Ask the REALTOR: How come there are so few homes with gutters in the Tri-Cities?

Ask the REALTOR® is a regular video series in which I answer your most commonly-asked real estate questions, with a new Q&A posting every week. If YOU have a real estate question for me, drop me a note here.

This week’s question: How come there are so few homes with gutters in the Tri-Cities? Here’s the answer in this brief video, and don’t miss the transcript below.

(RSS subscribers, please click here if you can’t see the video in your feed reader. Thanks!)

Transcript:

Hi, this is Cari McGee with Keller Williams Realty. Welcome to this week’s episode of “Ask the Realtor.” Every week, I answer questions from buyers and sellers — and pretty much everyone in between — regarding real estate. This week I’m coming to you from our new office — woo-hoo!! — with the brand new decor behind me, looking pretty sharp and spiffy.

But this week’s question is the following: “Cari, how come there are so few homes with gutters in the Tri-Cities?”

Well, the Chamber of Commerce answer would be because we have 300 days of sunshine here. But the actual real answer is because it does seldom rain here and most builders don’t even include that as part of a new construction package. When pressed by out-of-towners who are moving here and then they want a new home built and they’re like, you know, “How much does it cost to add gutters,” builders don’t even include that. Like, they don’t have that cost ready because it’s so seldom done here.

And it’s funny, because I was just talking with a Tri-Cities local who had not really thought about it until I said that and I suggested that she go ahead and drive a couple neighborhoods on her way home tonight and discover that there’s not gonna be a lot of gutters on the houses in your neighborhood.

So, just take a look around. It is a funny peculiarity about life in the Tri-Cities, but we rarely have gutters on our homes. If we do have gutters, it’ll be usually over one particular portion, like the front door, so that if you have a visitor coming or if you go out and peek out your front door and it happens to be raining, you’re not gonna get drenched by, you know, water coming off of your roof. But again — super rare and just one of the fun quirks about Tri-Cities living.

If you have any questions for me regarding real estate, by all means, give me a shout via any one of the methods that follow on the next screen. Thanks so much. Bye.