How to estimate the yearly maintenance cost of your home

What is the most expensive recurring cost of buying a home? Maintaining it. You may think that your home buying expenses are finalized at close, but the cost of maintenance is one that many homeowners plan & budget for (or fail to do so) well in advance. Maintenance can include anything from repairing drywall and caulking to repairing gutters and roofs. Because you can never really predict what will go wrong during the year, it is best to set aside a certain amount of money each year dedicated for emergency repairs and regular maintenance. Naturally, the question you might find yourself wondering is: how much? This article will give you a few methods to determine how much money you need for maintenance each year based on your specific home.

Before getting into the specific methods, let’s make some disclaimers. While these methods or rules are good general measures, they do not take into account the specific nature of your home and the climate it resides in. Some things to keep in mind are the age, weather & location of your home.


The age of your home is a big determiner in how much maintenance it will require. If your home was built within 5-10 years, chances are it won’t need very much maintenance. However, for homes that are 10-30 years old they will exponentially need more repairs until eventually major ones like roof replacement will need to take place.


Weather is another big factor that can influence the amount of maintenance a home requires. Homes in areas with more extreme weather conditions such as freezing temperatures, heavy snow & rainfall, high winds, termites or ice storms will generally require more care and upkeep than those in mild conditions due to increased wear and tear.


Lastly, the location of your home can have a major impact on the maintenance level necessary. Homes located on the bottom of a hill that can be exposed to rainfall collecting or homes in floodplains for example can require higher than average amounts of maintenance.

Now that those disclaimers are out of the way, the first rule I’d like to present to you is called the 1% rule. This rule states that one way to estimate the yearly maintenance cost of your home is to set aside one percent of your total home value. For example, if your home is worth

$200,000 you ought to set aside $2,000 for maintenance.


Another handy rule to estimate maintenance costs is the square foot rule. The square foot rule states that you should set aside a dollar for each square foot of your home. So if you have a 2000 square foot home, then you need $2000 for maintenance. This rule makes a little more sense as it is directly correlated with the size of your home so may be a little more accurate.


So which rule should you use to estimate your home maintenance costs? A clever way to do so would be to use both rules then take the average cost from both of them. This would ensure that you’re somewhere in the middle and take both rules into consideration. So if your home is worth $300,000 and it is 2,000 square feet big then you take the average of both maintenance cost estimates which is $2500 (3000+2000/2). Next, add 10% just to account for the external factors mentioned in the beginning of the article (weather, location, etc) 2500+250 = $2750.


For high quality home maintenance at fair prices contact Cransten Handyman and Remodeling & we’ll be happy to be your go to home/life saver.


Cransten Handyman and Remodeling

(800) 618 7015

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