10 Things I Would NEVER Ignore When Buying a Home in Omaha

Buying a home is one of the biggest financial decisions you'll ever make, and there are expensive mistakes you can avoid if you know what to look for. After 23 years in real estate here in Omaha, I've seen buyers overlook critical details that cost them thousands of dollars after closing. I'm breaking down 10 things I would never ignore when buying a home in Omaha, Nebraska.

Is there ever going to be a perfect home out there? No. But understanding these warning signs and hidden costs will help you make a smarter decision, whether you're a first-time homebuyer, relocating to Omaha, or buying your next home. From foundation problems and drainage issues to roof condition, property taxes, insurance costs, and hidden expenses, we're covering the lessons I've learned from over two decades in this market.

Let's talk about what you should never overlook.

Table of Contents

• Age and Condition of the Roof
• Homeowner's Insurance Costs and Coverage
• School District Boundaries and Quality
• Home Inspections 
• Sewer Line Condition and Age
• Age of the Home and Maintenance Costs
• HOA Financials and Special Assessments
• Floodplain Status and Water Intrusion Risk
• The Neighborhood and Negative Influences
• Property Taxes and How They Work in Nebraska
• Which Issues Should You Prioritize?
• Conclusion

Age and Condition of the Roof

The first thing I would never ignore is the age of the roof . Here's why: insurance. If you're not from Nebraska, one of the things that really surprises people relocating here is how high our homeowner's insurance is. We're one of the states with the highest-priced homeowner's insurance, and the age of the roof has a direct impact on that cost.

If you have an older roof, your insurance is going to be higher. Or sometimes what insurance companies do is offer something called actual cash value coverage instead of full replacement coverage. Let's say you buy a home with a 10-year-old roof. Instead of giving you full replacement coverage, if there's hail damage and the cost to replace the roof is $20,000, the insurance company is going to say, "Wait a minute, that roof is 10 years old, we're only going to give you 50% of that." And then, oh, by the way, you have a $5,000 deductible. So instead of a $5,000 out-of-pocket cost, you're getting a check for $5,000 on a $20,000 roof replacement. That's a $15,000 gap you have to cover.

What is considered an old roof? In different parts of the country, it's going to be different. In Nebraska, I would say anything over 5 years is starting to age as far as that roof goes. If a roof is 2 or 3 years old, you're in good shape. Or if it's new construction, that has an impact as well.

Here's another thing that happens with insurance and older roofs: sometimes you'll have a 2% wind deductible or hail deductible. Maybe your normal deductible is $5,000, but for a roof they're going to say it's a 2% wind or hail deductible. Let's say your house is worth $400,000, now 2% of that is $8,000. That's your deductible for roof damage.

Homeowner's Insurance Costs and Coverage

A lot of times people view insurance as kind of an afterthought. You want to get your insurance company involved early in the process because you're not just looking for the cheapest policy, you're looking for the best policy at the best rate. Sometimes going super cheap and not understanding what your policy covers can come back and really bite you.

During your due diligence period, in Nebraska, according to our contract, we have a 2-week due diligence period where you can do any and all inspections, don't wait to get your insurance company involved. Get your insurance company involved right away. Your insurance company can do what they call a CLUE report (Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange). They can do an address history on that particular property. If that home has a lot of prior claims, that can impact your policy and your insurance coverage.

Here's another tip: if you think you got damage from hail, do not call your insurance company first . That's counterintuitive, I know. Your first call should be to a local reputable roofer. Have the roofer come out and evaluate your roof. Because if you call the insurance company and they come out and say, "Hey, you know what, there's no damage, you're perfectly fine," that still impacts your insurance because it's filed as a zero-paid claim. Then a month or two later, you call the insurance company about something else and they say, "Wait a minute, you filed too many claims, we're dropping you from insurance." According to your mortgage, if you have a mortgage on the property, you're required to carry insurance.

You don't just have damage to the roof, you have damage to the gutters and to the screens. Roofers are really good at finding that stuff. A lot of times what you can do is have the roofer meet the adjuster at the property. That way those two folks can fight it out over the insurance.

We get a lot of hailstorms in Omaha, and what's really odd about a hailstorm is it can come through town and different parts of the city are hit differently. Every time there's a hailstorm, I think, "Oh, what listing is being impacted right now?" If you're a buyer and during the pending period when a home is under contract there's hail, you can get permission to have a roofer go out and assess the property. I've had that happen where there's a hailstorm during the pending period, and it's just a pain to deal with.

School District Boundaries and Quality

Even if you don't have kids, school district can make a difference . School district boundaries can change, so you want to make sure you verify on your own. Don't rely on your agent. There are parts of Omaha where the school is right down the street, you can see the school from the subdivision, and lo and behold, that subdivision goes to a completely different school district.

If school district is important to your decision to purchase, you want to make sure you verify that on your own and do your own research. Nebraska has a thing called open enrollment where you can opt in to another school district, but it is an application process, so it's not automatic. You're responsible for getting your child to and from school. In some of these newer school districts, it's going to be very hard to opt into.

Where is a good spot to research schools? I want to share a website with you: nep.education.ne.gov . This is the Nebraska Education Profile page, and this is actual public data. This is for Nebraska, and the 2024-2025 data is now available. You can go to this site and do statewide data or district and school data.

In Nebraska, there are different classifications: excellent, great, good, and needs support to improve. Here's the thing about school districts: what may be a good district or a good school for one person may not be good for someone else. Just because a district has an excellent classification doesn't mean that's the right school for you. It's kind of a starting point and gives you an overview. If you're living in Denver and you don't know anything about the different school districts, this is a good place to start, but you don't want to hang your hat on it.

The site gives you nice data: the total number of kids, the total number of teachers, program participation, attendance ratings, graduation rate, college-going rate, test scores, and financials to see how much they're spending on each pupil. In Bennington's case, it's $13,000 for every student. It's an interesting site to explore if you're looking to research different schools.

Sometimes you have to compromise. If you're in a certain district, it might be a higher price. You have to weigh that out. We have very local schools in Nebraska. That's one of our draws, our education system. But here's the deal: you pay for it because our property taxes are high. We also have good private schools. I sent my kids to private school, and it's kind of like your own tax because you're paying for grade school and high school, but I was happy with it.

Home Inspections 

I cringe when buyers waive a home inspection. There are cases where it makes sense, if you have somebody who's in the trades and who's going to flip the house, but I still think it's a good idea to do a home inspection. You're taking on a giant risk when you waive that home inspection. When you tour a property and you take 20 minutes to tour it and you waive that inspection, guess what? That was your home inspection.

You can do multiple inspections. Let's say you have the home inspector out and he finds something and says, "Hey, you might want to have an HVAC contractor do more in-depth research on that furnace unit," or the inspector calls out the roof and says, "I would have it evaluated by a professional roofing company." During that due diligence period, you can have a roofer come out to look at the roof.

Anytime you have inspections, you have to get permission from the seller to do the inspection. When you go under contract, 14 days sounds like an eternity, but it goes by really quick. When you're getting close to going under contract, contact that home inspector right away because good ones are busy. Let's say the inspector comes out and recommends having something else looked at, that timeframe can really get condensed.

Here's something else we see in our marketplace: just because the Uniform Purchase Agreement says there's a 14-day window, there's nothing that says the seller has to give you 14 days. I've had sellers say, "You know what, we're only giving you 7 days to do that home inspection." That can happen. They can move the goalpost, and it's perfectly legit.

Sewer Line Condition and Age

Let's say it's an older home built before 1990, and there's a big old tree in the front yard. You know what I'm going to talk about now: the good old sewer scope inspection . If you see a cast iron main stack, that's a tell. On modern homes, on new construction, that main sewer line is made out of PVC. Those main sewer lines are really nice because tree roots are not going to grow into them.

In older homes, they're made out of clay sections, and those clay sections are butted up to one another. Those little tree roots grow in, they're looking for water, and those tree roots love that water in that sewer line. On an old home, you're going to have a main sewer line that is clogged with tree roots.

On really old homes, I've seen this happen: the sewer line normally goes from the house to the street, but I had a case in Fremont where it was a corner house and the neighbor's sewer line tied into the seller's sewer line. It wasn't even going out directly to the street. When they repaired it, they would have to tell that neighbor, "Hey, by the way, you can't tie into our sewer line anymore. You have to run your own sewer line to the street."

Be very aware with old homes. Old homes are really cool, but they have old home problems. On a 100-year-old home, that thing is full of lead paint. You have those clay sewer lines. There's asbestos. Some of them have asbestos tile, asbestos tape on some of the furnace things, knob-and-tube wiring. There's plenty of things wrong with an older home.

What's nice nowadays is they have these cameras that go down the sewer line and you can check it out. Back in the day, before these cameras, you just had to auger it every once in a while. You planned on augering it every few years. Here's something else about the main sewer line stack: when it goes from the main stack under the house, that will be cast iron, and it has scale. It doesn't last forever, but it has to be what they call descaled. A lot of times if you have a sewer scope, they'll say, "This line isn't bad, but it needs to be descaled." They run some sort of auger thing that scrapes that cast iron.

Age of the Home and Maintenance Costs

People get so hung up on price as opposed to weighing everything out. Let's say you find an affordable home that's $200,000, but it's an older home, 70, 80 years old. You're going to have a lot more maintenance. Sometimes you have to be careful about that. If you have old mechanicals, you have to budget more for maintenance. Sam and I say that till we're almost blue in the face: budget for maintenance. But sometimes people overlook that.

Every home has maintenance, and sometimes when you do maintenance on things, you don't increase the value, you just make it more saleable. People expect to have a furnace that operates and a roof that is serviceable. Just because you replace the roof, you might make the home more marketable, but you didn't increase the value. Same thing goes with windows. You will recover some of the cost, but you're not going to recover all of your cost.

HOA Financials and Special Assessments

If you're buying a condo, you're not just buying the condo, you're also buying the HOA. You have to look at the financials of the HOA. Here's the other thing that people don't take into account: Sam pointed this out, and I thought it was a brilliant assessment, every home has a special assessment.

If you don't know what a special assessment is, if you live in a condo and they have to repave the parking lot, they might say it's going to cost $100,000 to repave the parking lot and there are 10 units, so that's going to be $10,000 apiece. That is your bill that you just have to pay. That's called a special assessment.

But if you think about it, let's say you have a driveway and you have to replace the driveway. That's kind of its own special assessment, only you're the only person paying for it. Every home has maintenance.

Floodplain Status and Water Intrusion Risk

You don't want to ignore whether or not it's in a floodplain. Flood insurance is very expensive, and there are stipulations where you may not be able to rebuild. You might think, "Wow, this is such a great deal on this property." No, it's not. It's in a floodplain.

Here's the crazy thing about Nebraska: the Papillion Creek watershed in Douglas County and Sarpy County, we can have some very freak rains where things flood. We have flash flooding where you're shocked at how high some of these creeks can get. You might have this little creek behind your house and you're thinking, "Oh, that thing looks harmless." After a heavy rain, that puppy could fill up. Even though it may not be in a floodplain, there's still a risk there.

Think about water intrusion in the basement. If you go downstairs and it smells musty, or if you're looking at the concrete block and it looks like there could be water intrusion, you might have to have further investigation. The holy trinity of a dry basement is gutters, downspouts, and grading . You want to make sure the grading around the house has a slope so it slopes away from the house.

Most homes, when they build a home, part of the code is they have to have a swale. You have two homes side by side, in between that home, there has to be a kind of channel so the water can be directed away from the house. Most builders put one in and it's required. But even when you buy a new home, when you build a home and you disturb the soil, it takes 7 years for the soil to settle. On new construction, right around the house, the dirt will sink down.

D.R. Horton actually injects water to help compact that soil better. A lot of builders don't do that, but I was shocked that D.R. Horton did. D.R. Horton also has interior and exterior drain tile. A lot of builders don't do that. People go online and everybody throws a lot of shade at D.R. Horton, but locally they do a really good job. Are their homes perfect? No builder builds a perfect home. You have to remember they build 83,000 homes. There's going to be folks that are not happy. I don't care who the builder is, they're built by humans and people make mistakes.

If you don't clean your gutters, that can come back to haunt you. You want to make sure you have downspouts directed away from the foundation, at least 5 feet out, directing water away from the foundation. If you dump water right next to your house, that water is going to go down. New homes have drain tile and a sump pump. Older homes didn't have all that. I grew up in a home that was built in the '50s and we'd have water in our basement. My dad was adamant about making sure the gutters were clean. You have to make sure that water gets directed away from the foundation.

The Neighborhood and Negative Influences

The first thing you're buying is the neighborhood. Sometimes, and I've been guilty of this when I buy rental property, I fell in love with the house and I didn't really scrutinize the neighbors. Are the homes well kept? Are there a bunch of trash and junk in the yard? Is the grass 3 feet tall? That impacts the value of your property. You want to make sure the homes around you are well maintained.

I've been guilty of that with buying a couple of my rental properties. "Wow, this thing's really good," and it's like, "Yeah, the neighbors look kind of junky, but oh well." Well, guess what? That still impacts your property. The first thing you're buying is the location.

The other thing you have to be careful about is what they call a negative influence . You might think, "Wow, this is a great deal on this house. The house down the street or across the street is $20,000 more." Your house is discounted because it backs to a negative influence. Sometimes there's a trade-off. On any home, I don't care what the home is, there is a trade-off.

Property Taxes and How They Work in Nebraska

You're not going to be able to ignore property taxes because if you ignore your property taxes, the government can take your property if you don't pay them. In Douglas and Sarpy County in Nebraska, we pay our property taxes in arrears. That means we pay 2025 taxes in 2026.

When you buy a home, you're actually prorating last year's taxes. On our purchase agreement, everybody explains this to somebody, and people's eyes just glaze over unless they're really analytical. Then they're all bent out of shape because it's like, "Why am I paying last year's taxes? Shouldn't the seller have to pay last year's taxes?" That's a totally legit question, but when you have the purchase agreement, they say we're treating last year's taxes in Douglas and Sarpy County as if they're current year taxes. They're going to be prorated as of the date of closing.

Every January they're going to assess your property. Assessed value and market value are two entirely different things. I had Dakota Smith on, he's the Douglas County Assessor, and he was on the channel a few weeks back. Every January they're going to assess your property and give it a new value. It's a mass appraisal method. You might have bought your property for $400,000, but your assessed value may not be that high. Technically what they're trying to do is get it within 92% of market value.

Here's what happens with new construction in terms of taxes: when you build a home, maybe when the assessor looked at it in January of 2026, it was just a vacant lot. Your first year's taxes on new construction might be just lot taxes. The following year they're going to come back and assess the property, and there's going to be an improvement on that property. Now it's going to be fully assessed. Your taxes are going to go up. Your first year taxes on new construction are very low, but the following year your taxes are going to go way up. In Nebraska, we have high property taxes, but it's going to be what they call fully assessed.

That's why builders don't want homes to have birthdays. That's why they have model homes. What a builder will do is have a model home, and somebody will come in and say, "Oh, we like this home." Then the builder will sign a contract and go build it on lot 28 or whatever. Builders aren't a march of dimes. Builders adjust to the market. If the market is getting tougher, builders are going to build fewer homes. They don't want to have unsold inventory out there because that's costing them money.

Which Issues Should You Prioritize?

Look, there's no perfect home. On any home, there are going to be trade-offs. But the things I would never ignore are the ones that cost you money after closing or create ongoing financial obligations you didn't budget for. Roof age and insurance costs can surprise you with thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses. School district boundaries can shift, impacting resale value even if you don't have kids. Water intrusion, sewer line problems, and foundation issues are expensive to fix and hard to spot without proper inspections.

Property taxes in Nebraska are high, and the way we pay them in arrears confuses a lot of relocating buyers. HOA financials and special assessments can turn an affordable condo into a money pit. Floodplain status and negative influences in the neighborhood can tank your property value. These aren't things you can fix with a coat of paint or a new appliance. These are structural, financial, and location-based issues that follow you for as long as you own the home.

If you're looking at buying a home, if you're in that new construction price point, at least look at all of your options. Go out there and look at different builders. Look at D.R. Horton, look at Charleston Homes, look at Richland Homes. Do your research. Don't just limit your options to existing homes. Give yourself some options. The good thing about going under contract with new construction now is you can go under contract now, have your home completed in June, and then put your existing home on the market in March or late February and sell your current home. It's kind of hard to marry up those dates exactly, but there's an opportunity out there.

Conclusion

Buying a home in Omaha is one of the biggest financial decisions you'll ever make, and there are expensive mistakes you can avoid if you know what to look for. From the age of the roof and the cost of homeowner's insurance to school district boundaries, sewer line condition, property taxes, and HOA financials, these are the things I would never ignore. I've been doing this for 23 years, and I've seen buyers overlook these details and pay for it later.

Do your research. Get your insurance company involved early. Verify school district boundaries on your own. Do multiple inspections. Look at the neighborhood, not just the house. Understand how property taxes work in Nebraska. Budget for maintenance, especially on older homes. And if you're buying a condo, look at the HOA financials and ask about special assessments.

If you have any questions or you're thinking about buying or selling a home in Omaha, I'd love to help. You can call or text me at 402-490-6771, or jump on my calendar and we'll set up a time to talk. I also have a neighborhood quiz at livinginomahaquiz.com that can help you narrow down which areas might be a good fit based on your priorities.