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Pretoria - When people talk about the cost of buying property, they’ll warn you about a bunch of unexpected expenses, like the transfer duties or the levy (which some purchasers fail to factor into their monthly expenses).
There’s another expense you need to budget for, and it’s one that comes up over and over again: fixing things.
When you walk through that brand new Tuscan housing development, everything is of course shiny and new, and the thought or having to do a bit of DIY seems far in the future. And home owners seeking to sell older houses do patch jobs, so that on show day their homes look crisp and beautifully refurbed.
You’ll be on the look-out for the obvious stuff, like cracked tiles or dripping taps, of course. But there are things that can be hidden.
One new home owner failed to question why the spare bedroom wasn’t painted the same anodyne beige as every other room in the house. That sparkling new white paint job was covering over a damp issue which surfaced about two years on.
Another buyer failed to ask why some tiles in the kitchen were a slightly different shade, only to discover a fault which made the tiles fall off at the slamming of a door.
But it’s not just about the latent defects that are in the property at the time you buy: it’s about the unrelenting demands a home makes of you.
One home owner was thrilled when he finally got his restful house on a large property in the suburb of his dreams; three years later, he said he would have put his house up for sale had it not been a buyer’s market at the time, just to escape the constant maintenance costs.
Starting with the very basics, there’s the garden. Many of us picture ourselves digging and weeding industriously, but the truth is, few two-career families have the time to do all their own gardening. So you need to budget for a gardener. You also need to budget for expenses that come up once a year, such as lawn dressing or fertiliser.
Next, there’s plumbing and electrics. Unless you’re a real fundi, about twice a year you’ll probably have to call in someone who can do repairs such as changing a washer on a tap.
And with call-out fees alone being somewhere between R350 and R700 (depending on where you live), this can become a large dent if you haven’t set money aside for it.
The ad hoc tarting up costs, too – the window that smashes in a highveld storm, or the shade cloth that flies away during a wild Cape Town south-easter.
Then there’s routine maintenance, which can add up to quite a lot. Repainting your entire exterior is a big expense, of course, but it also costs a not-insignificant amount to hire someone to sand, rust-proof and repaint the palisade fencing.
Replacing the putty that holds your window glass in the frame is a fiddly job which you may not have time to do, and so you’ll have to hire a handyman. Resurfacing wooden floors means hiring and getting comfortable with unfamiliar equipment. Some jobs just require the kind of tools and experience you don’t have – and that means mounting costs.
Any would-be home owner should factor in these expenses and, along with the bond repayments and the insurance costs, add a small monthly sum, say R500, for maintenance work.
And hey, if you don’t use it all in any given year, you’ll have some mad money at the year-end, just when you need it!
- Fin24
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* Share a personal story
* Ask the experts
There’s another expense you need to budget for, and it’s one that comes up over and over again: fixing things.
When you walk through that brand new Tuscan housing development, everything is of course shiny and new, and the thought or having to do a bit of DIY seems far in the future. And home owners seeking to sell older houses do patch jobs, so that on show day their homes look crisp and beautifully refurbed.
You’ll be on the look-out for the obvious stuff, like cracked tiles or dripping taps, of course. But there are things that can be hidden.
One new home owner failed to question why the spare bedroom wasn’t painted the same anodyne beige as every other room in the house. That sparkling new white paint job was covering over a damp issue which surfaced about two years on.
Another buyer failed to ask why some tiles in the kitchen were a slightly different shade, only to discover a fault which made the tiles fall off at the slamming of a door.
But it’s not just about the latent defects that are in the property at the time you buy: it’s about the unrelenting demands a home makes of you.
One home owner was thrilled when he finally got his restful house on a large property in the suburb of his dreams; three years later, he said he would have put his house up for sale had it not been a buyer’s market at the time, just to escape the constant maintenance costs.
Starting with the very basics, there’s the garden. Many of us picture ourselves digging and weeding industriously, but the truth is, few two-career families have the time to do all their own gardening. So you need to budget for a gardener. You also need to budget for expenses that come up once a year, such as lawn dressing or fertiliser.
Next, there’s plumbing and electrics. Unless you’re a real fundi, about twice a year you’ll probably have to call in someone who can do repairs such as changing a washer on a tap.
And with call-out fees alone being somewhere between R350 and R700 (depending on where you live), this can become a large dent if you haven’t set money aside for it.
The ad hoc tarting up costs, too – the window that smashes in a highveld storm, or the shade cloth that flies away during a wild Cape Town south-easter.
Then there’s routine maintenance, which can add up to quite a lot. Repainting your entire exterior is a big expense, of course, but it also costs a not-insignificant amount to hire someone to sand, rust-proof and repaint the palisade fencing.
Replacing the putty that holds your window glass in the frame is a fiddly job which you may not have time to do, and so you’ll have to hire a handyman. Resurfacing wooden floors means hiring and getting comfortable with unfamiliar equipment. Some jobs just require the kind of tools and experience you don’t have – and that means mounting costs.
Any would-be home owner should factor in these expenses and, along with the bond repayments and the insurance costs, add a small monthly sum, say R500, for maintenance work.
And hey, if you don’t use it all in any given year, you’ll have some mad money at the year-end, just when you need it!
- Fin24
Add your voice to our Property Issue:
* Write a guest post
* Share a personal story
* Ask the experts
