A Home Maintenance Program: To keep your Home from Turning into a Money Pit

Home Maintenance Program
There is tremendous value in keeping your home well maintained. When it’s time for resale, an appraisal, refinancing, or the dreaded demand for a home inspection from your insurer, having a well maintained property is priceless. We recommend having a Home Maintenance Program in place to keep your Home in tip-top shape and prevent it from turning into a money pit.
It is important to have an annual check of the mechanical, plumbing, electrical and heating portions of your home.
Back in the day, folks did this as a form of entertainment in their off hours, but in this day and age, who has the time?
Here is what the experts recommend:
- Contract with service companies that provide annual inspections on home equipment. Almost everyone has an inspection/maintenance program for their heating and air conditioning, but did you know that professional roofing, electrical and plumbing contractors also have these programs?
- Have a home services company clean your eaves troughs, check and touch up the caulking on your windows and siding
- Hire a knowledgeable handy person to go through your home and tighten all door knobs, cabinet hardware, and change hard to reach light bulbs and report on potential problems like rotting deck boards or loose railings, both interior and exterior. This report should contain quotation for repairs.
- Make sure your smoke/CO detection system is up to date and the batteries (if applicable) are changed annually.
- Keep all receipts for any maintenance work/services in a file folder that proves the nature of the work and the time it was completed. Tech savvy folks can scan and save on a stick.
You should budget 1 – 2% of your home’s market value for these services annually. Here’s what this expenditure will provide for you:
- A documented account of exactly what has been done annually at your home, its purpose and how much it cost.
- A record for predicting the useful life remaining in your equipment which allows you to budget for future capital expenditures. For example: roofing, hot water tanks and heating equipment good for 15 years; electrical and plumbing equipment good for 20 -25 years.
- Pre-empt disasters. Your plumber letting you know that the sump pump flexible discharge hose has deteriorated; your roofer letting you know that one of the roof vents was torn loose during last winter’s ice store; your electrician letting you know that your breaker panel has lost its certification; your handy person letting you know that the deck steps are rotting are all important items to pro-actively take care of.
- A smoke and Carbon Monoxide Detector is critical to a well maintained home.
- Peace-of-mind. It’s good to know that you can leave your family with the babysitter and the smoke/CO detection is perfect in your home.
- Pride of ownership.