Maintaining Your Biggest Investment
Most Canadians look forward to owning their own home, whether that’s a house, a condo, or an acreage in Spruce Grove, Stony Plain, Parkland County, the Edmonton area or elsewhere. In the excitement of taking possession of a new home, moving in and settling down in a new neighborhood, sometimes people forget they’ve taken on a long-term commitment to look after the property and protect the biggest investment most of us will ever make. Owning a home will require ongoing investment of work and money.
With proper planning and good routines, maintaining a home need not be overwhelming. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, CMHC, publishes numerous guides for homeowners. Check out “Home Maintenance Schedule: Regular Maintenance is the Key” for an extended season-by-season checklist of home maintenance tasks. (A slightly edited version of this article entitled “Your new home maintenance schedule” was published in a special section of the June 4, 2011 edition of the Edmonton Journal). If you’re like me, you’re bound to find a few things on this list you might not have thought about. For example, one suggestion is to remove the interior window screens in the fall to allow the circulation of air to keep condensation off the windows and to allow in more free solar heat. With spring now on the way in our region, time to check and repair those screens and then put them back on the windows.
Maintaining your home will make it safer, more attractive and more pleasant to live in. But there’s another very good reason not to neglect these routines. Time and again in the real estate business, the houses that sell the fastest and for the best price are those houses that have been looked after the best. When it comes time to sell your most valuable possession, you’ll be glad you kept up the maintenance!
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