The Hidden Costs of Home Ownership

Truly, owning a home is all shades of amazing, but with it comes a high standard of responsibility.  Here is a list of 5 things I’m pretty sure no one told you about being a homeowner:

1. The Huge Price of Maintaining Your Place

I bet you knew nothing about how much it costs to fix a broken window or repair a faulty heater when you had a landlord. Now, guess what…you are the landlord and all those overhead costs are gladly yours to pay for. As a side note to buying a house, you should have at least 1% of the cost of purchase of your home set aside for its maintenance yearly.

2. Good Contractors Are Hard to Find, and Harder to Keep

When buying your home, the furthest thing on your mind was how to find a good contractor, let alone keep one. Yet, here you are, searching frantically for the number of the hardworking plumber that fixed your leaky sink the other day, at a superb price. To avoid overpaying a contractor for poorly done jobs, the lesson here is to locate a good one on time and save their numbers!

3. Any Issues with Those Property Lines?

You didn’t think your super friendly neighbor could be so touchy about property lines? Welcome to the life of a homeowner. Before beautifying your house by constructing something or pruning the area over a property line, be sure to consult your neighbor! Also, it helps to have adequate knowledge of property lines, trespassing and encroaching on these lines; should you ever have to deal with such issues you’d be prepared.

4. To Build Structures, Get a Permit

This might come as a shock to you, but if you need to add on an extension to your house, be sure to have cleared that indeed; you can. You say, what about a deck? GET A PERMIT! Nothing is too small to be deemed improper without having permission to add such a structure. You can get more information on this at your local municipality. All major renovations require permission/approval from your town or city, so be sure to get that done; so that when they visit the site where something has been added as an extension, you wouldn’t have to reel in shock!

5. See Your Home as a Work in Progress

As a homeowner, it is understandable if you see the end of the road with regards to your dream house. When making down payment on the house, you could see in your mind’s eyes, the perfect abode for you and your family. However, you need to realize that getting to this dream destination will require a lot of work, time and money. Don’t be disappointed with this! The right way to approach this would be to organize these upgrades in advance and to stay within your budget when executing your plans. Upgrade your house one step at a time and soon enough, it will take your desired shape.   Author Bio: Anne Barry Anne has been working with writing-challenged clients for over five years now. She offers ghostwriting, ghost editing, coaching, and SEO writing for businesses that want to see their sites at the helm of Google SERPs. Her education background in communications and public relations has given her a concrete base from which to approach different topics in various niches. Her writing skills can be confirmed on upwork.com, where she is a top-rated freelance writer. She especially enjoys writing website and blog content for startups and e-commerce businesses.