The first day of fall has now come and gone so it’s a great time to start doing some fall cleaning and home maintenance projects.  One of the best ways to increase equity and improve the curb appeal of your home is to do simple maintenance and cleanup.  A few years ago, I shared some of my own maintenance tips (or blunders) and figured now would be a good time to revisit those.

CLEAN YOUR GUTTERS!

Gutters are those things attached to your roof that are supposed to provide safe passage for rainwater and melting snow down a fun little water slide and out into your yard!

I was lazy one fall and didn’t bother cleaning mine out. Well, to my surprise, that was not a good idea! When spring rolled around, one of the worst rainstorms in recent memory hit our area and my gutters looked like Niagara Falls running off the roof of my home.

So, there I was, standing on a 10-foot metal ladder in the middle of a torrential downpour, dodging lightning strikes while I scooped clumps of dirt, leaves, and tree branches out of the plugged gutters.

Not fun at all but if I hadn’t braved the elements, my basement would have flooded for sure.

Clean your gutters!

MAINTAIN YOUR DECK!

Our deck got pretty beat up in some of the past few hailstorms and I didn’t bother to do anything about it because we planned on replacing it “someday”.

Well, someday never comes and every winter I cuss under my breath each time my snow shovel slams into one of the nail heads sticking up.  Not to mention all the paint peeling up with the ice & snow as I run my shovel over it like an oversized paint scraper… and the dry rot getting worse with every rising sun.

Maintain your deck!

SEAL CRACKS AND HOLES!

Like many homeowners around our area, we’ve had to deal with a massive spider invasion.  Our home literally felt like the house in the movie Arachnophobia. I was ready to burn the house down!

It was becoming a nightly ritual to just cruise through the entire house with a shoe in one hand and a rolled-up newspaper in the other smashing bugs. Then, one Fall I decided to take some time and find the actual problem.

There were several gaps around the water and gas lines. Doors weren’t sealed properly, and the crawl space vents had holes in them.  I sealed all that up, applied some perimeter pest control spray and haven’t seen a spider inside since.

Seal those entry points!

Fall maintenance not only saves you from lightning strikes and spider bites, but it also helps you build equity - or at least maintain the equity you’ve built up in your home.

Spend a few less Saturdays on the couch watching the Cats win while the Griz lose and a few more days outside working on your home. This will save you from a costly flooded basement, a complete deck replacement, or pest infestation.

HAPPY FALL!  GO CATS!

written by Michael Mitchell, Real Estate Loan Officer