The age-long debate about the advantages of renting or buying a home continues, and there seems to be no concession from any side in view. A lot of variables and a lot of unique factors influencing individual homeowner’s choices are too many to reach a consensus on the issue. Or thing is certain though: both renting and buying a home comes with its fair share of costs. Everyone knows buying a home doesn’t come cheap, even though it makes sense to you and your family financially.
One good positive is the fact that the cost of owning a home isn’t fixed. If you can handle the upfront payments, these home project developments will permanently reduce the intermittent expenses of homeownership. Others avert costly repairs for life or until you decide to vacate the house.
Note that both federal and state tax credits can help you bear the cost of performance-enhanced projects if you feel your budget is unable to cover the upfront payment of these projects. You can also finance your home with an equity line credit, unsecured private bank personal loans, online lenders or credit unions.
1. Do A Home Energy Audit or Professional Assessment
Home Energy Audit
Conducting a Do-It-Yourself home energy audit, or getting a professional home energy assessment is one of the best ways to prioritize and create a cost-effective home improvement test. Assessments and audits are meant to help examine all the key systems and parts of the home to help you know where you’re either losing heat, misusing electricity and where efficiency is failing in your home. For example, the following places might likely be checked:
– Air leaks from either windows, vents and door frames.
– Mechanical devices like heaters, boilers, and furnaces.
– Other appliances and electronics like oven ranges and refrigerators.
When you’re done with the audit or assessment, you may come up with a to-do list that includes various improvements like:
– Patching drafts and leaks.
– Changing old, ineffective appliances for new and effective ones.
– Replacing or adding substandard insulation.
2. Invest In A Cool Roof
Sunny and hot weather can turn your roof into an enormous heating pad, roasting the upper floors and even the best-protected attics, tending to waste the airconditioning efforts, hopelessly fighting against this simple thermodynamic impact. A cool roof may not necessarily cool your house, but it sure reduces the upper floor heating severely. Like most height-related jobs, changing a traditional roof to a cool roof can be very dangerous. Getting quality fall protection equipment is necessary if you intend to change the roof yourself, but it is advisable to let the professionals handle it. Cool roofs are cost-effective in sunny or warm domains while in colder climes, cool roofs take longer to assert their worth as their reflectivity disrupts passive solar heating during the winter season.
3. Switch To Native or Climate-Appropriate Landscaping
Making a switch to climate-appropriate or native landscaping can help increase water savings as well as reduce or even eradicate any additional watering needs. These landscaping are cost-effective and come in handy in arid places where water-intensive landscaping such as turf lawns are not achievable without enough water supply. These native landscapes amalgamate plants that are only found in such a region’s natural habitat, while climate-appropriate landscapes amalgamate plants that can be found in similar climes around the globe.
4. Install New, Efficient Windows and Doors
Using a DIY door and window seal usually doesn’t work out, so you are advised to buy and install brand new doors and windows. It is a good thing that the installation of high-efficiency doors and windows is said to be one of the surest ways of ensuring the value of your home the case of a resell and also builds equity, so if you’d like to sell anytime soon, doing this alone can compensate for the cost of your project. Despite the aesthetics wooden windows give to a home, vinyl windows are quite affordable unless the wooden windows are for your home’s character conservation.
5. Periodically Stain And Seal Wood Decks And Siding
Even though staining and sealing wood in your home isn’t the idea of fun, doing it from time to time can highly increase your home’s natural wood lifespan and reduce any expensive replacement in the future. Wood siding should be freshly coated every 3-5 years, decks should be coated every 2-3 years unless it is heavily used and in severe climate, then it should be coated yearly.
Conclusion
Time and money are always limited which is why it is advisable to adopt a compromising strategy to improve your home and save cost by employing the BIY – Buy It Yourself – approach.
A BIY approach means you have to purchase the materials, and probably the tools needed to undertake the project which can be done with close interaction with your contractor, who then does the job and charges you for workmanship and any other miscellaneous. What this means is that you buy the materials and tools yourself, saving the additional money and time it would cost if your contractor had gotten it himself. According to research by HouseLogic, using this technique can save costs by 20 percent, which for someone on a tight budget, is quite a sum.