By Maura Stevens, February, 2025
Once you become a homeowner it’s important to keep up with home maintenance. Home maintenance generally falls into two categories – big expenses and small expenses.
The big expenses include replacing your HVAC, installing a new roof, installing a new water heater and updating your electrical panel.
While these can be large expenses they are integral to the running of your home. Try to be proactive about maintenance of the larger cost items. How?
These items tend to have a certain life expectancy. If you are coming up against the end of the system life cycle you can anticipate a replacement will be needed soon.
For example, if you have a roof with a 25 year life span and the roof is 24 years old – then you should anticipate that you may have to replace the roof in the next year. This gives you time to talk to several roofing companies and see who has the best price.
Keep in mind repairs can come in a time of crisis. For example your HVAC goes out on a 99 degree temperature day in August. Now you are dealing with maintenance under less than favorable terms and the repair or replacement of the system will likely cost more and takelinger to schedule.
Keep in mind that while these larger maintenance items can be costly they will be selling features when selling your home.
Small maintenance items are things such as Repairing rotted wood in your home, repairing leaks when they happen, repair chipping paint and caulking around windows and doors
Repairing these maintenance items does not cost a lot of money and if you maintain them now you will accomplish two things 👍
- improve the condition of your home and
- avoid having those items cause further damage if not taken care of.
We recommend that you walk around the exterior of your property twice a year to assess and repair any needed maintenance.
