Uxbridge homes with walk-out basements

In town, look at the lots on the town's higher western streets by Quaker Village and up toward the hospital, where a raised bungalow's lower floor often exits to the yard through sliding doors. The east-side subdivisions were graded mostly flat, but the streets that back onto the ravines and the brook's tributaries carry a row of lookout and walk-out lots that sold at a premium when new. Around the golf courses, the two-storeys facing a fairway or a pond were frequently built with a walk-out so the lower level could become a games room. Outside town the moraine's hills and kettle lakes give nearly every acreage bungalow a hillside to build into, and the walk-out level is where the extra bedrooms, the workshop and the woodstove usually live. Country listings sometimes call this a lower level rather than a basement, so read the description twice.

The things that make a walk-out attractive can also hide problems. Water runs downhill toward the exposed wall, so study how the ground slopes beside the door, the eavestrough outlets and whether a swale or a drain was cut to steer runoff. Inside, check the corners of the lower level and behind any finished wall for staining, and ask whether a sump pump exists and how often it runs in spring. Confirm that the finished space was permitted, especially if it holds a bedroom or a second kitchen, and that the windows meet egress size. On a rural walk-out, the septic bed cannot sit downhill from the door under a deck, so ask where it lies, and check that the woodstove was installed with a WETT inspection. If the lower level is unfinished, price the finishing realistically. Randy and Alexander can bring in the right inspector.