5 Critical Features To Look For When Buying A Beach Home

Buying a beach home can be one of the best decisions you make in your life. Beach life has a unique charm to it, and it’s not hard to understand why. But, it’s important to make sure that your beach home is outfitted to withstand the rigors and potential dangers of existing on a beach. 

There are certain characteristics and features you want your beach home to have to ensure that you’ll be able to comfortably live in it and add to it as you see fit without worrying about weather damage and legal ramifications. In case you’re in the market for a beach home, here are 5 critical features to look for when scouting one out. 

Make Sure Your Beach Home Has a Good Foundation

A solid foundation is key to long term living in a beach home, for obvious reasons. Extreme weather events are common on the beach, which means you need a sturdy skeleton to hold up your home. Wood Frame Construction is not what you want here. Instead, look for a beach home built with ICFs. 

These are hollow concrete blocks that are tied together with rebar or metal ties to create a comprehensive and unbelievably durable foundation and wall system. This is the single most durable type of foundation you can find and it will almost guarantee you never have to deal with structural damage in your beach home.

Find Out What Parts of the House are Weatherproof

Moisture intrusion is common in beach homes, so look to see what parts of the home are weatherproof. Weatherproofing windows and doors on your own is easy enough, but if you have insulation gaps and leakage anywhere in the walls, roof, or foundation, you might want to move on from that particular home.

Look Into Any Environmental Restrictions for Remodeling

Certain areas can have environmental restrictions on remodeling, so do your research to find out if this is the case. If there are restrictions, you might be limited as to what type of shingle alternatives you can install and other limitations mostly related to the exterior of the home, such as a new deck.

Check Out the Surrounding Houses

If you have certain roof and siding colors in mind, check your neighbors to see if the style clash might be a bit too much. This sounds trivial but certain materials will just not fit in amongst other types, especially if your whole neighborhood is uniform and you aren’t.

Investigate the Weather Patterns

If your area is hurricane-prone, that’s a whole nother set of circumstances you’ll have to deal with each year. If you aren’t up for the challenge it’s enough to drive you right out of your beach home and back to dry land, so don’t overlook this factor. 

Living on the Beach is a Dream

But, it can turn into a nightmare if you choose the wrong house. Make sure you look over the 5 critical features to ensure that you can enjoy your new beach home without running into any unexpected problems or roadblocks. 

Matt Lee is the owner of the Innovative Building Materials blog and a content writer for the building materials industry. He is focused on helping fellow homeowners, contractors, and architects discover materials and methods of construction that save money, improve energy efficiency, and increase property value. 

Let us do your next renovation project.  David Shoultz, and his team at Beachfront Builders located in Delray Beach, do all kinds of construction from remodels, flips, renovations, and new construction. Furthermore, his wife Ivana Shoultz and her company Beachfront Properties handle all of the design and real estate portions for each project. They work together to help you find any home, and make it your very own.  This is our passion, we live here locally and would love to help you.  So, Contact us if you’re interested in finding that perfect #beachfront winter getaway and we’ll help make that dream a reality.

Beachfront Builders. We are local, Licensed and Insured Contractors that offer a unique style of building. Uniquely, we do this by focusing on luxury, sustainability and using the latest technology to build your dream home. Not to mention, we work with the best Architects and Interior Designers to design your dream home and build them exactly the way you want. Therefore, we pride ourselves on all of the various small details and try our hardest to make this process, an enjoyable and great experience for everybody.

Lastly, we look forward to getting your feedback and potentially working together in the future!