Don’t get stung by deferred maintenance!

Deferred maintenance can sting you if you are lax in taking care of your home.

I received an alarming photo via email this week from my mother with the ominous subject line: “BEES”.  I immediately called and she sounded rather dejected.  It appeared that while my father was out of town she decided to get some overdue organizing done, and had discovered an enormous beehive in their attic crawlspace.  Let’s shelf my reaction when I realized that she had crawled back up there to take the photo!  According to the beekeepers that came to remove it, the hive contained an estimated 100,000 bees and set my folks back $650 for the removal. I told her to look at the bright side- at least it wasn’t a hundred thousand scorpions. The moral of the story is this—homeowners must do frequent checks to ensure their property does not get out of hand.

Houses don’t take care of themselves.  Doing these checks and performing property maintenance before you have a huge issue is just a smart thing to do, whether you are thinking of selling or staying indefinitely.  Do you have rooms, crawlspaces or outbuildings you rarely use? Don’t let more than three weeks to a month go by without a thorough check. It won’t take you long, but problems have a way of multiplying and expanding. Pests, water leaks, clogs- all of these items and more can end up to be costly headaches if not dealt with promptly. Caulk up cracks when they appear, flush your water heater a few times a year, get someone to check the state of your roof before next year’s monsoon, change your A/C filters as directed- you get the picture.

Schedule just 30 minutes a week to do a visual sweep of your property, take care of smaller items and make note of larger upcoming tasks that need to be handled.  Tucson homes and properties in the surrounding desert area need special attention and repair that homes in other parts of the country don’t.  Your house is like a living thing-it needs attention and a bit of love from time to time! Take care of it and it will continue to take care of you.

The above content was taken from an article written by us for the Northwest Explorer in 2013, but I think it is so important to look after your property that I re-posted it. 🙂