How much do you spend maintaining your house?

[TheFoxAndTheStar]

I stumbled across a “rule of thumb” that you should budget between 1 and 2% of your property’s value each year for maintaining it. That could be anything from getting the gutters cleared or roof tiles fixed, repainting a room, mending a fence etc.

AIBU to think that most people don’t spend anything like that much? For me that would be £4,500 per year. Nearly £400 every month just on maintaining it, not necessarily improving it.

(although that might explain why our house is currently a wreck!)

It has worked out at about 2% of value for us over the 10 years we have been in our house. some years is 500 on paint, plants and bits, other years it's something bigger like 10k on a new kitchen or new windows. The kitchen and windows were 30 years old so replacement was more maintenance than improvement in my eyes!

I'd say that's about right, in the last 5 years we've spent 2 or 3% of our house value each year. That said we've done some bit hitters like roof/window replacement. We've also spent out to get the house warmer/retain heat.

I meant 2% each year averaged over 10 years.

You might not spend that each year but technically you might need to save that towards replacing bathrooms/kitchen and other major refurbishment that crops up the longer you live in a property - unless you're one of those people who move house frequently.

I think we’ve got off lightly then. We’ve been here 20 years and have probably spent £30k in that time. Probably need to spend another £30k-£50k on everything that is now wrong with it (mostly cosmetic).