How Long Things Last in a House
I’ve been fixing up high end homes for 25 years and I’ve noticed how quickly things break. I thought I would let everybody know my opinion on how long the stuff in your house will last.
A good rule of thumb is that you are going to spend .5% of what the house is worth on maintenance every year. So if you spent $1,000,000 on it you should expect to spend $5000 a year keeping it up.
The worst thing you can do when you buy a house is buy one that is not for the climate you are in. I have seen so many beautiful Las Vegas Houses here in Hawaii that leak so badly. There is a reason we have the roofs the way we do in Hawaii. In fact, we should have steeper roofs. The ancient Hawaiians had tall, peaked roofs. This wasn’t a cultural thing or even an artistic statement. Houses with high-pitched roofs do better in tropical climates.
