annual house maintenance costs

[humptydu]

Having just moved into our new house from a rental, I have been trying to figure out how much to put aside for house maintenance per month. I've seen that costs have really gone up in the last year or two. Would anyone have any rough figures for how much they spend on the house per year. It's a three bed semi in London in reasonably good condition. We have some savings but would also be useful to put aside enough cash for the future

Well years ago I was told, when I bought my first place, that you should allow 1% of the purchase price for annual maintenance, is that any help?
Silly house prices may have skewed this sum a bit though! (Or maybe not, as you rightly say, stuff is going up all the time).

It depends on what you have in your home and what you consider maintenance.
Personally, I would add up all service costs for heating etc per year plus the cost of one major white goods appliance and the cost of redecorating one room. Divide by 12 and save that per month as a minimum. In an ideal world, I would add on 25% extra to the monthly cost, to help cover those odd ‘emergency’ expenditures like reducing broken roof tiles/extra boiler repair.
I would consider things like replacing a fence panel/s to be something I could see will need doing and save up for separately, as they aren’t urgent repairs for me. (No children/pets to escape) But everyone’s circumstances are different.

I'd agree anywhere between 0.5% and 2% of the house value per year. For a rental property I reckon over time to spend 10% of the rent on maintenance. Some of that is obviously in bigger chunks, like a new kitchen, or new flooring, but over time it has been pretty accurate. It depends where you are, obviously 1% of a 3 bed semi in London could be a huge amount, but if you've expensive tastes as well and want a high value new kitchen every 5 years, and love redecorating then it won't be very far off!

Ok, thank you for the estimates. I guess for us that would roughly equal to 8k per year which seems like a lot but maybe we will just have to deal with it. Does anyone else find that owning a house is quite an expensive business beyond even the mortgage.

Yep home owning is expensive! But - normally, that expense doesn’t arise all at once. Plus everyone’s expenditure is different, purely because as a pp said -
you may want a new designer kitchen every five years, whilst someone else may have the kitchen they bought with the house for thirty years, before replacing it. Someone may buy a thatched cottage and need to budget for it to be fully or partially rethatched, whilst someone else may buy a new build with a roof set to outlast their lifetime there. Everyone is different, and overtime you will set a budget which suits both you and your house needs.
Internet people can only guide you based on their own experiences and genera rule of thumb.
fwiw my first house took around 20% of it purchase price in maintenance bills annually, my second took around 0.25%, my third around 30% and my final one - I’ve yet to discover.

I bought a bungalow last March for £237,500 and was going to save 1% per year for maintenance. Unfortunately for me I've now found out all the floors need replacing . £11K if I have timber, £36K if I go concrete. Save as much as you can!

@Salome61 ouch ouch ouch.

Owning a home is soooooooo expensive!!!!!! First year of homeownership our basement flooded… that was a nice £20,000 down the drain haha. Then every year there’s something reasonably major. New garden fence (£500), new stove when 3/4 burners stopped working and it was impossible to get new parts (£2500), reupholstering the furniture after 5 years of toddlers + cats (£1000), new shower tray when the tiles all came loose (£1000) plus all the usual faff of toilet repairs, bath plug repairs, annual gardening costs (new mulch, a few plants…). It feels endless.

I joked with my DH when we bought our place that every house-related item seems to crop up in increments of £1000. That trend has unfortunately seemed to continue, even though DH is really handy and does loads himself. It’s insane! We definitely try to budget 1% of purchase price. And we bought a reasonably modern place.

@UpToMyElbowsInDiapers could you not claim any if that on insurance? Then just pay the excess?

it would also depend on the age and state of the home. new build, you have time to save up. 75 years that was occupied by a lovely hoarder for the last 5 decades better have a contingency plan. besides insurance i would expect a little savings pot of 3K would do.

It's a bit scary how much it all costs. If we go for very comprehensive insurface does that help? Or do most just cover damage but not repair?

We probably spend an average £200 a month on regular maintenance - gutter cleaning, driveway cleaned, touching up fence panels, trees being trimmed etc but it's the one off costs which you need to save for - we recently had the house repainted which cost £££ but won't need doing for another 10 years as an example.

We try to do as much as we can ourselves, washing windows, tree trimming and power washing driveway. We're currently in the expensive part of owning, refurb the property top to bottom but ideally once that's been done there shouldn't be too many ongoing costs after that.

Ok, so how much do you save for o e of costs per month?

We don't save specifically for maintenance costs unless we know it's coming (i.e the house is starting to look a bit flaky we should get it painted next year). Unexpected costs come out of our regular savings account (we save around 25% of our net income each month) or in desperate times (like our boiler that gave up in January 2016) on an interest free credit card.

I've never understood the percentage of house price being relevant. Surely it's down to the age and size? My house is massive compared to houses in a town 5 mins down the road that cost 300k more... and I assume mine will cost more to maintain.

200 per month for general maintenance sounds excessive to me, but we clean our own driveway, trim trees and bushes etc, so I guess it's down to how much you'll take on yourself.

I just think it's wise to build up a nice savings pot if you can, for things like boiler replacement etc and you can dip in and replace as need be.

It does add up especially if you are buying an older home.

we have about a 10 year cycle where we replace the kitchen, bathrooms, redecorate, new carpets flooring etc.

The total cost was around 50,000, so averages around 5,000 a year.

Then there are boilers which in my experience seem to last about 10 years as well and need servicing every year.

The appliances only seem to last about 5 years max so need to factor in a few hundred a year for those.

longer term at some point the windows, roof, electrics will need doing. These can last decades but at some point they will need looking at.

if you have a drive block paved that could be another 5,000+

A three bedroom semi shouldn't cost £8k a year to maintain. I'd expect it to be about half that unless you have:
-expensive tastes
-aren't willing to do any of DIY

Over 10 years I expect you might want:
Building repairs £10k (this will be very uncertain and volatile)
A new kitchen £15k
New appliances £2k
A new boiler + regular servicing £4k
Paint £1k (though would cost more if you get a decorator in)
Garden £5k (will obviously depend how big it is and will cost a lot more if you got a regular gardener - otherwise it is usually fences, decking/patio which cost money)
Replacement sofa, chairs, curtains etc £4k

See op, it just shows how different we all are, you need to sit down and see what needs doing on a regular and not so regular basis. Plus add in what you want to do rather than what needs doing. Eg some pp change carpets every decade- I’ve never had a new carpet in my life and probably never will. So I won’t budget for that cost, whilst others will.
All our budgets are different depending different properties and personal needs and wants. Yours will be too.

I will definitely budget over time. Just having had to do it in the past, inc things like house maintenance very hard to tell what needs doing and how much. I am sure it sounds naive but who knew that guttering needed clearing

@humptydu Please don’t take this the wrong way - I can highly recommended the readers digest of home maintenance. It’s around the £10 mark. Lots of helpful advice and tips within it. A good starting point for learning what needs to be done and what to do if something unforeseen crops up.
( as for guttering - I highly recommend gutter hedgehogs!)

Depends on the condition to start with. I've set aside £3000 this year, if it doesn't get spent it's rolled over to next year. This is for repairs rather than optional decoration. The kitchen will cost £10k separate budget.

You can mitigate some repairs by having insurance

I'd read to budget about 4-5% of the house's value, some of that is spent, some of that is saved and sometimes there are nasty surprises. However, I think any percentage/figure has a lot of limits, particularly with how the housing market has been since a lot of these numbers started to be used.

For me, having first bought just over a year ago, it's budgeting time for the tasks and the learning curve that comes with it more than funds thankfully, but there has still been some work and some things we're saving up for.

I agree with the reader's digest to home maintenance, there are a lot of lists out there of tasks you can customize to how much your home will need it and also if you have a garden, Gardener's World's monthly task lists can have useful reminders and tips. I now have a google document that has seasonal lists of tasks to remind me that I check, plus a place for me to keep my someday/maybe ideas.

It’s a really good idea to start putting something aside now that you’ve moved in, especially since costs do seem to be creeping up each year. A common suggestion is to budget around 1% of the property’s value annually, though in practice it depends on the age and condition of the home. For a three-bed semi that’s in decent shape, you may not face big expenses straight away, but smaller jobs, boiler servicing, gutter cleaning, paint touch-ups, or the odd plumbing fix can add up over time.

One approach that’s worked for me is to total up the essentials such as annual servicing plus the average cost of one appliance replacement or room redecoration, then divide that by 12. Setting that amount aside each month feels manageable, and it means I’m not scrambling when something unexpected comes up. Last year, for example, I had to replace a faulty water pump in the middle of winter, and having that buffer saved a lot of stress.

If you want a clearer picture of typical costs, PS Home Maintenance has a helpful website that outlines common repair and service needs. Using that as a guide can make it easier to plan a realistic monthly figure.

Yes maintenance can be very expensive depending on the house. My last house in London needed nothing structural doing in 13 years, just cosmetic improvements . The current house on the coast was much cheaper to buy but has constant problems from wind and weather and over 6 years we’ve spent half its value in essential repairs and new roof. I’m not sure that a percentage of the purchase price is a useful guide.