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 Estimate the Cost of Utilities 

A very important factor in determining whether or not you have found a home to buy is to estimate the cost of the utilities per month. You can do this in a couple of ways - estimate the cost yourself or call the utility company. They may offer free or reasonable energy audits. You can also look under energy auditors in your local yellow pages and hire someone to do it. To do the estimate yourself, make a chart of the most energy consumption devices in your home. This is usually your heating and cooling system, hot water heater, stove, and refrigerator. If you use a portable room heater, freezer, microwave, or dishwasher, also include these on your list. Don't forget the clothes washer or dryer, if you have these items. If you own any of the following, add it to your list: an aquarium, block heater, dehumidifier and humidifier, furnace fan, hot tub, water bed heater, well pump, computer color monitor or laser printer. Not all households have these, and their inclusion to this list may seem petty, but they begin to add up, and together they consume more energy than their owners might expect.

Make an estimate of how many hours during the day and over the course of a month you would use these items and write that down. Now, because you actually haven't moved into the house yet, at this point you can only estimate. If you decide to buy the home, keep track of these things over the course of a few months to get a more accurate estimate. Once you've determined the usage by hours, you'll need to find out the wattage of each device by looking at the device itself. Once you have that, find out the power company's charge per kilowatt hour. To find this out, call the electric company. Once you have this amount, you can determine how much money you are spending on each appliance. Remember, at this point we are looking for a rough estimate which will help us determine whether we can afford the utility costs or not. Look also at obvious indicators, such as a house with lots of windows and sunlight will use less energy than a darker house surrounded by trees. A house with lots of square footage will require more energy to heat and cool than a house with less square footage. Also, if the house has old windows, it will typically be more expensive for utilities because of the loss of cold and heat thru the windows. If there are new replacement windows, the opposite will be true. A house that has lots of ceiling fans shows you that you can keep the house cool with the use of air conditioning, which will cut your utility costs as well.