if you follow this procedure, by nightfall your brain will be tightly packed with hundreds of thousands of bits of important real estate information, and you and your spouse will be able to have useful decision-making conversations like this:

YOU: I kind of liked that contemporary with the fireplace in the kitchen.

YOUR SPOUSE: No, the contemporary had fire damage in the kitchen. You’re thinking of the split-level, the one where the garage floor had a Rust-Oleum stain shaped like the Virgin Mary.

YOU: No, that was the colonial, remember? With big white pillars out front and no toilets.

YOUR SPOUSE: No, you’re thinking of Monticello. Remember, We went there on vacation in 1979?

YOU: No, it was 1978.

Using this logical elimination process, you’ll begin to narrow your list down to the three or four dozen houses that you are truly interested in. These are the ones you should go back and inspect in a thorough manner, using this convenient checklist:

Home Inspection Checklist

The Roof

This is a “must.” There is an old German expression that goes: “A house without a roof is like a machterstrassefurtermorgennachtdankeschoen without a gutsprechenbuchlungwiegehtvolkswagenporsche.” If anything, this is an understatement. So the first thing you should do is go up and crouch in the attic and see if you get bit by a bat. This is usually an indication that the house contains bats, which, depending on your lifestyle, could be a negative factor, especially if one tries to suck out your blood, because that means it’s a vampire bat, which means the house is located in South America, so right away we are talking about probably a fairly long commute to work.