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About Buying a Home in East Sacramento
My hairdresser in East Sacramento was getting married last Thursday so I had to get my hair done on a Sunday. Which is OK, I guess, at least this way I don’t have to style today, as long as I didn’t toss and turn all night and let our new kitten Tessa throw up on my head, and I think I’m good there. It was while I was sitting in the salon on a Sunday afternoon touching up what she calls my sparkles, when I realized my hairdresser needs to buy a home.
Wait a minute. Sparkles, what are sparkles, you might ask? I asked that myself because for a moment I thought perhaps diamonds were a thing of the past, like Bruce Jenner’s face. I swear he no longer looks like a man, he looks like a woman. And I wouldn’t know that if I wasn’t sitting in a hair salon on a Sunday afternoon peering at the cover of People Magazine and discussing Sparkles.
Sparkles are gray roots. Yes, one of these days I’ll get around to letting my hair grow out its natural color just so I can see what it is, but for now, I don’t have that kind of luxury of time. If I have gray roots, I color them. I am jealous of the women who don’t have to mess with that, but then again, you still need to get your hair cut unless you want to look like Albert Einstein, or maybe Morticia Addams — the latter is the direction I’m heading.
Rather than spend my time at the salon catching up on all of the pop culture stuff I’m better off not knowing about, I used that time to talk with my hairdresser about buying a home. She has two incomes, a spouse, decent jobs, and she’s tired of living in an apartment. She needs a house. So, if she’s gonna buy a house, she may as well get started on the right path.
It’s funny what you hear yourself say when you spend time talking to a person who doesn’t know anything about buying a home. This particular couple will probably buy a two-bedroom, 1 bath, maybe about 1,000 square feet, and I predict it will be an older home somewhere in Midtown or among smaller bungalow homes in East Sacramento. However, my hairdresser needs to learn about home repair. Take responsibility for fixing up her new home; I insisted, it’s empowering, too. Unfortunately, she believes she can find whatever she needs to know about home repair on the Internet.
Only if she chooses wisely. Doesn’t end up electrocuting herself.
So, yesterday we talked mostly about debt ratios and finding out how much she and her spouse pay each and every month for bills and living expenses. Her first step is to talk with a mortgage broker and get pre-approved. If she needs to pay down debt, now is a good time to get started. I have plenty of time to help her out, lots of patience, and I’m in no rush. My experience says, once she catches the fever, she may be the impatient one, though.
The Direction a Sacramento Home Faces
When I counsel home buyers for Land Park, one of the questions I typically ask is which direction they prefer their Sacramento home to face. It’s a facet of home buying they might not have previously considered. Then it hits them, yes, the direction a home faces is a preference. The direction of their new home is a choice, a selection. The orientation of real estate is important.
In the northern hemisphere, southern exposure gets the most sun, when the sun moves from east to west. But the way the streets are laid out in Sacramento, especially in the core areas close to downtown such as Midtown, Land Park and Curtis Park, many streets run east and west. This means most of the homes in Land Park face north or south.
However, in East Sacramento, many streets run north and south, so those homes typically face east or west. If your Sacramento home faces east or north, the front part of your home will receive the morning sun and the back yard will be hit by the hot afternoon sun.
One of my Land Park neighbors behind me wants to rebuild a shared fence. Her dog has a habit of jumping over the fence. Well, that and the fact the fence is falling down. It doesn’t matter much to me since that fence is located behind our garage. But the type of fence matters to my husband because he maintains several raised-bed vegetable gardens back there.
The neighbor asked if it would be all right to build a fence higher than six-feet, and I gave her the go-ahead. Then my husband had a chat with her, because he was worried that an additional foot of fencing would block part of the sun from his garden. He suggested she top it off with chicken wire. When she shared that bit of information with me, I couldn’t help but laugh. I suspect my neighbor was a bit horrified by that suggestion. Chicken wire isn’t exactly visually appealing. I think lattice would look better.
However, my husband is right about one thing. (Quick, call out the media.) A higher fence on a southern property line would throw shadows on that part of the yard. So, if you’re looking at homes in Land Park, consider which way the sun moves. You may prefer to buy a Sacramento home where the master suite is shaded in the afternoon, with a sunny morning breakfast nook. Or, you may prefer a back yard with a northern exposure, especially if you do a lot of late afternoon entertaining. But look out for those neighbors who tell you to put up chicken wire.
While Elizabeth is on vacation, we are revisiting her favorite blogs from previous years.
