Do you take good care of your property investment?
Do you take good care of your property investment
?
Bricks and mortar are without doubt one of the highest value single ticket items that money can buy, and yet so many of us do the deal, go to Deed, pay hundreds of thousands of Euros and then sit back and don't give it a second thought, relying on a reactive fire fighting approach, only fixing things as and when they go wrong.
Yet when it comes to the car, often a significantly less expensive purchase, we take it for an MOT every year, because it's illegal to do otherwise, often having it serviced at the same time because we don't want to breakdown far away from home, being stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Similarly, we buy anti-virus software every year for our computers, providing helpful protection, equipping us with the necessary tools to be prepared for the unexpected. The cost of our computers are quite literally a drop in the ocean when compared to the cost of an apartment or villa.
Whether it's down to lack of sound advice, or simply something that's out of sight out of mind, ignoring routine maintenance can often lead to an emergency further down the line. And there can be no doubt that the cost of prevention is always significantly less than the cost of putting things right after the event.
Mold is an extremely common problem which occurs in many older properties, and some new properties, here in the Algarve, caused by different sets of circumstances. Often older properties suffer this type of damage due to poor construction, or simply neglect over a prolonged period of time. This creates a very unpleasant damp and musty smell throughout the affected areas of the property, resulting in an unattractive proposition for both the rental and/or resale market. Ultimately, this will have an adverse affect on the value of your property investment!
Whilst construction techniques have improved dramatically here in the Alagrve over the past five to ten years, newer properties can also suffer the same consequences, though often due to a different cause. It is a common perception that the weather in the Algarve is great, a much better climate than the one most of us are used to back in our home countries. However, spare a thought for your poor neglected property, for they have very different needs to us.
While we love the hot sunshine of the summer months combined with the mild temperatures through the winter, a delightful prospect when compared to a grey overcast summer when the sun rarely peeps through the clouds and temperatures are a very average 20 degrees, with generally wet winters hovering around the low single digit temperatures. All our dependable old properties want is something reasonably constant, nothing too varied.
The range from low winter to high summer temperatures experienced in the Algarve are so much wider than the range of temperatures in the UK and Ireland, and when it rains in the Algarve it really can be torrential. Coupled with regular minor earth tremors in Portugal (often not great enough to feature on the richter scale, but nevertheless significant enough to have an impact on a property over time) this means that the structure and materials of buildings are subjected to significantly increased levels of stress.
The results of this are seen on the exterior render and paint on buildings in the Algarve, where wide ranging temperatures, severe heavy bursts of rain and earth tremors can cause the paint and the render to develop small cracks from time to time. This is perfectly normal and not a major problem if regularly filled, primed and repainted with good quality materials.
However, all too often they are simply glossed over with a lick of cheap paint, concealing the root cause of a more serious future damp problem that will inevitably occur, causing that awful unpleasant musty/mildew smell and having a damaging and costly effect.
Therefore, when carrying out regular maintenance to your property don't go for the cheapest paint you can find, or the cheapest quote from the local builder, as you will often find out much later on, when it's too late, that it was not money well spent. Be sure that you are not just "papering over the cracks", make sure the cracks are filled in with a good quality epoxy based filler, then finished off with good quality primer and paint.
This will ensure that your property investment is safely and securely sealed up for the winter months, preventing any future nasty surprises.
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