Continuous House Maintenance

Long-term home maintenance

It is inevitable.  Most people will spruce up their home right before they put it on the market.  But doesn't it make you really wish you'd done it before so that you could also enjoy the upgrades and repairs?  Well, here are several reasons why you should bite the bullet now:

Your house can be fixed up, spruced up, and otherwise clearly improved just before a sale.  However, you can only do just so much.  Even though you may have done a wonderful job, years of neglect can show up in many small ways.  Just as it is hard to get a pair of worn clothes to look like new with a good ironing, most buyers can pick up on little things that show the home might not always look this good.  

An example of this is cigarette smoke.  If a home has been smoked in for the last 10 years, a bit of paint, carpet shampoo, and air freshener will not hide the smoke from a non-smoker.  You might be able to mask it or eliminate most of it.  In fact it might not even be terribly noticeable.  But non-smokers will still probably label the house as musty, even if they don't identify the smoke.

Stay on top of maintenance and periodically take on one of those big projects.  It keeps your house in top form.  But the biggest benefit to all this may well be the fact that your neighbors will notice your improvements and do something to their house as well.  Nobody wants to have the worst looking house in the subdivision.  And if your neighbors decide to keep up with you, then if you sell your house, the rest of the neighborhood is as attractive as your own house.