Pay Now For Minneapolis Duplex Repairs or Pay Later

For many Minnesotans, the week of the 4th of July means time at the lake or a family vacation. For others, it means time off to work on projects around the house or, if you’re a housing provider, your duplex.

This year, I fall into the latter category. It seems there is always an infinite list of projects everywhere. It’s easy to resent them, to not do them and spend my precious little free time enjoying something fun.

As a Realtor I am reminded almost every day of the cost of doing nothing.  Deferred maintenance snowballs until finally, it seems insurmountable.

It’s easy to decide to let the next owner do the maintenance, the updating, or to deal with a challenging tenant. It’s easy to justify not spending the money, imagining there will come a day or a time when I will have both the funds and inspiration to take on the project.

Apparently I’m not the only one who falls into this way of thinking. I regularly run into would-be sellers with a lot of items on their To Do lists that never got crossed off due to either a lack of time or lack of money.

The irony is, one way or another, not addressing these issues will cost us time and money, whether we address them or not. That’s because all those little projects create an overall impression of a place. When it comes time to sell, it’s usually one that suggests a tired and worn property. A buyer views is just as we did; as having a ready-made project list that will cost them both time and money.

As sellers, we are then left with a choice. Either sell at enough of a discount to incentivize a would-be buyer to spend time doing the tasks we couldn’t squeeze in. Or, have our property on the market long enough to find a one in a million buyer who shares my vision.

Either way, it costs me time, or money. Or as I tell myself in my mind, pay now or pay later.

Since I don’t like my choices, I’ll be spending my holiday at home.