Things to remember when buying a home

The home buying process is a daunting task and there's so many things to remember and do that many will make mistakes along the way.  Here are some wise words of wisdom to remember when buying a home (excluding loan related issues) and avoid the most common mistakes many make to the best of our ability.

(Accept that many mistakes will be made, but we must always try to do the best possible)

• Hire your own home inspector, not the one the real estate agent recommends.
• You read this before on different sites im sure.  It's serious.  Dont use inspectors that basically work for the agent.  You are throwing money away.  Kickbacks makes everything dirty.  Your agent has been screwed over too many times to have your best interest in mind.
  
  
• If you are buying a newly built house, vet what actually comes with the price/purchase and what the property tax is after the home is built.
• Besides 4 walls, what else you get? Gutters, a lawn, a fridge, A/C, etc. 
• Property tax on land is pennies compared to what you pay after you have a new home constructed and move in.
• Look for shallow dips in the yard. If it's buried construction trash make sure the seller deals with this.
  
  
• Storage space is a huge part of your life. Get the biggest garage possible. Buy either a half car extension or a full car extension over the amount of vehicles you will have.
• Garage space is a huge deal if you are living in a long term detached home. Else, attic or basement may suffice. Unless you are planning on storing stuff at your parents home.
  
  
•  Dont buy a house that needs upgrades or with a pool unless you were specifically going in looking for one.
• You will never get the upgrades done and putting in a new in-ground pool is extremely expensive.  Maintaining a pool is a pain that you need to be looking forward to when you bought it.
  
  
•  If there is a soaking/jacuzzi tub - make sure there is sufficient hot water. Fill up the tub as if you would use it to make sure.
• In apartments, you may have a timer on your hot water.  In homes, you have to check if your hot water tank is big enough.
  
  
•  Observe your close bus stops especially when school is out to see what kind of neighborhood you are in.  Check rental listings to see if there's too many people in your neighborhood that wont care about it.
• Avoid the ghetto.  
• Avoid having a large crowd of kids around your home at 3 pm.
  
  
•  Avoid any homes with big trees growing right by it.
• Protect the foundation
  
  
•  Check the parking situation at night time when everyone is home.
• If you plan on street parking/using a community parking lot.
  
  
•  Dont buy homes in a flood zone if this is your primary house.
• Basements always get flooded when it's bad. Even if you have a sump pump.
  
  
•  Dont buy a home with an open kitchen floor plan unless you were specifically looking for it.
• You will need a super expensive exhaust fan (not a dinky one attached to a microwave) and the smell will seep everywhere.  Worse than the smell is the grease.
  
  
•  In a house, get your utility lines marked.
• You will need to know where they are at some point.
  
  
• If you are not set on buying a condo/coop, go for a house, not an apartment. If you must have a shared wall/ceiling/floor, make sure it's sound proof. 
• You will feel like a prisoner in your own home if you dont check this. If high property taxes is a deterrent, calculate the price of the maintenance fee and common charge of an apartment and understand it adds up close to the property tax amount anyway. Its far better to live in a detached house in the end.

Removing music from IOS7 iphone/iDevice purchased off iTunes

The music app in IOS7 continues to be a piece of crap that ignores folders and makes you make local playlists or sync with your iTunes while at the same time, tries to move you away from iTunes to iCloud.  It's trash.

You may have songs for whatever reason, (belongs to someone else, got it free from the starbucks, whatever) that comes up in your phone.  You try to swipe it but there's no delete option like the other songs that you copied from your computer.

To remove it, you must:

• In Settings, make sure "Show All Music" is on.
• Play (replay* because you played it at some point to have this problem) the song and just fast forward to the end.
• In the playlist on your screen, if you see a cloud icon, touch it to "complete" downloading the song to your device.
• So at this point, the song is fully in your phone. You've enabled the cloud connection, played it all the way to the end to ensure full download.  Now you can swipe it to see the Delete option.
• Delete the offending song.
• In Settings, make sure "Show All Music" is off to get rid of the song name with the cloud icon from your list.