You take your car for oil changes on a regular basis. You schedule time out of your busy schedule to hit the gym. Why? Because you know it’s crucial to maintain your car and body to keep it running smoothly and efficiently. Yet, I bet you are in the majority of homeowners (68%) who don’t perform routine maintenance on their largest financial investment, their home.
Admittedly, home maintenance can be tedious, and at times, overwhelming. 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.
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Backstory
I’m an average homeowner. I’m constantly balancing work, family, friends, hobbies. And quite frankly, I tend to let home maintenance slip down to the bottom of my very full “to-do” list.
It seems everyone – from realtors, to contractors, to even parents – says “home maintenance is so important”. Yet sometimes I need additional motivation to prioritize our home’s maintenance.
What are the benefits of home maintenance? Why am I walking around my house checking for cracks in my foundation or vacuuming my frig’s coils when I just want to be sitting on the couch taking in the newest Netflix series?
Good question – and one we answer here.
What Is Home Maintenance?
Before we dive into the benefits of home maintenance, what exactly IS home maintenance? What does it entail for homeowners?
Home maintenance means examining and if necessary, repairing or replacing the various components of your home. It’s checking your home’s components (foundation, plumbing, roofing, etc.) for safety and efficiency.
In other words, it’s ensuring everything in your home works the way it’s supposed to.
Home maintenance doesn’t refer to the general, everyday tasks like cleaning and organizing. Cleaning the bathroom – not home maintenance. Checking under the bathroom sink for leaks – home maintenance.
Home maintenance can be simple. Yet so many homeowners (like me) tend to ignore home maintenance. They put it off until something breaks and needs repair or replacement, which leads to an expensive and daunting experience.
Home maintenance can be broken down into 5 easy buckets.
- Routine Maintenance
- Project Maintenance
- Corrective Maintenance
- Emergency Maintenance
- Lifestyle Maintenance
You can dive more into the different types here – 5 Types of Home Maintenance Every Homeowner Should Know.
11 Benefits of Home Maintenance
Owning a house can be a source of joy, a place for family to gather, make memories and feel safe. But if you don’t keep up with home maintenance it also can be a huge source of headaches. Here’s 11 financial, mental, physical and environmental benefits to motivate you to make home maintenance a priority!
1. Save Money
Many 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.
Sound counterintuitive, right? How is spending money every year on my home saving money? Agreeably, in the short term, it doesn’t appear you are actually saving money.
But, 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?
How is that possible? Routine home maintenance saves money by identifying small problems now before they balloon into large costly repairs or replacements.
For example, during your usual fall maintenance you identify a few damaged shingles and small hole in your roof. For a few hundred dollars you hire a roofing contractor to replace the shingles and patch the hole. This relatively small expense delays the roof’s deterioration and need for complete replacement by years.
2. Reduce Additional Damage
One of the biggest benefits of home maintenance is its mitigation of the risk for secondary damage.
What is secondary damage? Best explained by example. Let’s take another look at that roof you patched last fall.
What if you hadn’t checked your roof? 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 – wood rot, soggy insulation and a moldy smell. And potential destruction of everything stored in that unfinished attic – holiday decorations, extra clothes, toys, books, furniture, etc…
Long story short, by not walking around your house on a crisp fall day looking up at your roof, you’ve gained a costly nightmare of repairs and replacements.
Scary, right?
3. Validate Insurance & Warranties
Ahhhh… home insurance and home warranties. A sexy topic, am I right? ? But if 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 glorious man cave…
Unfortunately, if you didn’t properly maintain and care for that water heater, your insurance might not cover any repairs or replacements. And now you are stuck watching the Sunday football games in the cold, cramped tool shed.
The fine print of most home insurance policies and home warranties require homeowners to step up and upkeep their homes in good working condition to be valid. Otherwise, these policies will not cover issues caused by lack of maintenance and pay for repairs or replacements.
4. Save Energy
According to EnergyStar.gov, the typical U.S. family spends $2,060 annually on home utility bills. And with recent global events, utility bills (especially gas) are on the rise.
Keeping up with your home maintenance can help curb utility bills without sacrificing comfort. And save the environment.
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.
For a comprehensive look at how your house uses (and loses) energy, reach out to your local and state utilities to see if they perform free home energy audits.
Another way to save energy is with a good old fashion dusting of your appliances – refrigerator, exhaust fans, washing machines, dryers, dishwashers. Over time these appliances gather dust, debris, and gunk, affecting their efficiency. Cleaning the refrigerator coils avoids the frig from working overtime to cook your food, while cleaning the dryer vent not only improves energy consumption is also avoids fires.
5. Extend Life of Appliances
Performing routine home maintenance on your home appliances – dishwashers, refrigerators, washing machines, etc.- will keep them running smoothly and efficiently for years to come.
Simple and quick tasks, such as changing oven hood filter, will keep that oven humming and extend its lifespan potentially for many years.
True, all appliances eventually putter out and need replacement. But with a little forethought and planning, you can avoid unnecessary repair bills and costly premature replacements.
6. Increase Home Value
Buying a home is a long-term financial strategy and should be treated as an investment. And when you are ready to sell, you’ll likely want the highest return for your investment.
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.
However, if you haven’t maintained your home, it will be painfully obvious in the home inspection report. The home inspector will identify a host of potential repairs and replacements, lowering your home’s worth. Potential buyers will take that under consideration and offer less money.
And considering that a recent survey found that well-maintained homes usually sells for 10% more (average of $44,000), wouldn’t it be a shame to lose out on that kind of cash?
Consistently performing small, inexpensive routine home maintenance tasks will do wonders for resale value and fetch top dollar.
7. 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.
US fire departments respond to an average of 346,800 home structure fires per year (about 40 per hour). That number is nothing to sneeze at! Frequently testing your home’s smoke alarms and fire extinguishers ensure their functionality when it counts.
Cut back on your home’s risk of theft by maintaining your yard. Burglars target homes with overgrown or high bushes because they provide easy hiding places to jump into windows. The simple task of trimming bushes and shrubs protects your home and safeguards your family.
8. 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.
Skip on home maintenance and one day, you might pop your head into your unfinished attic and be surprised by a wasp or termite infestation that spells trouble.
9. Enhance Quality of Life
Don’t you just love jumping into a bed with freshly made sheets at the end of the day? The quiet hum of the dishwasher? 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.
If you don’t take care of your home, it won’t take care of you. A bit of home maintenance will give you the sanctuary you desire.
10. Relieve Stress
A well-maintained house not only enhances your quality of life, but also gives you peace of mind.
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.
Personally, I don’t think the mental aspect of being a homeowner is discussed enough. Homeownership can be stressful – and all that worry must take a toll on your mental health, right? A recent survey by Thumbtack, a leader in home management technology, indicates that 68% of homeowners feel overwhelmed, confused and stressed about maintaining their home – yikes!!!
I find that as I learn more about how my house works, and how to maintain my house, I feel more secure that we are protecting both our wallet AND our mental health.
11. 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.
If you have central AC (if so, I’m insanely jealous), it is essential to replace its filters on a regular basis. Dirty, clogged AC filters can worsen the indoor air quality in your home, becoming a hazard to those who suffer from allergies and asthma, increasing the frequency and intensity of symptoms and attacks.
Wrapping It Up
There are so many benefits to home maintenance it’s impossible to ignore –financial, mental, physical and environmental. Small increments of investment every year will require fewer major repairs and replacements (and headaches) in the long term and help your home stand the test of time.
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