Housing expenses for an average pre-war house in MA (Newton: contractors, disposal)

[MrLinderman]

Originally Posted by bugelrex

Would be interesting to see how much people spend on upkeep and maintenance of their single family homes. Particularly pre-war homes as this is the majority of the housing stock

This would be useful as many new home owners under-estimate their expenses

- paint house every 5-7 years. $10k each time
- winter heating bills. $300-$600 during the coldest months
- maintain water and heating boiler once a year. $100
- paint and repair inside walls every 7 years. DIY, $200 in materials?
- roof replacement. every 20 years. $10k each time
- maintain windows. $500 every 5 years?
- random appliances breaking. $500 a year?
- cutting lawn and garden maintainance. $500 a year if paying someone?
- snow removal. $200 a year if paying someone??

Any other things to add or suggestions on how to keep costs lower?

Find a cheaper exterior painter?

Now my mother's home doesn't technically count since it was built in 48 (as was most of her neighborhood) but before she switched to siding she never paid over like 4k for exterior paint. 10k seems really high.

[NewfieMama]

We had 5 estimates last year when we had our house painted. Again, it's half clapboard, half cedar shingles, so the whole thing didn't need to be painted. We only had one quote come in under $16K. Two were over $20K. I went with the cheapest (at $12K) and he ended up needing to do a little extra work, so it came in just over $13K. We do have a privacy fence in our front yard that was included in the quote, but I had the quotes broken out with and without the fence and it was never over a few thousand, so even without the fence nothing would have been under $10K.

My sister (who lives in the midwest) had her (larger) house painted for $6K. It's so expensive here!!

[MrLinderman]

Originally Posted by NewfieMama

We had 5 estimates last year when we had our house painted. Again, it's half clapboard, half cedar shingles, so the whole thing didn't need to be painted. We only had one quote come in under $16K. Two were over $20K. I went with the cheapest (at $12K) and he ended up needing to do a little extra work, so it came in just over $13K. We do have a privacy fence in our front yard that was included in the quote, but I had the quotes broken out with and without the fence and it was never over a few thousand, so even without the fence nothing would have been under $10K.

My sister (who lives in the midwest) had her (larger) house painted for $6K. It's so expensive here!!

That's crazy! I wonder if prices have skyrocketed in recent years? I just texted my mother, and she said she had it done in 07 (she thinks, maybe 08). Her house is the basic ~1200 sq ft colonial.

Paint looks nicer, but good god, if those are the prices these days, I'm sticking to siding when I buy.

[A02]

Some of the items listed are going to be a part of your annual budget - regardless of your home's age. Things like servicing the furnace/boiler, winterizing/de-winterizing irrigation, etc are simply the cost of owning a home.

Other items listed are less about the home and more about the time/ability to do the work yourself. Leaves, snow removal, etc only cost money if you pay someone to do it. Yes, there is the upfront cost of buying a snowblower or lawn mower, but these will eventually pay for themselves - lawnmowers and leaf blowers will do so very quickly.

Our house was built in 1925 and has a 2005 addition off the back done by previous owners. Typical things that have been done to the home (or similar neighbors homes built at the same time) usually include at some point:

- Getting insulation blown into the exterior walls. Many old homes have none at all.
- Getting the attic better insulated.
- Upgrading the electric. Our home was already upgraded to 220.. but some neighbors still had knob and tube until recently.


Since buying the home a few years ago we have done many things that have less to do with the original age of the home, but more about when things need replacing based on when they were originally installed/purchased... or to be honest, how they were taken care of as well.

In the past 5 years I've bought a new dishwasher, a new fridge, a new range (which also involved wiring a new 50amp line), a new OTR microwave, a new kitchen faucet, new bathroom vanities/hardware/faucets in 2 bathrooms, new roof, installed an indirect heating system to replace an old hot water heater, had c-lines wired up to install modern stats, new front door/frame and hardware, new side door/frame, some electrical work (additional plugs inside/outside), converted all lighting to LED, etc etc etc.

In the end, everyone's home, needs, and budget are completely different. For us, we bought knowing we would be doing upgrades and tweaks over 10 years or so to get the home to where we wanted it to be. Every home and owner will be different. Even a monthly heating budget will vary wildly depending on insulation, how new the windows are, how efficient the furnace/boiler is etc.

[Bruins_Fan]

Originally Posted by NewfieMama

We had 5 estimates last year when we had our house painted. Again, it's half clapboard, half cedar shingles, so the whole thing didn't need to be painted. We only had one quote come in under $16K. Two were over $20K. I went with the cheapest (at $12K) and he ended up needing to do a little extra work, so it came in just over $13K. We do have a privacy fence in our front yard that was included in the quote, but I had the quotes broken out with and without the fence and it was never over a few thousand, so even without the fence nothing would have been under $10K.

My sister (who lives in the midwest) had her (larger) house painted for $6K. It's so expensive here!!

That's insane, how big is your house (never mind see in your other post)? Our 2,000 sq ft. Cape painted for little over $4k 1-2 years ago. Same guy that painted it a handful of years before that. Worst estimate I got was something like $8k...ripoff, IMO.

[bugelrex]

Originally Posted by NewfieMama

Well, we have a pre-Revolutionary War house, which is probably not the pre-war you are referring to. We set aside $10K per year for maintenance. Some years we spend less, most years we spend more. We've lived in our home for seven years. It's a center-chimney cape built in 1775 with an addition built in 2000, around 3K square feet.


What we've had done:
1. Various rotting wood around exterior of house--replaced some skirting boards, a set of stairs, areas up near our gutter that were rotted. I think all of it was around $8K in repairs.
2. De-leading sections of the interior, specifically around windows and anything 5 feet or below (where kids can reach). That was around $10K.
3. Replacing of a bay window--$5K
4. Exterior painting--$13K
5. Interior painting (after de-leading). I did 5 rooms by myself, which was only about $600 in materials. We had painters do 7 rooms and that was about $5K - $6K in materials/labor.
6. Tree removal. We live on a couple of acres and all of our ash trees are dying. We've had about $6K of tree removal over the past 4 years. Another ash seems to be dying, so we'll probably have another batch in a year or two.

Things that are coming up that we are budgeting for:
1. Roof replacement. We have a weird roof because of the addition, so we're budgeting $20K
2. Cedar shingle replacement. Our house is half clapboard (the part we had painted) and half bare cedar shingle. We're budgeting about $12K for that.
3. Having front walkway redone. The soil between the brick has just washed away. Trying to re-use the materials, but the quotes to re-do have ranged from $2.5 - $5K.
4. New fence (ours is wood). I don't know, maybe $7K?
5. New furnace--I have no clue what to budget for that

Ongoing annual costs.
Landscaping (spring cleanup and mulching): $2K. We don't use a lawn service and we do our own leaves, so it's just a 1x per year cost.
Window cleaning: $400 (every other year)
Gutter cleaning: $175 (in the fall)
Private trash pickup: $384 ($32/month for one barrel)
Wood for burning. We go through 1 - 2 cords in the winter just weekend burning in our wood stove. I want to say it's a $300 per cord.

We use oil heat and burn through about 160 gallons per month in the winter. So about $425 per month (at $2.65 per gallon). When we moved in, oil was much more expensive, so that has been a nice break. Electric is about $200/month in the winter (due to rate hikes) and usually a little less in the summer despite running 5 window unit air conditioners.

We do our own snow removal, but back when we had it plowed it was $50 per plow.

The biggest issue we have with an antique house is that everything has to be custom. Every single time we've had work done on our house, something is uncovered that was done incorrectly in the past. And the re-work is all custom. It would be funny if it weren't so expensive.

The kicker is, none of the "maintenance" costs involve anything fun like re-doing a bathroom or updating the house. But it's obviously something that has to be done and it feels never-ending!

Good luck!

This is really great info, I think this is going to scare off first time homeowner into buying condo's instead

[NewfieMama]

Originally Posted by bugelrex

This is really great info, I think this is going to scare off first time homeowner into buying condo's instead

Ha, no kidding! Definitely makes me miss the days of renting!

[MikePRU]

Originally Posted by Bruins_Fan

That's insane, how big is your house (never mind see in your other post)? Our 2,000 sq ft. Cape painted for little over $4k 1-2 years ago. Same guy that painted it a handful of years before that. Worst estimate I got was something like $8k...ripoff, IMO.

I was thinking the same thing. I had my house painted maybe 2 years ago and the quote was $6K. IIRC I ended up paying $8K because he ended up replacing way more of the clapboards than he originally thought.

[NewfieMama]

ugh, so frustrating about the lower painting costs. I think most of the cost was associated with scraping an antique house (since there is the lead paint factor). They have to take extra precautions to make sure the old paint doesn't touch the soil. Also, we have antique windows with wood sashes and all of those sashes had to be hand scraped and painted. I don't have the quote in front of me, but I believe the vast majority of the cost was in prepping the house for paint. Probably something unique to an antique home. I think that's why the fence was so much cheaper--it was just a large surface with no detail work and no lead paint to worry about.

[bugelrex]

House painting costs probably vary depending on which suburb or city you are in. If you are in say 'Brookline', I wonder if its much cheaper to find a painter based in 'far out suburb' to drive in 1 hour and still come out 'much' cheaper than a city painter?

I guess the same could be said of 'tree removal' and contracting jobs in general...