Home buyers who do their homework try to anticipate exactly what that home will cost them: down payment, points, fees, the mortgage payment itself, taxes, insurance....
But there's one expense that you should always add into that total, because forgetting it can hit you with the need to come up with a fairly large chunk of change, often with little prior warning.
What is this expense?
Maintenance costs.
Once you sign those papers and are handed that key, you are now the person responsible for making sure everything works, from the roof to the heating system to the plumbing. You don't get to call the landlord anymore when the living room ceiling starts to drip or the air conditioning conks out or the toilet backs up. You are now the one who has to either figure out how to fix things yourself, or somehow come up with the money to hire a pro.
And here's something that any longtime homeowner knows: if somethings going to break, it'll break at the worst possible time.
My neighbor called me late on the afternoon of December 24th. "Do you have water pressure?"
It's been so dry around here lately that our local water company has been plagued with leaks, so
we've been experiencing periodic cuts in water pressure. (Parts of Texas are notorious for the
tendency of the local clay soil to "settle" and bust pipes.) But this, unfortunately, was not the
case this time.
I checked and got back on the phone. "I've got full pressure."
"Oh, hell. We were just getting in the car to go to my mom's for Christmas and I came back in to get something and heard water running through the pipes, but I don't have any pressure. So it's leaking somewhere, and what do you want to bet it's in the slab?" She was almost literally grinding her teeth.
I pointed out that at least she'd discovered this before driving away, so she could cut the water at the meter and not come home to a flooded house.
As it turned out, she was lucky; a length of PVC had pulled out of a joint just beyond the slab in the dirt and with a little digging, sawing and gluing, her husband was able to fix it when they got home.
I was not so lucky.
New Year's Day, and I was at my computer when I heard what I can only describe as a thwang coming from my hall closet. I'd never heard a sound quite like that before. I poked my head in through the closet door, thinking that perhaps Snark, the Ugliest Cat In The World, had somehow been shut inside and knocked something over. Nope, no cat. All quiet. I use half the closet as a pantry and the other half houses both my heat pump's interior unit and my water heater, both side by side on a low wooden platform. I peered around the water heater and in all the corners. Definitely no cat.
I went back to my computer. A few minutes later, I heard another thwang and then a bang.
Suddenly, water started streaming out a bottom grill located under the heat pump. I jumped up, stuck my head back in the closet and found water pouring out of the mid-section of the water heater.
I ran to my utility room and switched off power to both the water heater and the heat pump, ran back to the closet, pulled off the grill and tossed every towel I had handy under the platform to absorb the water, which turned out to be less than one might think, given that this was a fifty-two gallon tank. With the assistance of a small mirror, I found that the tank's seam, which was facing the wall, had simply split halfway up.
Ah, the joys of homeownership.
My friend had again gone out of town. I have a key to her house. I took my evening shower up there that night, walking home through her pasture in my bathrobe and parka.
The next day was spent in visits and calls to every place within twenty miles that sold water
heaters. The initial stop-in at Lowe's almost gave me a heart attack; fifty gallon heaters cost a minimum of $300. I listed all the brands available, got on the internet, found a rating site and found that the brand of my old heater was near the top of the list. Since it was warranted for six years and had lasted sixteen, it seemed the logical pick.
Next job? Schedule a plumber. I called three and the lowest price to replace the heater, with me
buying the tank and bringing it home myself, was $350.
Luckily, I moaned a bit about this to the lady at the store where I went to get the tank and she had me call her husband, a licensed journeyman plumber who did side jobs on the weekends and agreed to charge me $200. I also lucked out in that the next day was warm. In North Central Texas, the temperature in the winter depends almost entirely on which way the wind is blowing and you can go from low 30s one day to 70s the next down to low 30s the next, which is exactly what happened. We had one warm day to get the tank in and working, and considering that it took 45 minutes just to drain the old tank using a hose run out the front door, we needed it.
Total cost? $324 for the tank, $200 for the labor. Ouch.
Not all home maintenance expenses will be this costly, especially if you learn to do some kinds of
work yourself. Like many home owners, I've learned to do a lot of things, from unplugging toilets to snaking out drain pipes to the one memorable time that I replaced an entire bathtub and surround. (It was a mobile home and the bathtub and surround were plastic, light enough for me to lift by myself.)
I've hooked my main drain to a septic tank, I can replace or repair most leaking water shut-off valves, and I've replaced more toilet tank valves than I like to think about.
But somethings I can't or won't do myself. For example, I've paid to get shingles replaced on my very sloping roof and I've paid quite a lot to get my heating/AC fixed. (I don't want to risk sliding off a roof, and I won't mess with anything both complicated and electric.)
Almost any homeowner will have similar stories. Eventually, even the best fridge, dishwasher or dryer will go south. Eventually, even the best roof will spring a leak. Eventually, even a top-of- the-line AC unit will leak freon or just plain give up the ghost.
Since you often can't predict when such things will happen, you should always add at least 5%
extra to your estimated monthly costs of home ownership, then set that money aside to build up a repair fund. If you can't set aside that extra 5% comfortably, think long and hard about buying that particular house. Almost any company that does repairs on your home can put a lien on your house if you fail to pay. You don't want to end up choosing between having no heat or no running water... or having your credit ruined and, potentially, your house taken away from you.
A little money banked for home repairs can make that difference. So remember to allow for it...before you buy the home.
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