Your Seasonal Home Maintenance Checklist Based on Where You Live: Get the House Ready to Sell in Any Climate
Published on March 29th, 2022 7-8 min readAt HomeLight, our vision is a world where every real estate transaction is simple, certain, and satisfying. Therefore, we promote strict editorial integrity in each of our posts.
Proper home maintenance in America isn’t one-size-fits-all. With an area of 3.8 million square miles, the U.S. has a vast range of climates that all take varying tolls on a house. In Duluth, Minnesota, where the average minimum monthly temperature is 1.5 F, your home’s enemy is the extreme cold. Miamians, on the other hand, need to worry about hurricanes and 62 inches of rain annually.
Poor maintenance becomes evident when the time comes to sell the house, and the home inspector writes you up for a decaying deck or water damage in the basement. Not to mention that without the right upkeep, your house will lose value over time.
So rather than download a generic task list, consult this seasonal home maintenance checklist tailored to regional weather patterns. The sooner you start protecting your abode against the area’s most threatening elements, the better.
Pacific Northwest: Gear up for wet weathe
In the Pacific Northwest region, water damage is one of a homeowner’s biggest concerns. Most of the area’s rainfall happens between October and March, and according to The Weather Channel, cities like Portland and Seattle experience around 150 days of rain annually.
If you’re east of the Cascade mountains, you may experience drier, hotter summer weather than those closer to the coast, but you also experience colder winters. In either case, you can’t avoid the rain. But if you keep your house dry in all the right places, you can prevent mold and water damage, which can be a big deterrent to buyers.
Moss thrives in wet, shady conditions, and as it spreads, it can lift your shingles, cause mold, and lead to cracks in your roof. Then, when it rains again, water gets inside your home and more mold and water damage ensues.
Basic checklist:
- Gently remove moss from the roof.
- Clean out the leaves, sticks, and debris from your gutters.
- Trim your trees away from the house.
- Keep carpenter ants at bay.
- Seal up decks, patios, and any wood surfaces exposed to the elements.
Gently remove moss from the roof.
Moss thrives in wet, shady conditions, and as it spreads, it can lift your shingles, cause mold, and lead to cracks in your roof. Then, when it rains again, water gets inside your home and more mold and water damage ensues.
Your house is one giant drainage system. So in addition to creating bad curb appeal, clogged gutters put a hitch in that drainage system by allowing water to run down the exterior of your house rather than away from it. “Sometimes that will penetrate your fascia board which will go into your walls,” says Forey Duckett, a top-selling agent in Seattle. This can cause mold growth and put your home’s foundation and structure at risk. For the same reason, Clement also recommends making sure your landscaping grades away from your foundation.