box near your your filter and heaters and pumps and everything else. So ask where it comes from. Another one that’s very popular nowadays is plumbing electrical to man cave sheds, she sheds, hobby sheds, business that are now in a shed in the backyard for homebased businesses and now you’re buying it. How does it get there? Where is it at? How deep is it? Water features. If you have pondless waterfalls or you have fountains and they’re being run, are they being run off of electrically connected extension cords that are lying in the bark in the planter beds or is it a designated electrical circuit that was brought out there to run just those particular water features? And lastly would be outdoor kitchens. If you have gas lines and electrical lines that come out to outdoor kitchens, where are they? How did they get there? Okay, moving on. The health of the greenscape and the placement of various plants etc. out there depending on your perspective, what perspective you bring as a first-time home buyer. The landscape health overall may or may not be a high priority to you. For many first-time home buyers, it’s all about location, location, location. We’ve heard that for decades. your proximity to work compared to these homes that you’re looking at now. How about the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, the neighbors and the neighborhood? How does it come to bear on the home that you’re looking at? But some items of greenscape interest should be in your top 10 of things that you look at. Here are some things to look for when it comes to the greenscape portion of the property tour and inspection phases of your home search. Number one, right out of the gate, large trees. And when I say large, I’m talking about there are trees that literally are the front yard or are the backyard. various species of trees that can be super problematic, especially if they’re planted too close to foundations, too close to driveways, too close to leech lines and septic trees and their roots can be extremely destructive. So something to look at. A 50 or 75 year old big leaf maple tree is a beautiful thing to look at in the fall, say in October when they turn their beautiful reds or yellows or golds. But that beauty can be quickly twarted as far as where is that 75year-old maple tree and why is the corner of the driveway at an angle and cracked four feet into the driveway. Something to look for extra-l large trees or bushes very close to the house. When we bought Book and Brook and Pond here, the previous owners, for whatever reason, but probably more out of naive tay than anything else, they planted five green giant arborvite right next to the garage wall. And I’m talking like 18 in from the garage wall. And if we moved in and left those things there and they were allowed to get big. Yeah. Just wrong plant, wrong place, wrong reason. plain and simple. So, look for huge bushes and trees that are put way too close to the home and they’re problematic at best. You know, they’re they’re places for creepers and peepers to hide behind while they pry on your windows. You can’t be seen from the street because they can hide in the bushes. There’s pushing up on eaves. There’s many plants that are bushes themselves that get so robust at the trunk that they can mess with the foundation and they can mess with drainage systems and septic systems and just be aware. You know, for me, I I wouldn’t necessarily walk away from a home because it had a big bush in the front. My first house in Hayward, California, had four big chameleia bushes right in the front yard. And they were so big that the living room window, which was probably 8 feet off the ground. These chameleas were 15 feet tall and covered up that elevated window. And one of the first things I did was I went there and I butchered those chameleas. If they died, they died. But at least we wanted to be able to look out the living room window to the street view. Well, those things within four weeks popped all new growth, every single one of them, and they came back out beautifully. The following year, they ended up blooming, and they were beautiful chameleas once we scaffold them out and really trim them up. They looked really good. But boy were they the I would have put them out a lot further and I would have got a variety that didn’t get that big. But solution solution found, right? Okay. Moving on. something that uh is kind of minor in nature. But if you have family members in this buying tour that are really sensitive to bees, anaphylactic reactions to be stings, then look for plants that bottle brush plants or something that blooms and just attracts honeybees like crazy. Now, for the most part, honey bees are pretty docil, but ask those people down in the southwest about the killer honeybees. Yeah, not so much, huh? So, make sure that it’s a safe landscape and if you have a bush or two that is prone to high be attraction, it can come out just as easy as it went in. Other minor things to look for in the greenscape health and that is if there’s a existing drainage system, has it been, you know, infiltrated by tree roots and bush roots and stuff? Does it actually work? Can you stick a hose down the drainage tube that’s attached to the down spout and it actually flows and comes out at the emitter down by the street down by the sidewalk. And if not, how come? Probably dirt, roots, and rodents that get in there and uh stuff it up. Something to think about. How about the neighborhood and the fall leaf cleanup? Many times people overlook something like that. A house that I had in Northern California, it was so old, probably 60 years old when we bought into that and all the beautiful liquid amber trees and the oak that were in there. Beautiful, beautiful treeline streets. But every fall when those leaves came down and the rain started, it all flowed to one street gutter system. There was only one. And man, all those leaves would get swept up into the gutters and flow down to this this uh drainage area and it would just plug up so quickly. It would just flood the whole neighborhood. It would back up. And I can remember on dozens of occasions myself going out there in in waiter boots and stuff and literally pulling all the leaves up out of there and oftentimes had to call the city to come out, pull the manhole cover and literally do one of their huge truck vacuums to get things to work again. Something to think about and look for. And lastly on the greenscape and that is what is the overall health of the yard. Overall health and maintenance of a landscape is kind of a direct reflection on everything. you have somebody who has a neat, tidy, well-maintained, functioning landscape, chances are better than certainly better than 50/50 that everything else is going to be okay systems wise. The house will be in good order, the electrical, the walls, the paint, the roof, and blah blah blah blah blah. But if you have the opposite, something to look at, leaves are never taken off the the roof line, gutters are never clean, things build up and back up, sprinkler systems are not winterized, it the system is destroyed, there is no drainage system. Things are not mowed, things are not clipped, things are not maintained, and fences are falling in. Good indication. and yet they’re asking top dollar for it. Okay, our last segment here is the hardscape. Hardscape is something that uh can be really obvious, but the the root cause may be different than what you’re seeing visually. And let’s go back to the the big tree thing. and you have a driveway that has a huge lift and crack in it, but you have that huge redwood tree or sycamore tree or willow tree, god forbid, that has lifted that. Now you have the repair of the driveway that’s going to be needed and you have the potential removal of a huge large tree. Thousands and thousands of dollars staring you in the face. But oh boy, it has three bedrooms and two baths. and it has a new gas range. So, it’s not going to help you that much, but your decision, right? So, things to look at in the hardscape is conditions of the driveways, the walkways, patios, they should all be in good shape. They should all be free of algae. Algae is a good indication that water is sitting somewhere when the heavens open up. It should be clean. There’s nothing wrong with you turning on a hose and splashing a little water on the back patio at your final walkthrough and you see ponding and pooling. Big decision to be made, right? Can you can you deal with it? Is it is it okay in your eyes? But when you sign on that dotted line and you take those keys, that problem is your problem, not the seller’s problem. The other thing about it is what about the total absence? The total absence of hardcape. You buy a double wide out in the country on five acres. Something that you go, well, it could be in better shape, but hey, it’s on five acres and it’s only four miles from work. But you have no driveway, maybe a light sprinkling of gravel on dirt. You have no back patio. You have no walkways except the weedy grasses, the native weedy grasses outside. All these improvements that might be wanted. There’s a dollar of dollar value attached to each one of those improvements. Now, I’ll leave you with this. I’ll leave you with this little tidbit from someone who has been there and done that and will never ever wear that t-shirt ever again. In this day and age, in this day and age, one of the biggest things, and I am not a financial advisor here, I’m speaking from personal experience. And that is the overwhelming, suffocating amount of debt that young people go into. College education, unless you’re really super fortunate, you have college debt. Looking for a house, you have house debt. getting a new car, car debt. Throw a few things on the credit card, credit card debt. In this world, we should try to live within our means and we should try and be able to save, save, save and make huge down payments or make double mortgage payments and pay things off in a hurry. I was one who was young and dumb and stupid and fell victim to other people making decisions and then finding bounce checks, finding choking, struggling debt. And I will never put myself in that position. Now at 67, I’m looking at finally finally in the last 15 years. No, not even 15 years, more like uh 10 years, I’m I’m debtree. I I don’t have those revolving debts every single month anymore. It just it is such a freeing liberating feeling that you’re not at the the the whim of financial institutions and you can do with your monthly resources as prudent as we are as we want to. So something to think about as you go into this. If you’ve saved up a minimum amount of money to put down for a home, most first-time home buyers, unless they have family assistance, you’re still going to get into that less than 20% down. So, private mortgage insurance has to kick in. So, your payments are more and you have taxes and you have insuranceances and everything else. It’s why oftent times landscapes are always last on the priority list every month as far as improvements. But know this, you can always doll up at little to no cost what you inherited as far as a buyer. You can clean up your yard. You can make it safe. You can take your own trees down as long as you’re not being stupid about it and clean things up. And then as time marches on and resources are acquired, then you can do some more stuff. But please take it from one who’s been there and does not ever want to be in that debt situation again is just try to live in the color black financially every single month. Every month. Red is not should not be your favorite color financially. No red ink. Uh-uh. No black. Make sure you save the monies. Make sure you you look at the future. you know that things are going to need to be repaired or replaced, save for them in advance. Like right now, I know that I have a stove that’s going to have to be replaced soon. So, we’re shopping, we’re saving, and we will buy it. We’re not going to finance a new stove, just not the way we think. Plain and simple. So, I invite you to follow along on some of these inspection uh steps and the elements outside the home. to avoid any sort of costly mistake once you get in there and four months later you find out problems or six months later just outside the warranty phase of later. Anyway, that is what I have for you this week. Sure do appreciate your time and if you’re still with me I invite you to jump over to YouTube and watch the visual part of this particular episode. We’ll have lots of pictures and other thoughts that are going to be brought into it. But as always, to your guys’ landscape success, to your house buying success, it’s an exciting time. Believe me, very exciting. Just don’t be blind. Don’t be blind. Don’t be blinded by realators. Don’t be blinded by certain lipstick elements of the house you’re looking at. and always be a smart and prudent shopper when it comes to homes or anything else. Anyway, I’ll catch you guys next week. Thanks for tuning in. Appreciate your time very, very much. And I’ll say goodbye for now.