New Bedford Homeowners Insurance: Tips for Easy Maintenance

Maintaining your home is not just something that you need to do to keep up with requirements for your mortgage company and insurance agency in New Bedford, but something you should take pride in doing for yourself. When you properly maintain your home and take care of small repairs and replacements as they arise, you protect your investment in the future. Any work that you do on your home helps to increase the value or maintain value, depending on the current market rate. Your New Bedford homeowners insurance policy protects you in the event of a covered accident or incident, but the key to getting the most out of your Massachusetts home insurance policy is to ensure that your home is effectively cared for and maintained year-round. Your local agent can provide you with tips to ensure that you have the best home insurance in New Bedford based on your individual needs and goals.

Preventive Maintenance is Key

Establish a regular schedule that provides you with reminders about the work that needs to be done to effectively maintain your home. You can work with a consultant or take a look at online schedules that are provided by home maintenance companies, insurance agencies, and other industry experts. Preventive maintenance is essential to helping you keep your end of the bargain with your Massachusetts home insurance policy. While most policies protect you from certain types of damage, if you are found to be neglecting basic maintenance, the chances are good that you won’t be covered at all. Certain maintenance tasks, such as getting the HVAC system serviced annually, replacing air filters indoors, and testing your smoke and carbon monoxide testers, are just common sense. However, you might be surprised at how many people don’t take the time to even do this type of work.

Other preventive services, such as taking care of landscaping, which does add value to your home, getting your roof inspected annually, and making sure that tree branches are not hanging over structures, fences, or neighboring properties, should also be provided as required. Some maintenance might be enforced by your local city, town, or county, as it can negatively impact the value of local homes if the work is not completed. Mowing the lawn, edging the lawn, ensuring that lawn irrigation is working properly and that trees are not hanging over public sidewalks and streets, could result in a warning or possibly a fine if ignored. Other jobs can be more complicated or frustrating to have to do, such as clearing out gutters multiple times each year to prevent standing water, water leaks, and ice dams from forming.

Work Smarter Not Harder

There are lots of ways that you can keep up with home maintenance, satisfy your New Bedford homeowners insurance policy, and stay off the radar for local code enforcement officers. Hiring someone to do the work for you will get the job done, but that might not be in your household budget, especially if you just paid a huge down payment on your home. Your local provider of home insurance in New Bedford might have some tips on their website, such as the blog that we offer here at Borden Insurance, but your best bet is to take a look at the work that needs to be done and see if you can find alternative solutions that will reduce your effort.

• Cleaning the Gutters – consider installing “gutter guard” products that prevent leaves, twigs, pine needles, and other debris from getting inside your gutters; you will still need to perform seasonal inspections in the spring and fall, but they will reduce the amount of time you spend working on and thinking about gutters
• Annual HVAC Service – sign up for an annual service with a reputable provider who will come out in the spring and fall to check your HVAC system, replace filters, perform basic maintenance, clean the unit, and let you know if anything needs to be repaired; make sure to do this before you need the air-conditioner and before using the heater for the first time in the fall
• Quarterly Pest Control – most of the well-known services offer quarterly spraying to keep away all sorts of pests, such as ants, wasps, cockroaches, crickets, spiders, and other common problems; when you sign up for annual services, they often perform a whole home inspection for things like termites, carpenter ants, and other damage-causing pests; the sooner you uncover these issues, the less it will cost you to treat and repair the damage they cause
• Annual Systems Inspections – it is highly recommended to get annual inspections of your home’s primary systems, including the plumbing, electrical, HVAC, septic and sewage; consider an annual contract that offers perks, emergency response, and preventive services in addition to yearly inspections to save money

Save Time and Money

Borden Insurance Agency in New Bedford can provide you with a wide range of products, services, and options designed to help you protect your home with a comprehensive Massachusetts home insurance policy. Contact our team for a FREE quote and learn more about the opportunities available for New Bedford homeowners insurance protection. Give us a call at 508-999-3636 and speak with one of our agents about your current needs for home insurance in New Bedford and our surrounding SouthCoast service area.