"New homeowner at 26 and grilled too close to the plastic siding of my house and warped it"

"Brick is meant to breathe. Painting it can trap moisture inside your walls."

"I was this dummy. My toilet started running. Intermittently at first but then more frequently. I kept putting it off. Then I had three major surgeries back to back and put off looking at the bills until they were due at the end of the month. My water bill was somewhere around $550 dollars. It is normally $50! Then because I’d put off looking at it until the end of the month and the water bill invoices for the month before that, I hadn’t caught it in time. So when the next month’s bill arrived it was $650ish! It was just a piece inside the tank that needed to be swapped out. A $10 part that literally took 4 minutes. It cost me over $1k just because I kept putting off looking at a toilet that had started running."

"Flushing “flushable” wipes."

"Not paying attention to wooden things that need periodic painting. Porch posts, door trim, fences, etc. If you don’t keep up with it, it rots. Then you have to replace porch posts, door trim, fences, etc. I had no idea until things rotted."

"Putting eggshells down your drain/garbage disposal. Tons of people do it. It can create a cement and clog your drain. A plumber told my wife that decades ago so we never did it. I figured there’s no harm in not doing it so better safe than sorry. Then some friends of ours had plumbing problems. Lucky for them, the point of compaction was above an unfinished room so it was easy to get to. He cut out a section of PVC pipe and it was like a chunk of cement inside. All caused by eggshells."

"Husband’s coworker hired someone to remove a tree from his backyard. They quoted him $600 to do it. Dude was not insured or licensed. Near as we can tell, it was just a dude who owned a chainsaw. Tree fell on the house, damaged part of the roof, siding, and took out the electricity. His insurance wouldn’t cover it because the dude who did it was just a dude. Took 4 days to get the electricity fixed. The dude who took down the tree “felt really bad” about the damage he caused"

"Furnace filters. Replace them more often than you think you need. Don’t run ultra-high MERV ratings. You need airflow over your indoor coil for the system to work well."

"Ignoring very basic maintenance like clearing debris causing water to pool on roofs. And ignoring caulking around windows. My Aunt and Uncle had a beautiful Spanish mission-style house from the 1920s. And it was in really good condition when they bought it. Roughly 20-25 years later, the only thing in halfway decent condition were the wood floors. Roof was shot and actively leaking in multiple rooms. Causing plaster ceilings to just fall. Exterior walls were destroyed. Framing was completely destroyed, and again plaster just falling off he walls. The house stood in great condition for over 70 years. And through minor neglect, fell apart in the last 20."

"Moved to Texas around a year ago. Learned the hard way that during dry hot months you are supposed to water your foundation to help the clay-like soil settle in and around it. Wtf ,water my house?"

"When every adult does not know where the whole-house water shutoff valve is."

"Friend decided to finish his basement. Built his stud wall on the ground and tipped it up to place, discovered it was an inch or two taller than it should have been. Instead of taking it down/apart and cutting to size, he managed to force it into place essentially jacking up a section of his 1st floor. Upstairs, tile grout began to crack and come up, doors didn’t shut/latch properly and you could see new gaps between the baseboards and flooring."

"Previous homeowners bricked over the only (tiny) access point to the crawlspace. It’s been super fun trying to fix copper plumbing lines they ran under the house, up an exterior wall to the 2nd floor laundry. Every winter they freeze a few times. There’s supposedly a heating line on them but I expect it’s no longer working. I’m using next weekend to pull out the floor in the back stairwell to create a new access point so I can get under and see what’s happening. I dread going into the crawlspace, been here for 7 years and I have no idea what to expect"

"Forgetting to clean the condensation line on my HVAC. During a hot streak in the summer, the condensation line got clogged. Water slowly leaked out of the HVAC (it was in a utility closet so no idea how long it was leaking.) The water leaked under the drywall to the adjacent room, and ruined all of the flooring."

"Not paying attention to termites invading his garage. The framing was so chewed up that the only thing keeping it standing was the outside stucco. And he won’t take advice on it"

"Probably the biggest one I see a lot (insurance agent) is people not trimming trees over their roof. Usually the company has something to say about it, and it’s not just because you want to avoid having a giant limb fall onto your roof during a storm, but also because the falling leaves/pine needles will make short work of your roof by encouraging moss, rot, whatever else to propagate. I’ve told clients if they won’t trim the trees, they’ll want to get up there once or twice a year with a roof rake/broom, so it’s easier to just take down the limbs and be safe"

"Ignoring the anode rod replacement requirements of your hot water heater"

"I had a wash sink next to my washing machine. Had NO idea that the washing machine actually drained into the sink. Left a pile of rags in the sink and flooded the whole basement. I would like to say this was isolated, but I went on to do it two more times. The shop vac was my friend."

"The first 10 years we owned our house, we rarely (maybe never, I can’t recall) got our gutters cleaned. We didn’t see the value in it. Eventually we had to replace an entire bay window and the surrounding wall. I think it cost $10-15k twenty years ago."

"Our sump pump was working when we moved in but about 9 months later we had a week of heavy spring rains. I realized I hadn’t heard the sump pump making noise for a while so I went into the garage to check the 3ft crawlspace we never use which runs the length of our entire house. I kid you not — we had a 2ft deep swimming pool under our home. We spent $7k on getting the water pumped out, mold mitigation, getting a vapor barrier installed, and replacing the sump pump with one that has an alarm. The old sump pump was the cheapest one our plumber had ever seen. Would’ve been nice if our home inspector had bothered to mention it."

"Forgot to take a hose off of the spigot before the first freeze of winter."

"Not reroofing your house. Water will leak in and start ruining your house. Also, mold. You do not want mold!"

"I only learned recently about the filter in the dishwasher and I’m so grossed out."

"A future customer replaced the ballcock in his second-floor toilet and then went out of town.A neighbor called the police the next day when water started coming out the front door.Always call a licensed plumber."

"Failure to have the chimney of a wood-burning fireplace inspected and cleaned before lighting a fire in your new home. Burning cardboard in a fireplace. That house burned down day 3 when the family decided to get rid of boxes."

"I’ve seen stone countertops destroyed by the use of the wrong cleaners and lack of proper care."

"Don’t ignore a dank smell in the basement, get a dehumidifier ASAP because that smell is going to only get worse and ruin anything stored there stink, and eventually black mold will arrive"

"Putting hamburger grease down the drain."

"Something I learned late in life but thankfully early in homeownership… ladies – tampons aren’t flushable!!!"

"Check for gas leaks regularly!!! The detectors are less than $20 on Amazon. You can get acclimated to the rotten egg smell they add to make it more noticeable. Whole neighborhoods have been wiped off the map by gas leaks. Our newly purchased (one-year) home nearly killed me this year. A pocket of leaked natural gas had floated into and sat in our nearby bedroom from the kitchen after I made a whole bunch of stuff for dinner with the gas oven and stove."