Home Sweet Home: The Shocking Truth About Maintenance Costs

0:00Hey everyone, this is Jim, producer of the Around the House Show Podcast. If you're listening right now, you already know we bring you the best tips, tricks and expert advice to fix, upgrade and maintain everything in your home, without the headaches or the huge bills. But if you're catching us on the radio or borrowing a friend's phone, you're missing out on new episodes dropping straight to your device every week. So do yourself a favor, hit pause for just a second, grab your phone and subscribe to Around the House Show on your favorite podcast player. Whether it's Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube music, or wherever you listen, it's completely free and you'll never miss an episode again. Thanks for supporting the show, now let's get back to making your house work for you. Welcome to Around the House with Eric G, your go-to source for everything home improvement.

1:03Whether you're a DIY enthusiast or just looking to make your space shine, Eric G is here to guide you through the latest tricks and tricks. So grab your toolbox, put on your thinking cap, and let's get to it right here on Around the House with Eric G. Welcome to the Around the House Show, your trusted source for everything about your home. My name is Eric G. Thanks for joining me today, guys. Hope everything's well. Today I wanted to jump in and talk about this new report that I just saw come out. This is a great midweek special midweek update kind of topic here. This came from Synchrony, a leading consumer financing company. They did a new national study called Lifetime of Homecare. This is interesting, guys. Hope everybody's doing well out there. So they went out and did a study to see what is the expectation of homeowners on lifetime home maintenance costs. Homeowners expect to spend about $70,000 on lifetime home maintenance costs.

2:07Wrong. The actual costs exceed $339,000 or more than $7,000 per year on average. And nearly half of homeowners of delayed or cancel repairs to do economic pressure, driving higher long-term costs and seven out of 10 homeowners like adequate repair services for inevitable emergency repairs. So this really kind of tells us that we have a huge gap out there of what people think it's going to cost to maintain things and what it's not. And so pretty interesting. You know, we've got new homeowners coming in that have less skills than we saw 20 or 30 years ago on average, because well, we took out most of the home shop repair classes that we took in school, the wood shop, the mechanical stuff, so many schools put in computer labs in those same spaces. And now we have people that have to pay stuff to get a fixed versus repairing it

3:07themselves as a DIY project. So it's interesting. So despite recent softening, the US repair and remodeling market remains nearly 50% above pre-pandemic levels. It's just topping about $600 billion. Well, it's really interesting. That shows us kind of there's a financial burden with this as well, which is home care. Gotta take care of the place. And if you think about it, I know there's people out there that are kind of shrugging their shoulders going, oh, yeah, I bought a new house. I'm good. But tell you what, in today's marketplace out there, with most homes, the way they're constructed, you think about appliances. Most appliances don't last seven to 10 years. So if you got buying new home, yes, you start out with everything brand new. But by year seven, maybe that microwave's gone away. Maybe maybe that refrigerator's on its last leg. Washer and dryer are dying. Dishwasher, it's almost toast. Water heater if you haven't maintained it

4:11could be gone. And that HVAC system guys, if you haven't maintained it every single year, that could be on its way out as well. So if you really start thinking about that, even with a brand new home, that starts to catch up with you very quickly. So it's really interesting here thinking about that disconnect that we're finding. And where homeowners, many people out there are expecting on this study to pay one to $5,000 tops. The actual costs do exceed $7,000 a year. So if you have major repairs, you could be in the mid 400,000 mark over the lifetime of that home. If you have to put in an HVAC system, water damage, things like that. So pretty, pretty interesting stuff. And I think it's something we should pay attention to because I tell you what, when you get a roof that rarely last 20 years, this stuff starts to add up quickly. If you're not out there staying in that deck every few years, if you're not out, making sure the cutters are clean, everything's caulked up.

5:15All those maintenance things that we talk about every year, we've got our spring home maintenance checklist coming up here soon. I tell you what, it's one of those things that we need to dive in and make sure that we take care of because anytime we do some of that maintenance like that, we're ticking away ourselves out of that $339,000 average. So the more we can do ourselves, the more money we have in our pockets and the more we're not having to pay somebody else to do it. You know it's great yesterday. I was here working in my studio working on this weekend show and I hear some saws and stuff going next door. So I look out the window, check it out, contractor next door. This house is not seven years old, swapping out about your window. Yep, it looked good. They did a great job. It was awesome. I was so, I wanted to give out and just give the guys a good golf clap out there because they flashed up. They did go a little excessive on the caulking, I will say. That was a little big, but other than that, I'd give them an solid A, I'll go 92%. But really, it ended up looking great and they did it right. But I bet you

6:22that was a $1,000 window replacement, $1,500 window replacement. So second story of that, scaffolding setup with a couple of ladders and they're out there for most of the day because they wanted to do it right and I give them that. They had to cut back on the window and even that, that, you know, of course, that window is going to be a different thickness a little bit. So they had to do some modifications. They did a great job. The time they were in and out, I'd say they were in their six, seven hours, but that just shows you two or three guys out there. So that could have been an easy $1,500 box on that plus with the window. And I was just one window. So you start to think about what those things cost. Well, we start, should start planning on that. You know, maybe you should have a fund for your house. Start out, saving it up, have 10 grand, setting that fund out there for just the maintenance costs. We do it for our taxes in many areas where you have your taxes taken out and put in. So that is one of those things you kind of think about. Okay, what is your budget for maintenance? And I'm not talking

7:26about when you have to put in the new water heater, you have to put in the new HVAC system or, oh my gosh, I need a new roof. Because none of that stuff's covered by insurance unless you bought a home, home warranty. And you know, my take on the home warranties. It's not bad if you're buying a house and you can get somebody to throw it in as part of the deal. But the rest of it, nah, don't mess with it. Don't mess with it. I do not like the home warranties in many situations. If you're going to go out and buy it, I would say, you know, here's the problem. I mean, they do cover things. Don't get me wrong. But it's like anything else. What are they doing? They're going to sit there and make sure that they are repairing everything. You're not going to get a brand new furnace in most cases. So things to think about when you're dealing with that, because that can get totally out of control. And you know something, I don't want to see a pay more than you have to. You might be better taking some classes, learn how to fix it, or put in a budget for, hey, that refrigerator could die because so many times these days,

8:27with what it costs to fix a refrigerator, you're almost to the point of going out and buy another one, especially if they're charging you a two or three hundred bucks just to get out and take a look at it. That stuff adds up quickly. And you might just be better off to put a budget in there than to buy that extended warranty. All right. Enough about burning holes in your wallet. Let's talk about a few things on our update here. A couple of things we have our new YouTube channel around the house HQ. We've made some changes even as early as this morning here. We're in the middle of changing today doing some stuff on there. We have you two YouTube channels. The at around the house Eric G and around the house HQ. What we're going to see is the podcast stuff is going to be a lot of it is going to be over on the original show that we have there. So that's going to have our interviews. That's going to have the stuff that's going to be related to the basically our podcast and radio show. Let's keep it simple. A lot of that's going to be right there. However, our new main channel is going to have more of the product reviews DIY fixes projects

9:30that kind of stuff. So we're building those out and some interesting interviews that aren't going to make it into the radio show or podcast. Sometimes we're just standing out there and we run into people and maybe it's not relevant for that. Even though we might be talking about home improvement, the context sometimes doesn't translate into good audio. So you'll see some interviews. We got some coming up there this week too. I'll just say it's somebody important from Shark Tech and we'll leave it at that. But we've got a lot of great stuff coming up and I tell you what, I am so excited. We're going to be announcing here this weekend. We teased about it last week, but we got some new tips from Red Wing, which I'm super excited about. And I can't wait to show you more about that. All right, guys, why are you going? I've got so much to do today, including making some changes on YouTube over there and getting those things dialed in. But check that out. You can find out all that information in our podcast notes, always hiding right there. Have a great rest of the week. We got a great show coming up this weekend. I can't wait to show

10:31you. We're going to be doing some debates. And this one's going to be interesting. Do they build those houses like the used to? Is that good thing or is it bad thing? Johnny and I debate that one out on Saturday. Can't wait to show you that one. Get's interesting. We get a little bit into what we think is good and what we think is bad. And it's a good, strong debate. So we'll see you then. Thanks for tuning into around the house guys. I really appreciate you and make sure to share this show off to your friends, neighbors, family. And we're here to help you guys out. And of course, if you've got questions for me, hit me up and around the house online.com. We'll see you Saturday. Thanks for tuning in to Around the House. Thanks for tuning into the Around the House show. Make sure you subscribe on your favorite way to catch podcasts. Also, be sure to subscribe to our new YouTube channel. And you can find it at Around the House HQ and ring that bell for updates. Thanks for tuning into Around the House. I love the radio. Take my eyes out. I know where to go. I'll over the radio with you.

11:39Hey, it's Eric G with Around the House. Are you looking to grow your business? Need a spokesperson for your company? Maybe an MC for an upcoming trade show or maybe you want to up your game and shoot some promotional videos. My team of experts would love to chat with you. Head to Around the House online.com and fill out the contact that's formed. And we'll set something up. Thanks for listening to Around the House.