Home Service and Maintenance
The homes we live in most often are the biggest assets we have and yet we often fall short of keeping up with Home Service and Maintenance.
While you read this article you may be thinking to yourself that you need to change your furnace filter, or you may be thinking of several items that need to be addressed on your Home. It’s always I should do it that when I get home. . . That’s after you get done with work and then head off to kid’s activities, and the last thing you want to do is work at your home.
Fact of the matter is we all live busy lives no matter what age bracket we fall into.
The fact is most people spend more money on vehicle maintenance annually than they do on their home. How do I know this? I spent five days speaking to people anywhere from downtown Rochester to some of the local towns around Rochester. My results were 70% of people that drove cars that were less than five years old were up to date on vehicle maintenance. The same 70% of the people that were up to date on vehicle maintenance, 100% of the people all had items that needed service or maintenance performed on their house. That includes homes that were less than a year old.
A common asked question when we are working with someone that wants to build a new home is “how much is it going to cost for Service and Maintenance”? As a rule of thumb one can expect to spend 1%-4% of your home’s value. To put this in perspective if a person values their house at $500,000 then you might spend $5,000-$20,000 annually on upkeep. Believe me this is a FACT! There are hundreds of Home Service or Maintenance checklists on the internet that are available to us, but I can tell you that most people do the very minimum on home maintenance.
Why do we tend to let things go until it’s too late and that often results in bigger costlier problems?
Here’s the reasons we were given of why people don’t have Service or Maintenance performed on their house.
It’s a new house, it shouldn’t need anything. (Jamie’s Note: Not true, most issues will happen in the first year.)
It’s a new house and it’s probably under warranty. (Jamie’s Note: This may be true now, but what is the plan after year 1?)
I don’t know who to call to fix XYZ.
Contractors don’t call me back.
I don’t have time to meet multiple contractors and try to coordinate times.
Preventable Home Service and Maintenance is expensive. (Jamie’s Note: Yes, it is.)
Last week I had a meeting with a husband-and-wife doctors downtown that we are building a high-end luxury home for. They are in the process of getting their existing house ready to sell and they were completely stressed out over the lengthy list of items that needed repair or replaced before the home was ready for market. Here I was sitting across from these two brilliant doctors that handle very difficult situations daily and I could feel how anxious and stressed they were over trying to tackle this list on top of raising a family and being focused on work. They said they didn’t even know where to start. Of course, I wanted to help anyway I could, so I asked them to email a list of items that needed to be done. After reviewing the list, I quoted them a price and our company completed the list lengthy list in three days.
Our goal when writing articles or blogs is to shed light on items we are asked about. This article is not intended to sell you on Home Service and Maintance items. We are dedicated to answering questions you may have. No matter if the home you live in is new or existing, they need to be cared for. Homes are meant to be lived in and Premier Builders can help keep your home in tip top shape!
