yeah but what is a mortgage payment, since it varies so much by location. a house that is 80k in one location is 800k in another.
is $3000 a year in average a good ballpark for annual repairs?
Ah, the joys of home ownership.
For me, I understood all the expected repairs of roofs, furnaces, appliances, etc. So while i didn’t like it, I was resigned to writing those fat checks.
It was the unexpected expenses that gave me heartburn. One house had been re-piped with copper. So i thought, well at least i don’t have to worry about major plumbing issues (i can handle replacing a faucet). I didn’t think about the sewer line being 100 years old. That wasn’t a cheap fix.
Another house had a big ugly sliding door to the outside deck. I understood we would probably need to replace it and understood the cost that would be involved, but it wasn’t a priority. Welp, finally replaced it. And it cost 3x as much because a long ago unnoticed water infiltration had rotted the header.
Not to scare you aware from Home Ownership, but stuff is gonna come up. Despite some boom/bust periods, i think it is a much better choice than renting.
This is what I’ve replaced in the last 3 years:
AC, old one was from 1974! It stopped working, and turned out to be an electrical problem, but nobody would touch an AC that old to diagnose or repair it. We rarely used it, and use the new one all the time, so a big win for comfort.
Furnace, old one was from 1996. The blower fan disintegrated, though the furnace itself worked fine I wasn’t going to spend lots of money on a new blower for a 25 year old furnace.
Hot water heater, old one was from 1998. It was leaking from the drain and pressure relief valves. Easy enough to fix, but again, why spend even $50 to repair that old of a hot water heater. New one is cheaper to run (supposedly).
Garage doors, old ones were from 1969. Nothing wrong with the doors, but the opener died, and due to clearance issues I needed to replace the doors to get a new opener. Old doors used a cardboard honeycomb for insulation, so new doors should be much more better at keeping the heat in.
Ah, my roof is Welsh Slate. To be honest, it’s probably been patched up at various times over the years as tiles come loose, but the basic roof is original. Wood shingles aren’t a thing in the UK. Nowadays,. most roofs use concrete tiles.
Slate or tile roofs are rare around here. AIUI, the house has to be built for slate in the first place, as otherwise the weight will be excessive; and between that and the cost of finding roofers who know how to deal with it and how to repair it as needed, it’s considered too expensive for most construction. I don’t know about the weight of tile, which I have seen in some other areas of the USA – I think there may be places in Florida where it’s more common.
My barns now all have metal roofs; the house was fairly recently redone with 30 year asphalt shingles, which may now outlast me.
Wood shingles are now illegal most places unless treated to make them fire resistant. They’re not in common use anywhere I’ve been; but they would have been common 140 years ago.
I think the reason the rule of thumb works that way is because the costs of repairs often scale with the cost of living/home prices. It’s not a perfect formula because an AC unit in a $1M home will not cost exactly double what it costs in a $500K home or 4x of a $250K home, but they won’t be the same either. Either the $1M home is going to be substantially larger requiring a significantly bigger AC unit, or multiple units, or the cost of labor and delivery is going to be a lot higher in a urban environment.
As a practical example, I live in a large city and when I had to replace my AC unit I had to lay out money to have both the old and new units craned to the roof, this nearly doubled my cost. My parents modest suburban home of comparable square footage cost significantly less for an equivalent compressor to be installed.
More expensive homes also tend to take more expensive materials. You might be OK installing whatever fridge is on sale for $500 at Home Depot in your $300K ranch home in the burbs or bungalow on the outskirts of the city. In a pricier area with higher-end homes you’re not going to do that, you’re going to pony up for the higher-end appliance and in some cases go whole hog with a $5000+ Wolf or other super-premium brand.
I see them on a handful of houses here in Seattle. Generally on older homes, but I wouldn’t really have any idea when the shingles would have been put in.
It’s unlikely we’ll have risk from wildfires here in the city, but obviously homes anywhere can catch fire for a variety of reasons, so I’m not particularly interested in them myself. Though they do look awesome!
I realize my initial reply didn’t directly answer this question. It’s impossible to know if $3000 is enough with the information available. Both my furnace and AC replacements cost ~$5000 each. New windows were ~$30K. Dishwasher was like $700 installed, garbage disposal was like $400. My home wasn’t that old at the time and my home inspector didn’t flag any of those things as needing to be done when we bought it since they weren’t actually that far past their typical lifespans, but we had a run of bad luck and I’m not one for half-measures. Certainly my prices are higher than average for a few different reasons but plumbers are fucking expensive, electricians are fucking expensive, delivery fees are expensive and if your AC goes out in the middle of a weeks long heatwave…it’s gonna be fucking expensive.
I haven’t seen anyone mention it yet, but you also need to budget for ongoing maintenance too. You probably should have a HVAC tech out once or twice a year to inspect your systems to avoid big surprises, and that adds up. You may need regular pest control services depending on your region. You might have to regularly pay an arborist to help you manage any trees on the property to avoid a nasty issue in a storm. Depending on how spry you are, you may be paying for seasonal gutter cleaning. Asphalt driveways, some masonry and wood decks need to be sealed every handful of years. Little things add up.