I need advice on the purchase of a house
 

Hey everybody! I'm in Toronto, and I'm getting a LOT more familiar with the finer details of money and mortgages, and I've been informed I am expected to get a house.

Which, yeah, if you can afford it, better then renting where you're flushing your money every month. :/

SO I've found a place. 3 houses on this crescent are listed for sale through this company, and this one's the nicest- although two more are listed through a different company.

http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=18+MASS...,0.010568&z=17

http://www.mls.ca/PropertyDetails.as...ey=-2106592530

I have some very specific questions for those inclined:

-What, exactly, is Central Air Conditioning? I've heard the term, and I've seen a number of 'example' air conditioners and I'm just not able to piece it together mentally. Is it just an AC unit that's permanently built into the house or something?

- Heating: Forced Air, Natural Gas. What the hell? I don't know what this is [The forced air part]. Can someone familiar with it get me an easy to understand explaination? Is it cheaper then electric heat?

- Hydro costs. Electricity is cheaper at different times in the day- midnight to 5 AM being the cheapest power times. I think it's called Metered running? Anyway, we're 7+ People [One I will be sleeping with] going to live in this house, and all of us are addicted to our computers. O_o anyone wanna take a stab in the dark at Hydro costs? All but one of us will spend most of the day at school.

I think those are my 3 biggest concerns at the moment, and I wanted to bring them to you all.


Edit: Oh yeah and I'm like 99% sure it's not a crack house despite being a really good price [all the houses on this street are]. I'll be investing in Bars for windows because frankly that's just good sense inside a big city with a high crime rate.

Central air is often tied into forced air, iirc. The idea is with forced air your house will have a furnace and vents; the furnace will heat the air and force it through the vents. Central air conditioning allows for cool air to be forced through the vents as well. It's not a permanent window unit.

The other alternative to heating that I know of is just convection; you've got a boiler and radiators, simple stuff.

Electric is often really expensive; electric heating is relatively inefficient, iirc.

I wish you luck and good tidings.

It's like this. So yeah, instead of an air conditioner you would put in the window, it's one that's pretty much permanently hooked up to the house.

As far as Water costs, I lived in a house with six guys and about $350 US every 3 months. But that would be Cincinnati, OH costs; I have no idea if it's done differently in Toronto. I'd recommend calling the utility place you'll be paying and asking them what kind of rates they charge and if they could give you some kind of unofficial guess at the per-person amount of water you'll be using.

Other tips for you are to make sure your house is well insulated, examine the place and have it appraised as a part of the final deal, and generally make sure there aren't any structural problems or bug problems. That's about all I can think of now, but you can probably find a good home buying guide on the internet somewhere.

I don't know about merka but wherever I've lived gas heating is far far cheaper than electric unless you got a fancy dancy heat pump.

Thanks guys, that answers a lot of my early concerns. I've got a property inspector who's going to come with me on my second lookover of this house.

edit: and I'm definitely calling hydro to find out some estimates, thanks Spectre.

For reference, you can ballpark the cost of running a desktop computer 24/7 for a year at approximately $200 USD (roughly equivalent in CAN by now since the dollar sucks ass). So multiply that by 7, run it through a little analysis based on the time of day...you get where I am going with this. Not sure of the difference in cost for a laptop.

You guys might want to get used to shutting down or placing the comps in hibernation.

That's actually not too bad. I'm looking at some energy-friendly stuff from our server tower too, since we're going to need it.

Also, I get to finally put my education to work, and get some good physical lines established, and do Ethernet wall outlets. <3 I don't think I can describe how happy that makes me.

I just want to say from someone that has central air since it sounds like its not something you are used to. That is a massive plus to a house. I'm not even kidding once you get used to it using older heating and cooling systems will be like having to use an out house. Sure you could, but after the alternative you'll realize how crappy it is.

Seriously I dont think I'd ever buy a house that didn't have central air conditioning

Well, I'm in Canada. We have 2 days a year where it gets warm enough to use an Air Conditioner, and then we just go to the beach. =P