01/31/2024
🏡🏡Perform maintenance on your car on a regular basis? Your home needs the same TLC. Yet, you may be in the majority of homeowners (68%) who don’t perform routine maintenance on their largest financial investment, their home. But being proactive with a small investment of your time, money and effort can lead to significant financial, mental, physical and environmental benefits of home maintenance.
The list below is a small reminder to 🛑 and do these right now. Trying to do many things at once is OVERWHELMING. Little project or projects per month. The trick is planning. I have a Rolodex of great contractors and various resources that can help you maintain your beautiful home.
There are 1️⃣1️⃣ Benefits to maintaining your home.
🏡 Save Money 🏡Experts recommend budgeting a minimum of 1% of your purchase price on home upkeep per year. To put in perspective, if your home is worth $300,000, then you expect to spend about $3,000 a year on maintenance. Data shows these short-term preventative expenditures financially pay off in the long run. For every $1 spent on maintenance, approximately $100 is saved in future repairs and replacements. That $3,000 spent on maintenance could balloon to $300,000 if you ignored upkeep. Significant, right? That $3,000 spent on maintenance could balloon to $300,000 if you ignored upkeep.
🏡 Mitigation of risk for secondary damage. Remember the hole you patched in the roof last fall? Just think if the consequences If you hadn’t checked? What if that small hole got bigger, resulting in a significant leak in your unfinished attic? Not only would the roof deteriorate faster and need a larger patch (or an entire new roof), but now there is water damage throughout your attic. A simple repair gas turned into a bill that is 3x the original amount.
🏡 Validate Insurance & Warranties
f your water heater springs a leak and floods your finished basement, you will probably take a keen interest in how exactly insurance will pay to rebuild that. If you didn’t properly maintain and care for that water heater, your insurance might not cover any repairs or replacements. These policies will not cover issues caused by lack of maintenance and pay for repairs or replacements.
🏡 Save Energy Keeping up with your home maintenance can help curb utility bills without sacrificing comfort. The biggest chunk of energy is usually from heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC). Ensure your system is inspected and cleaned regularly for maximum efficiency. Replace furnace filters on a regular basis; otherwise the system will need more energy to work harder to deliver cool or warm air. Another way to save energy is with a good old fashion dusting of your appliances – refrigerator, exhaust fans, washing machines, dryers, dishwashers.
🏡 Extend Life of Appliances Simple and quick tasks, such as changing oven hood filter, will keep that oven humming and extend its lifespan potentially for many years.
🏡 Increase Home Value A well-maintained home with a binder documenting a history of repairs and improvements is sure to boost resale value. Prospective home buyers will notice attractive curb appeal, fresh coat of paint, updated appliances, etc. and be willing to pay top dollar to settle into a house that doesn’t require major repairs. A recent survey found that well-maintained homes usually sells for 10% more (average of $44,000).
🏡 Boosts Home Safety A well-maintained home is a safe home. By conducting regular home maintenance checks, you minimize the risk of tragedy such as fire and theft occurring to your home. Study says US fire departments respond to an average of 346,800 home structure fires per year (about 40 per hour). Terrible and preventable.
🏡 Minimize Pests An unmaintained home is a magnet for a pests, including insects and small rodents, both inside and out. Simple routine maintenance tasks can keep those pests at bay, reducing the chance that these pests make a cozy home inside your cozy home. Well-maintained yards don’t provide tall grass and weeds that harbor nests of baby rodents. Checking for foundation cracks eliminate the opportunity for mice and insects to get inside your home.
🏡 Enhance Quality of Life A frequently overlooked benefit of home maintenance is that it improves your quality of life. Living in a house with creaky floorboards, sticky doors, or overflowing gutters is, well, annoying and frustrating. however, clean sheets, clean windows and the hum of a dishwasher can really calm the senses.
🏡 Relieve Stress With proper home maintenance, you can rest assured that you have done everything possible so that your home – from the roof down to the sump pump– is working efficiently. You’ll feel less anxious about “what will break next?” Sure, surprises happen, but you will be prepared.
🏡 Most importantly-Improve Your Health Not only do you get peace of mind from upkeeping your home, but your body also reaps physical benefits from home maintenance.
Study shows that that 68% of homeowners feel overwhelmed, confused and stressed about maintaining their home – that’s crazy 😜 .
😊☃️🍁☀️🌸Don’t let yourself be overwhelmed or confused one day longer. Where there is a will, there is always a way. 📞Call me, 💬chat with me,📱 text me➡️ I’d like to be your one stop resource for all things 🏡
