Owning a home is a huge accomplishment, and it can definitely give you a feeling of security – both literally and figuratively. However, homeownership is not all sunshine and roses, and one thing most homeowners dread is home maintenance.
There are so many things that can go wrong in your home, and even when they don’t, you probably have a long list of maintenance and repairs you need to do at any given time. If you’re tired of spending your downtime working on your home – or just can’t find the time at all – a professional home maintenance service can make it seem like your home maintenance is on autopilot. Here’s how.
What Is a Professional Home Maintenance Service?
The first thing you probably want to know is what a professional home maintenance service is.
These kinds of services make it easier for homeowners to get things done around the house. Instead of having to call all kinds of different service providers to get a quote, inspection, or repair, you deal with one company that has all those professionals on its team.
So, whether you need a plumber, an electrician, or an HVAC specialist, you only have to make one call to get the right person to your home.
Professional home maintenance services also do regular home maintenance inspections, working through a custom checklist to make sure everything in your home is in good working order. This means that you don’t have to understand, remember, and complete all those checks yourself.
You’ll simply get a report at the end of the process that will tell you if everything is up to date or if you need to do some repairs and maintenance on specific things in your home.
Why Does It Seem Like Your Home Needs More Work?
Many people have discovered, in the past couple of years, that it seems like their homes require more work than usual. The reason is actually quite simple: we’ve all been spending more time at home.
Many people have been working from home, and some children have been doing much of their schooling at home. Socializing outside of the home has been limited at times too. So people who might once only have spent half their time at home have been home 90 or even 95% of their time.
There’s a dual effect related to this.
First, because people are home more often, there’s more likely to be wear and tear on their homes. Second, because you are home more often, you are more likely to notice things that might need to be repaired, replaced or refreshed.
Why Is Routine Home Maintenance Important?
You might be wondering why you need to do routine home maintenance. After all, as they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
However, your home is a lot like taking a class. If you stay up to date with the homework and study for your tests, you won’t be faced with a mountain of work and cramming at the end of the semester.
Everything in your home will wear out at some point, and if you catch it early and do the necessary repairs and servicing, you can usually extend that item’s lifespan – often by many years.
One example might be your siding.
One cracked and damaged piece of siding is not too difficult or expensive to replace. However, if you leave a cracked and damaged piece of siding on your home, water might get in, and if it gets through the vapor barrier on your home, it could saturate the actual structure of the home. That can lead to rot, which would lead to serious and very expensive structural problems. It could also cause mold, which could make your home unsafe to live in.
It would be a lot easier to replace the siding board than to fix all of that.
Staying on top of these little things around your home can save you a lot of time and money, but it can be hard to do that when you’re working, spending time with your family, trying to stay in shape and trying to get enough rest in between. A professional home maintenance company makes it easy to get everything done, and still have a life.
Protect the Value of Your Home
One of the reasons people like to invest in real estate is that it usually appreciates over time. This means that your home increases in value while you live in it, and if you decide to sell one day, you will almost certainly make a profit.
However, like any investment, there are some caveats.
If you want your home to appreciate over time, you have to make sure that it does not fall into disrepair. Home maintenance problems tend to compound over time, so what starts as a small issue can become another issue, and another, and so on, until there is nothing in your home that doesn’t need to be fixed.
While the land your home stands on might still become more valuable over time, if you don’t keep your home well maintained you could lose tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on any sale.
This sort of puts the money you must put into repairs and maintenance in perspective. Think of it as an investment in your future wealth. Regular maintenance and repairs are the single most important thing you can do to protect the value of your home.
Why Do People Skip Home Maintenance?
We’ve already touched on the fact that our busy lives often interfere with our ability to keep our homes in good repair, but there are other reasons some people might not be able to handle home maintenance. Those reasons include:
- People with disabilities, who might have accessibility problems
- People who don’t have the skills to do repairs and maintenance tasks
- Single parents who don’t have the time to do these kinds of projects
- Older people who can no longer safely tackle home maintenance tasks
Those are just a few of the reasons why people might not be able to do everything they need to maintain their homes. It’s important to remember that no one ever wants to let their home become run down or allow things to break, but sometimes, circumstances stand in the way.
This is why access to professional home maintenance services is so important. Being able to have quick access to trained professionals at an affordable rate makes it possible for everyone to maintain their homes.
How Do Home Maintenance Services Work?
Usually, when you want to get something around your home checked or repaired, you need to get out the phone book or get online and search for people who offer those services.
Then you probably have to call or email anything from a few to a dozen or more companies to find one that can do what you need done in an acceptable time frame. Once you’ve found them, you still need to arrange to meet them at your home so they can take a closer look at the problem.
If you have to meet several different companies to go over the problem, you may need to take time off work to be able to meet with them. Then you have to wait for quotes to come in.
After you have all the quotes, there may still be questions, so you need to make more calls and send more emails to make sure you understand all the quotes you received.
Finally, it’s time to hire a service provider, but they probably have a queue of jobs ahead of you, so you might still wait a few weeks or even a month or more to get the work done; then you need to make sure you are home when they can fit you in.
It’s all kind of exhausting, so it’s understandable why people put it off.
Home maintenance services are different. Instead of calling and emailing dozens of people, you will have one point of contact. You call the service and explain the job you need done. They arrange for a professional who specializes in that kind of work to come to your home, review the problem, and get the job done.
You get upfront pricing, detailed quotes, and fast, efficient service. It’s a huge time saver and makes staying on top of home maintenance easy and convenient.
Annual Inspections
Another great option that home maintenance services offer is to have an annual or twice-yearly inspection of your home.
Perhaps you got lucky this year and didn’t have any home maintenance or repair issues that you couldn’t handle yourself. That’s great, but there might still be hidden problems that you don’t know about.
Often, these kinds of problems aren’t just about protecting your home, but also your own safety.
Furnace inspections, ductwork inspections and similar checks need to be done regularly, because when those systems malfunction, the results can be dangerous.
Roof and gutter inspections might not be dangerous to you, but if you have a leak or a blockage, it could cause extensive damage.
Minor plumbing problems might not bother you, but eventually, most minor problems turn into major ones. Those kinds of problems cost a lot more to fix and cause a lot more disruption and damage.
Choosing a home maintenance service that also does scheduled maintenance inspections when they need to be done ensures that all of those things are taken care of when they need to be. So you don’t have to worry about the repairs and maintenance you can’t see, either.
Cost-Effective, Convenient and Skilled
We’ve all tried to do home repairs and maintenance ourselves. We think we can save some money by opting for DIY. But by the time you’ve been to the hardware store to buy materials, rented the equipment you need and found the time to do the job, you’ve probably spent a lot more than you planned to.
A professional home maintenance company allows you to avoid that and offers a convenient way to get services when you need them.
You can also be absolutely sure that the people who are doing the work know what they are doing and will get the job done right. There’s just no substitute for training, certifications, licenses and experience.
Maybe you’ve also tried to find someone to do some repairs and maintenance online. Perhaps even on social media. If you’re like most people, you’ve discovered that while some service providers are great, others can be a nightmare. Either they make the problem worse, or sometimes, they take your money and never finish the job.
A professional home maintenance service ensures you never have those problems. Look for one that vets all their employees and verifies all their credentials. The goal here is that you only ever have skilled and trained people working on your home, and you make all your phone calls and payments to one reputable company.
Finding Home Maintenance On Demand
Home Maintenance is an important part of owning a home, but it can require a lot of attention–especially when small issues aren’t handled correctly before becoming big issues. An affordable home maintenance service is the perfect solution.
Look for a professional home maintenance service that offers on-demand repair and maintenance services when you need them. A great subscription-based service will allow you to pay a very affordable monthly fee and may offer not only regularly scheduled maintenance checks (usually twice a year) but will also provide the help you need when you need it, with completely transparent pricing.
If your repair falls outside of the work covered by your subscription, look for a service that offers competitive, detailed quotes for complex work. This kind of preventative maintenance service will make keeping your home well-maintained as easy as possible–no long waits, no endless phone calls and emails, and no hassle.
PreFix offers all this and more. Sign up today to automate your maintenance and repairs. It really is like putting your home maintenance on autopilot.