I simply love living in northern New Hampshire and there's nothing quite like the seasonal transitions to keep us entertained and amazed by nature's beauty and strength. One of the more exciting and visually stunning changes is our migration towards Fall. I know, if you are reading this and are under the age of 18, you are cursing those words and are bemoaning the end to the carefree days of summer and YOUR shift towards homework and study hall. If you are a homeowner, I hope you are asking yourself the question: "Is my home ready for the colder temps?"
As we are forced to reach for that extra blanket at night and even move the slider in the car from blue to red, our thoughts should also be directed towards readying our homes for the coming white stuff!
Getting and Staying warm inside the home...
The first property I bought was in desperate need of some TLC in the downstairs unit. I ripped up all the flooring, entirely replaced the bathroom and painted nearly every surface in the whole place. In that instance it was all well worth it. The upstairs unit was covering the mortgage and thankfully the repairs did not end up being that extensive (or expensive). In many cases though, folks get too excited about some (likely false) fantasy of a fixer-upper they see on some reality TV show and are more than disappointed at the end-result. Let's take a look at some history in the "needs some TLC" world and see if we can come up with a more solid strategy.
Porch.com did a study of over 1,000 homeowners and the data below comes from their findings. Most of us think that buying a home that needs so...