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Make sure you’re prepared for the TRUE cost of owning a house!

Make sure you're prepared for the TRUE cost of owning a house! 2

Anyone that owns a house will know just how much money they cost to keep running. It doesn’t matter if it’s a new build or a 100 year old restored cottage soon enough the list of odd jobs that need doing will start growing at an alarming rate.

We’ve lived in our house for about 8 years now and in the very first month we had a step go through on the stairs, the toilet broke and we had a garage door that just would not shut no matter how hard we tried.

Money can be extremely tight the you first move into a house. Normally you’ve stretched every penny you own to get the property you are after and the thought of having to fund repairs straight away won’t be something you would have considered.

About a year into owning our home we had a very rainy day and water was coming into our bedroom through the roof! We got a roofer round who replaced the tiles and where then fed the line about how the whole roof needs doing! 8 years later and we’ve never replaced another tile but I found it so disheartening that some trades people you use will try and con you out of spending more money with them on unnecessary repairs.

Of course sometimes you can find a diamond in the rough as find someone who can do amazing work for you to match your budget. When we had our bathroom re-done at the start of the year we were looking at spending just shy of £1000 on fitting a new bath / shower and the work around all that. We used MyHammer which is like a comparison website for local tradespeople and put out a request for someone to do the work for us and found a fantastic fitter who we’ve gone back to for plumbing repairs as well.

Part of our new amazing bathroom!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course sometimes you need to look to improving the house and not just repairing it. Last year when we decided to get a conservatory we look at a number of local firms such as Kingfisher Windows in Leeds and after having a number of them round one of the biggest aspects we looked into was the aftercare support. Most of them offered a 10 year warranty on the conservatory but we wanted to know exactly what that covered and also how do we deal with the warranty when if we sell the house to a new owner within the 10 years.

So if you are looking at buying a property be prepared for the cost of repairs to mount up. Some you can put off and others will be far more urgent but I think it’s time well spent getting a personal recommendation from a neighbour or someone you know as the last thing you want to do is spend unnecessary money especially when funds are so tight!

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Written by themoneyshed

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