04/18/2026
Canadian homeowners spend over $13,000 a year on home maintenance.
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Here's where that money actually goes.
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Most people don't track it. It just... leaks out.
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$180 here for a guy to look at your furnace.
$350 there for an emergency plumber on a Saturday.
$90 for the electrician who came out, looked at it, and said "that's not my scope."
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Then you call someone else and pay another dispatch fee.
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Here's what we see over and over again when homeowners add it up at the end of the year:
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Dispatch and service call fees alone are between $500 and $1,200. That's just the cost of getting someone to show up. Before they touch anything.
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Repeat visits for the same problem, because the first person fixed the symptom, not the cause. That's another $300β$800 wasted.
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Off-hours emergency premiums, furnace dies on a Sunday, pipe bursts at midnight, you're paying 1.5x to 2x the normal rate.
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Easily $400β$600 over a year if it happens twice.
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Overlapping trades, the plumber says it's an electrical issue, the electrician says it's the appliance, the appliance guy says it's the plumbing.
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Three dispatch fees. One problem. We see this constantly.
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Then there's the stuff that just quietly gets worse because you didn't have anyone scheduled to look at it.
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Gutters that back up. Weatherstripping that's gone. A dryer vent that's half-packed with lint.
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None of these are big-ticket items on their own. But stack them up over 12 months and you're spending more on chaos than you would on a plan.
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The homeowners who spend the least per year aren't the ones who are handy.
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They're the ones who have a checklist and a schedule. Spring walk-around. Fall furnace check. Seasonal gutters.
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That's it.
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Boring beats expensive. Every time.
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"You don't need a bigger maintenance budget. You need fewer surprises."