What to Look For When Buying a House

The showing is where you decide whether a house is worth paying to inspect. Here is what I look at, in order, and what each thing usually means.

By Vito LiRosi · Realtor and licensed home inspector · September 2026

What to look for when buying a house, from a Realtor who is also a licensed home inspector.

Buyers ask me what to look for when buying a house more often than they ask me anything else, usually between the second and third showing, when two houses have started to blur together. I answer it differently than most agents, because I am also a licensed home inspector, and I have spent years in basements and attics across Mount Prospect, Arlington Heights and Des Plaines.

A showing is not an inspection. The job at a showing is narrower than people think: decide whether this house is worth paying an inspector to open up, and gather the handful of facts that let you write a smart offer if it is.

What to look for when buying a house, starting with what you cannot change

Location is permanent. The lot is permanent. Layout is changeable, but it is the most expensive change in the house, so treat it as close to permanent while you are deciding.

Do this before the second showing: drive the commute at the hour you would actually drive it, not on a Sunday afternoon. Stand in the back yard and look at which way the ground falls. Then walk the floor plan the way you live, from the car to the kitchen with grocery bags, from the bedroom to the bathroom at night. Everything you dislike about that walk is either permanent or a renovation. Finishes are the opposite. You can fix a kitchen. You cannot fix a lot that drains toward the foundation.

Walk the outside before you walk the inside

I never start indoors. Stand at each corner of the house and sight down the roof line. A sagging plane, cupped shingles or dark patches of missing granules are all telling you the same thing about remaining life. Then look in the gutters. Shingle granules collecting there mean the surface is wearing out.

Follow every downspout to where it actually ends. A downspout that dumps a foot from the wall is the single most common cause of the wet basement a buyer finds out about in March. Look at the ground itself: it should fall away from the house. Check whether the driveway, patio and walk have settled and now pitch back toward the foundation. While you are out there, note the window wells, the mortar joints, tree limbs over the roof, and where the sewer cleanout is.

Inside, go to the basement first

The basement is where a house tells the truth. Take out your phone flashlight and look at the bottom eight inches of all four walls, including behind the storage. You are looking for a horizontal stain line, white chalky residue on block, rust at the base of steel posts, and any one wall freshly painted when the others are not.

Find the sump pit. Is there a pump in it, is the pit dry or wet, and is there a backup for when the power goes out during the storm that fills it? Then look up at the joist bays under the bathrooms and the kitchen for old staining. That is five minutes, and it is the highest-value five minutes of the showing. It is also the part almost every buyer skips.

Read the data plates, then read the panel

The furnace, the air conditioning condenser and the water heater all carry a manufacture date on a metal or foil plate. Photograph all three. Photograph the electrical panel with the door open and the label visible.

That is four photos, and they change the conversation. A house with three pieces of twenty-year-old equipment is not a bad house, but it is a different offer than the same house with a furnace installed last year. You are not trying to condemn anything at a showing. You are trying to learn which large expense arrives first.

On the panel, note fuses instead of breakers, a service that looks undersized, or a panel brand your inspector flags. In the mid-1960s to mid-1970s stock that fills a lot of the Northwest suburbs, also ask whether the branch wiring is aluminum. Insurers ask.

What you see, what it usually means, and who to call

This is the table I wish every buyer had in their pocket at a showing. It is not a diagnosis. It is a translation.

What Illinois adds to the list

Illinois radon rates and the standard limits of a home inspection.

Radon. The Illinois Department of Public Health reports that 41 percent of homes tested in Illinois came back above the EPA action level of 4 picocuries per liter. Illinois law also requires that a buyer be informed about radon at purchase, and that any existing test results be disclosed. Ask for prior results in writing, and order your own test during the inspection period. Mitigation is a known, solvable expense. Not knowing is the expensive part.

The sewer lateral. Plenty of the older blocks around here have clay laterals with sixty-year-old trees planted over them, and roots find clay joints. A camera scope is a separate order from the inspection, and it is the one I recommend most often on pre-1970 houses.

Water that is not the house’s fault. Look up the address on the FEMA flood map before you write the offer, and ask the neighbors what the street does in a heavy summer storm. They answer honestly and they answer for free. And if the house predates 1978, assume lead paint is present somewhere.

What a home inspection does not cover

This surprises buyers every time, so I say it early. Under the InterNACHI Standards of Practice, an inspector is not required to determine the presence of airborne hazards including radon, is not required to inspect wastewater or septic systems, and is not required to identify environmental hazards such as lead paint or asbestos.

That is not a gap in your inspector. It is the definition of the service. It means three things get ordered separately when they apply: a radon test, a sewer scope, and any environmental assessment the house calls for. Write your inspection contingency wide enough to cover them. For the room-by-room version of what the inspection does cover, I wrote that out in my home inspection checklist for buyers.

Six questions to ask before you write the offer

• How long has it been listed, and what is the price history? A reduction pattern tells you where the seller actually is.
• Why is the seller moving, and what is their timeline? Terms win houses as often as price does.
• What permits exist for the address? Call the village yourself. It is public record.
• What is on the seller disclosure and the radon disclosure? Ask about anything answered with a blank.
• For a condo or townhouse, are any special assessments pending? Ask for two years of association minutes.
• What stays? Appliances, the shed, the mounted televisions, the water softener. Get it in writing at offer time.

This is the point where it helps to have someone in your corner who reads houses for a living. That is what my buyer’s agent services in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago are built around: one advisor who understands construction and condition, not just the contract. Moving into the area from somewhere else? Start with my Northwest suburbs relocation guide.

All of this assumes you already know which town you are shopping in. If you do not, start with the commute and work outward: my guide to which northwest suburbs actually fit which lives lays out the corridors, the trade-offs and the places I would steer you away from.

Not every problem you find deserves the same reaction. When something on this list turns up and you have to decide whether to negotiate it, plan for it, or walk, I sorted the common findings into the ones that are worth walking away from and the ones that are only worth a conversation.

Questions buyers ask me at showings