Own a house that you plan to sell soon? Do you know that a well-maintained home raises your home’s market value and helps you land a higher selling price? Even if you are not planning to sell your home soon, it is still important to keep an emergency fund to cover the unexpected home-related costs as it helps you keep your house in its best form. This article presents the factors underlying the need to keep an emergency fund for your house.
Keeping an emergency fund will help you face home improvement costs
Being a homeowner, you likely keep an emergency fund for some unavoidable costs every year—property taxes, utilities, and insurance. Why not keep a stash of cash for other home-related costs and emergencies? Owning a house means you are responsible for anything that goes wrong, so you must not overlook the continual home maintenance costs. Keeping an emergency fund for your house helps you easily tackle your unexpected expenses and avoid derailing of your financial health.
The Approaches to Keep an Emergency Fund for your house
Experts recommend saving at least 2 percent of their home's purchase every year in an emergency fund to deal with both routine and unexpected issues. However, homeowners must realize a difference between big-ticket items and routine home improvement and repairs. If you have bought a new home, a big-ticket item like a water heater, furnace or a new roof is often covered by a home warranty. If this is the case, start budgeting around 5 to 10 percent of your net pay for a home maintenance emergency fund. While it might seem that you don't have anything to di, there will still be the things you would need to purchase like garden hoses, garage door openers, doormats, downspout extenders, light bulbs, cleaning supplies and equipment, extension cords, refrigerator water filter, etc.
Other costs that necessitate keeping an emergency fund may include HVAC cleaning and inspection, plumbing leaks fixing, pest treatments, pruning trees, moisture control, etc. Indeed, you cannot estimate an exact amount for each of these; however, it is still a wise idea to keep a few thousand dollars in your emergency fund to cover whatever comes up.
Old Versus New Home’s Renovation and Repair costs
Older homes (homes that are 25 years or older) repair costs tend to eat a bigger slice of your overall home maintenance costs. Newer homes (a home that are 5 years or less), in contrast, needless annual maintenance as the materials and fixtures are newer, and numerous elements of the house may still be under the warranty. To be super specific, we recommend making a spreadsheet of all the items in your home, their lifespan, and total cost—then use that number to compute how much you’d be required to save monthly or annually for your home repairs or replacement emergency fund.
Conclusion
Keeping an emergency fund for your home helps you plan for the unexpected. Having a home costs a lot of money, but this long term investment is far worth it in the end if you keep it well-groomed and maintained.