For homeowners, whats a rough timeline for how often things have to be fixed or replaced

In My Humble Opinion
21

The garage door is a fun one. They are heavy, and there’s a spring at the top to bear most of the weight so a person (or electric opener) can raise or lower the door with modest effort.

That spring experiences one fatigue cycle every time you raise and lower the door. Two cars coming and going twice a day (plus various other cycles, e.g. taking the trash out or mowing the lawn) means roughly 1500 cycles a year. 15,000 cycles in ten years. Our spring broke a couple of years ago as I was lowering the door. With the door almost fully lowered the spring has a lot of energy; it sounded like a fucking shotgun going off in my garage. The kicker was that the spring is fixed in the center, and the break was to one side - so it only let go of one side of the door, and the whole door got badly racked. I managed to muscle it open and get my car out for work the next day, but we had to get it replaced right away. Can’t remember for sure, but I think it was on the order of $1000 for a two-car-wide door.

Sensible. HVAC can be costly, and depending on where you live, the loss of cooling can make your home extremely unpleasant, or the loss of heating can be an outright emergency. Several years back our AC was terminally ill (occasional icing on the evaporator, + screaming dry bearings in the condenser fan), so we opted to replace. Contractor noted that our furnace was 21 years old, so we opted to replace that at the same time. Bill came to $5K all told. We were OK with that, but it’s not hard to imagine some people having a crisis if they don’t have funds set aside for sudden home repairs like that.

22

House was built in 1969. When I bought it the roof was new-ish. I had the AC put in in 2006 but the furnace is older (no idea how old). I bought the washer, dryer, stove and garage door opener 15 years ago (all get very light use), fridge is about 10 years.

I have been thinking about my roof lately. I think I’m going to start socking money away for that. I’ve found recently that with good credit, banks give away loans like it’s my god-given right. So I’ve got a new HELOC sitting around in case of emergencies.

23

The trend in a lot of areas where I’m seeing homes built is at least somewhat of a move to materials and equipment that have longer lifespans than in the past. I don’t know about nationally, but being involved in local real estate a lot of houses built here are now being built with roof types that will likely last far longer than traditional shingles do. Metal roofing has become very common around here for example and will way outlast normal asphalt shingles.

I think a lot of newer HVAC systems are projected to probably get another +5 years to lifespan versus models installed in the 1980s-2000s. HVAC stuff is also…weird, I know people who still have air conditioners and furnaces from 1985 running. There are many, many reasons this is bad. But there are ways to shoestring keep things running for a long time. In that specific example, with energy efficiency gains and regular maintenance costs on those 35 year old systems, it’s highly likely those people have cost themselves a fortune spread over many years by never upgrading their HVAC heating/cooling.

Washers/Dryers are kind of similar in my experience in that I’ve personally seen a ton of them last the 30+ year mark. Similar to a furnace it’s highly unlikely you should want to operate a 30 year old washing machine, but there’s people who do. For plumbing PEX piping is now becoming standard on newer construction and frequently if you have work done on copper pipes inside your home, your plumber will at least suggest you replace them with PEX. PEX piping will very likely outlive you, and could conceivably last into your children’s old age. Copper and PEX is generally used in water supply lines, drain lines are moving to PVC, replacing things like galvanized pipes or other older types of pipe. PVC much like PEX will likely outlast anyone currently living in the home.

Note that the structural integrity of the pipe lasting 50-100+ years isn’t the same as “never needs plumbing work.” Even with newer pipe types, shit can happen. Pipes can come loose or get damaged, seals wear down on things that have them etc etc. Expect if you buy a home you’ll some day need to talk to a plumber.

24

Wow, that is crazy low compared to what we spend. We spend about six months’ mortgage every year (on average) fixing stuff, ranging from this year (about $10,000, higher than average) on replacing a huge swath of pipes in our bathroom, to some years where we only spend $1-2,000. The estimate I heard is that you should plan on spending 1-3% of the house’s total value every year on maintenance and repair, or double that if you have an older house (ours is 102 years old).

To be fair, our house was owned, back in the nineties, by a troop of drunken monkeys who fancied themselves DIYers, and the stories about their drunken-monkey fixes are almost too ridiculous to believe (see: part of the roof consisting of cardboard, wooden support beams held in place with wood glue, etc.). I tell people that our house is an anthology of fables, and every one has the same moral: hire a professional.

25

Or it might just be the battery in the thermostat that needs to be replaced.

26

Buying a fixer-upper is much more expensive than a generic tract house on its 2nd or 3rd owner in its 2nd or 3rd decade of existence. And woe betide the person who buys a fixer-upper without realizing it’s a fixer-upper! Hope you avoided that arrow through the wallet.

27

I wouldn’t call it crazy low, but I agree that it’s probably a pretty optimistic estimate. In my experience 2-3 months mortgage is probably closer to the truth.

A new furnace or a new AC unit each will cost about 2-3 mortgage payments for an average priced home. A new roof or new siding will cost 4-5 mortgage payments. Random appliances failures, minor improvements and repairs can quickly add-up. And I think most homeowners should probably consider budgeting for major remodeling projects if you want to maintain and grow the value of your investment. Bathrooms for example should probably be remodeled every 10-15 years and a kitchen every 15-20.

28

Yeah, dishwashers seem to have a fairly short lifespan in our experience too. Dryers, washing machines, ovens, ranges, fridges, and hot water heaters all have pretty long lifespans, especially if you can do stuff like change a busted thermocouple on a hot water heater, or other similarly mildly handy stuff. They all do eventually wear out though.

Garage door openers last a LONG time. We just recently had ours replaced, and we’ve lived here for 14 years, and the opener was old when we moved in. I think it may have dated from the early 1990s or late 1980s. $650 for the opener and track installed (door and springs were fine), for what that’s worth.

Same thing for the sprinkler controller; it definitely dated from the 80s (manual had a copyright of 1987), and we replaced it 2 years ago with a fancy modern Rachio smart controller. The sprinkler system itself should be eternal, unless the heads wear out, or the valves stick, at which point they can be easily replaced without putting in a whole new system. I guess it’s more temperate here; I’ve never purged ours, and it does a fine job anyway.

Breaker boxes are even more eternal… unless you have one of those faulty Federal Pacific ones, which you should replace ASAP, as they represent a significant fire risk just being in use.

Paint is probably at least a 10-15 year thing, if not more.

Hah! Back in grad school, I shared a house with a friend of mine (well, he owned it, I just rented a room), and my room was directly over the garage. One of the springs let go while I was standing more or less where the spring was located- I thought it was some kind of earthquake or something- not only was it loud, but I felt it through my feet!

29

Sure, but the batteries die pretty regularly, and you’ve probably figured out how to diagnose that already. :slight_smile:

30

That would not be an arrow we avoided, decidedly not. But I think we may still have come out ahead. We bought our house (our first and so far only house purchase) in 2003, and by now, based on the sale value of homes around us, it’s nearly tripled in value. We bought a much larger house than we could otherwise afford, due in no small part to the insane filth of the home when we bought it and the unreasonableness of the sellers.

It’s been less-than-relaxing to own, but still our mortgage is super low compared to what it’d be if we tried to buy any other home in our area today.

31

And all your improvements add to your basis which reduces your taxable gain at sale. It can take some skill to swing certain repairs as improvements, but especially if you’re replacing what was illegally shoddy work with quality work, that’s an improvement, not a repair.

32

We bought a 30 yo house in 1972 and lived in it for 47 years. in that time, we replaced the roof twice, the first time after 25 years and the second after less than 20. While we had a few plumbing repairs, we certainly didn’t replace the plumbing. The wiring should have been replaced. There was nothing wrong with it, but it took an electrician every time we needed a grounded socket and stacking power bars is probably not a good idea. We replaced the dishwasher twice, but the second time there was nothing wrong with the actual washer, but the plastic underneath the rack had worn away and the metal underneath rusted and left stains. Had I only been able to replace the 25 yo rack, it would still be going. We bought 3 fridges over the years and one stove. The washer and dryer last about 20 years. Some of the cedar decking on the porch were decaying after 35 years and had to be replaced.

33

Garbage disposal. Every three damn years, it seems. Pieces of Shit!

34

What are you feeding down it? I’ve owned 4 residences now totalling 35 years. I’ve bought one garbage disposer in that entire time and that was to replace the contractor-grade POS the previous owner installed with a high quality high powered one. I’ve never had one fail.

35

I’d add for a new homeowner who has bought a house that isn’t brand new, all things being equal expect a lot of the issues within the first 5 years of homeownership. Obviously this is a very very general rule, but people who know they are close to selling a house often will be more likely to ‘creatively’ do things that keep the house up and running, and will pass both a home inspection and casual look overs by prospective buyers, but that will make themselves known within a few years to the new homeowner. This isn’t usually super nefarious stuff, but most people who have bought a house have a couple stories of discovering some questionable home maintenance work from previous owners.

36

Got a septic tank or is the house on city sewer system? If you have a septic tank it will need to be pumped every once in a while. My 900 gallon concrete tank just reached its limit after about 15 years. Most need to be pumped sooner.

Also if you live in a rural area with a septic tank, the drain field may have to be dug up and repaired, or have enough area to put in an entirely new drain field or a sand filtration system. I was talking to a building contractor guy about building a new house on my 1 acre and he said that codes now require that even if you have an existing, working, drain field, that there needed to be an area to put in a replacement field.

37

Wow! I’ve done 3 at my house, 2 at my Mom’s, one each in two other places we got.

38

Keep records! and keep them where you can find them.

39

Alas, I didn’t do that. All my old vinyl LPs might have been worth something nowadays. :slight_smile:

40

In my case this was accurate. In the first 5 years we had to replace our house’s windows (ouch), AC, furnace, dishwasher, garbage disposal, and deck, the last we still haven’t bothered to do yet.

We ended up doing a full remodel this past year so we now have basically a brand new home, so it’ll hopefully be clear sailing for quite a while into the future.