It might be easy to change a light bulb or tighten a loose cabinet handle, but there are several other tasks that will need to be done around the house over time. If you constantly call in a handyman to take care of these little jobs for you, you’ll be spending a fortune.

Instead, handling these jobs yourself can help you get better acquainted with your home and save a few bucks.

Here are a few skills you may want to become familiar with in order to keep your home in proper working order.

1. Shutting Off the Main Water Source

Imagine the kitchen sink pipes bursting, or the toilet valve leaking. Such scenarios can quickly lead to flooding, which can wreak major havoc on your home. When this happens, shutting off the main water source can help to put a stop to the gushing water and minimize any damage that may occur. But what if you don’t know where this source is?

Knowing where to shut the water off can help you prevent water damage that can end up costing you dearly.

2. Turning Off the Gas

If you smell gas in your home, call the gas company right away. In the meantime, knowing how to turn off the gas can help to minimize the dangers you may be exposed to. The shut-off valve for the gas running into your home is typically located at the gas meter outside of your home. You’ll need a wrench or something similar to turn it off.

3. Fixing a Leaky Faucet

Faucets tend to drip, but you don’t necessarily have to call the plumber just yet if the issue is minor in nature. Not only is a leaky faucet annoying, it also wastes a ton of water, which you’ll quickly notice when you get your water bill.

4. Cleaning Your Gutters

The gutters outside of your home play a crucial role in protecting the structure. Namely, they’re responsible for directing any water from rain away from the home. If they’re not working properly, they can allow water to pool near the foundation of the home, which can then seep into your home and cause water damage.

Your gutters should ideally be cleaned out every year and inspected for any signs of damage. If you’re comfortable climbing a ladder, you can clean these gutters out yourself to make sure they’re free and clear of any debris that could be blocking proper drainage.

5. Powering Off the Circuit Breakers

It’s not uncommon for a fuse to blow every so often, and when this happens, it’s helpful to know where your circuit panel is and how to switch the breakers on and off. Some homeowners may mistakenly think that there’s a power outage when the power goes out in one room but not another. But if power is still on in certain parts of the home, most likely all that’s needed is a flip of a switch in the breaker box.

Sometimes all that’s required is a reset of the breakers to help power up small appliances without having to call in the electrician. Grounded outlets tend to come with reset buttons, especially those in kitchens and bathrooms where they may be exposed to water.

Be sure to check out the circuit breaker and all grounded outlets when you first move into your home to get familiar with them so that if there’s ever a problem, you’ll know how to deal with it.

6. Changing the Temperature on the Water Heater

Do you really need scalding hot water flowing out of your faucets? Probably not, but your water heater is working hard to keep the water hot, which costs money and uses energy. You can save some money by turning the temperature down. If you know how to turn the thermostat on your water heater down to a lower temperature, you can not only save money and energy, but you can also prevent any chances of scalding.

7. Changing Your Air Filters

In order to ensure high air quality in your home, your air filters will need to be changed every so often. You might notice your home being dustier than it should be, and changing the air filters can help alleviate this issue. Every three to six months should suffice, but they’ll probably have to be changed more frequently if anyone in the home suffers from allergies or respiratory issues.

8. Caulking Cracks and Air Leaks

Caulking is highly used in home construction and is used to seal up cracks and gaps that may allow air and other elements to enter or escape the home. You’ll notice caulking around your windows to prevent any cooled air from escaping or hot air from seeping in. You’ll also notice caulking around your faucets or shower heads to prevent any water from going anywhere other than out into the sink or shower stall.

But over time, the caulking can break down and loosen. When this happens, the affected areas will need to be recaulked. You can easily do this yourself with the right tools, including a caulking gun and caulk material.

9. Fixing a Running Toilet

Toilets that don’t stop running are noisy and waste water. Instead of calling a plumber, you can easily fix this yourself by getting familiar with the flush valve assembly. In order to gain access to this component, you’ll need to lift the top of the toilet tank, then simply reposition part of the assembly until the running stops.

10. Cleaning the Refrigerator Coils

Think about how hard your fridge is working to keep all of your food products chilled. After all this work, this major appliance will need a little attention once in a while, and that includes having its coils cleaned.

Filthy coils can cause the fridge to work harder than necessary, which can lead to a breakdown sooner rather than later. To clean the coils, all you need to do is pull the fridge off the wall, unplug it, and vacuum the coils (which are usually under or at the back of the fridge).

The Bottom Line

Getting acquainted with certain home maintenance and repair tasks can help ensure your home is working as smoothly as possible without constantly having to call in the repairman to deal with these issues for you. Not everyone is necessarily handy, but you can still learn a trick or two to keep your home in tip-top shape.

There’s a first for everything, including renting your first apartment. But given all of the information and history that landlords typically like to see from tenant applicants, is it possible to get a lease if you’ve got no references or credit to back you up?

While a lack of credit, references, and rental history can certainly be a hurdle when it comes to landing a rental unit, it’s certainly not impossible to get a lease if you’re a first-time tenant. To help landlords see you as a responsible tenant and encourage them to approve your lease application, consider the following tips.

Have a Guarantor Sign on Your Lease

You’ve probably heard of guarantors when it comes to loans and mortgages, but what about leases? Guarantors can absolutely be used in this type of scenario to help you increase the odds of landing a lease.

Guarantors are those who are financially established and have decent credit and can be included on a lease to help provide the landlord with some reassurance that the rent will be paid. Whether it’s by yourself or the guarantor, all the landlord really cares about is getting paid, regardless of who writes the check.

If at any point throughout the lease you are unable or unwilling to pay rent, the guarantor would be obligated to step in and make the payments on your behalf. Having this signature on the lease may be just enough to get the landlord to agree to take you on as a tenant.

Take Out a Secured Credit Card

If you lack any credit, that could pose a problem for you, not only with getting a lease but even getting any sort of loan. If you’ve got no credit, lenders and landlords have nothing to base your financial history on. There will be nothing to back up your claims that you’re a responsible consumer who always makes debt payments on time.

In order to establish credit, consider taking out a secured credit card. These are much easier to get approved for compared to traditional unsecured credit cards. To use these cards, you would put up a certain amount of money as a deposit, which would essentially become your credit limit that you would not be able to spend over.

If you use the card responsibility and make regular payments on time and in full every billing cycle, these habits will be reported to the credit bureaus and will help to build up credit. Good credit is what you want to have, and being financially responsible is key. Once you’ve established good credit, your chances of landing a lease are much higher.

Agree to Direct Debit For Rent Payments

Rather than your landlord depending on you to provide rent checks on time every month, they may feel more secure if they were able to access rent payments through direct debit. While not necessary, it can help support your case and will show the landlord that you’re committed and serious about paying your rent in a timely fashion without forcing the landlord to hound you month after month.

Prove You Make a Healthy Income

Landlords want to make sure their tenants are financially capable of making rent. If your current income isn’t enough to sustain your rent charges, your application won’t have any leg to stand on. Ideally, you’ll have a decent job that pays well enough to allow you to comfortably make rent payments with plenty of money left over for other expenses.

Supply paystubs, an employment letter, or anything else that proves that you’ve got the income to support the rent. 

Submit a List of Personal References

If you’ve got people in your network who can vouch for your level of responsibility – especially when it comes to money – provide these references to the landlord. While landlords typically like to have references from previous landlords, you don’t have this luxury. But having a list of references from others who would describe you as a responsible individual can help landlords sway in your direction.

Consider Putting Up Three Months’ Worth of Rent in Advance

Landlords want to make sure they get paid for every month that passes, and supplying three months’ worth of rent upfront can help landlords see that you’re serious and have the financial means to make rent every month.

Get Some Help From a Real Estate Professional

Real estate agents are well versed in the realm of buying and selling homes, but they’re also heavily involved in the lease market as well. In order to get increase your odds of finding a unit that you can afford and suits your lifestyle, having a real estate agent in your corner can really help. They’ll also be able to negotiate with the landlord and plead your case in order to get the landlord to sign you on as a tenant.

The Bottom Line

People with good credit, a history of renting, and a good track record of making rent on time are in a really good position to get approved for a lease. But what if you don’t have these assets? Luckily, there are some things you can do make up for what you may lack as a result of being a first-time renter. And to really improve your odds, be sure to work with a real estate professional.

Sometimes, you just need to feel a little fancy! So, this week took me to Chop Shop, located at 2033 W. North Ave. The restaurant is located inside a 100-year old former auto body shop and is Chicago’s only sustainable butcher, deli, restaurant, and bar. It also houses a 6,000 square foot event space and concert venue. The menu rotates seasonally and is sourced from local farms and the in-house butcher. We were first seated on the rooftop patio, which is just adorable. There’s a number of upscale picnic tables with big umbrellas and string lights, making it feel warm and inviting. Unfortunately, it started to rain soon after we were seated, so we had to move inside. There were a number of specials on the menu. Select wine bottles were half-off, they served $1 oysters from 5-7 pm, and a $14 fried chicken dinner. Of course, we ordered a dozen oysters. They were absolutely delicious! I love fresh oysters and these certainly did not disappoint. We decided to start with the Signature Butcher’s Board: chef’s choice of house-made meats, local cheese, house pickles, and jams, served with grilled bread. This was delicious. There was an incredible blue cheese and I loved the chorizo as well. The menu was full of wonderful sounding entrees, which made it super difficult to decide. I finally decided on the Sriracha Chicken Burger: a half pound patty topped with pickled red onion, arugula, provolone, Sriracha aioli, on a brioche bun served with French fries. I wanted to eat a bit lighter, so I took the bun off and ordered the burger without the aioli. I also subbed a house salad with balsamic vinaigrette for the French fries. The chicken patty was very tasty! The Sriracha gave it a really nice bite and the pickled onions were perfectly tangy. My friend ordered the Butcher’s Burger: a brioche bun with a half pound of prime butcher’s blend, grilled balsamic red onion, bacon, aged cheddar, and a house sauce; served with fries. This was a very solid burger! The aged cheddar was sharp and delicious and I really loved the balsamic red onions.

Chop Shop’s kitchen is open Sundays from 11 am to 9 pm, closed on Tuesdays, open Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 11 am to 10 pm, and Fridays and Saturdays from 11 am to midnight. The deli/butcher is open Wednesday through Mondays from 11 am to 7 pm and closed on Tuesdays. For more information, check out their website.

RACHEL HOOVLER & DEAN’S TEAM CHICAGO

While you might not necessarily be doing any of the wheeling and dealing at the negotiating table when buying or selling a home, it’s still interesting to know how your real estate agent handles these talks in order to get their clients the best deals possible. In fact, one of the many reasons to hire a real estate professional is to have them negotiate for you.

This is an art form that’s not always easy and takes some amount of experience and training to nail down. That said, there are a few tricks that agents often employ to seal the deal, and here are a few of them.

1. Using Market Value As the Starting Point

Rather than using the asking price as the starting point, savvy buyer agents will calculate the true value of a property. Many sellers purposely price their homes over what the current market value of their property actually is. At the same time, many buyers attempt to lowball sellers, which often sends the deal nowhere, particularly in hot real estate markets.

In seller’s markets, buyers may want to offer slightly over the present market value in order to get the seller to accept, even though the offer price may be under the listing price. Offering just under the minimum amount that the seller is probably willing to accept is a better approach than lowballing in an effort to snag a deal. This will often coerce the seller into making a decision to accept an offer that’s only slightly under what their minimum is.

The idea is to engage the seller and get them to be a willing participant, and oftentimes lowballing too far will just kick buyers out of the game.

2.  Add an Escalation Clause to the Offer

If you’re on the buying end of a real estate transaction, you may want to consider including an escalation clause in the contract. An escalation clause is often used in scenarios that can possibly lead to multiple offers and is intended to eliminate most – if not all – of the competition. These clauses state that the buyer will pay a certain amount of money above the highest offer that the seller receives and usually includes a cap.

An escalation clause can help give you the best chances of winning a bidding war if you ever find yourself in one, which is pretty common in many sizzling markets across California. Basically, you promise to pay an ‘X’ amount more than the highest offer (but not over a certain amount). Sellers are often intrigued by these types of offers and are obviously more willing to keep buyers in the game as a result.

3. Making it a Win-Win Situation For Both Parties

Rather than going into a negotiation as a fight to see who can come out with the best deal, savvy agents create a situation that makes it look as if both parties are coming out on top. Buyers and sellers who go into a negotiation looking to squeeze every dollar out of each other can hurt each other’s position. Instead, striking a deal that leaves both sides satisfied is the best way to go.

4. Negotiating Over the Phone First

Many times it pays for agents to negotiate over the phone first to discuss pertinent points of the deal with the other agent before bringing the negotiations to the table. This can help start the process and get both parties on the same page before meeting in person and can help avoid much of the back and forth bantering. Too many counteroffers can confuse the situation. Instead, keeping things as simple as possible is the best way to go.

5. Giving Something to Get Something in Return

Sometimes it pays to offer up a little something in order to persuade the other party to sway in your favor. This is especially helpful for sellers and works by throwing in a little something to sweeten the deal and get buyers to meet them where there want to be. For instance, sellers can offer to pay down part of the closing costs, buy down the interest rate, provide an allowance for improvements, or throw in some furniture or other goodies as an incentive for buyers to keep their offer price higher.

6. Stay Somewhat Aloof

In a buyer’s market where there is plenty of supply to go around, buyers can use the strategy of being somewhat nonchalant about the whole thing, making sellers feel as though they’re possibly interested in other homes. With this strategy, it’s important for buyers not to let the sellers think that they’ve fallen for the home and that there are other properties out there that they may have their eye on.

7. Use Exclusions as Negotiable Items

It’s common for appliances to “automatically” be included in a real estate deal, but there’s no rule that says washers and dryers, for instance, should necessarily come with a home. Rather than including them in a deal, list items as exclusions and use them as negotiating tools instead in situations where a couple thousand dollars will mean the difference between a deal or a dud. 

The Bottom Line

Savvy real estate agents have a number of tricks up their sleeves when it comes to negotiating real estate deals. That’s exactly why it’s incredibly useful to have one in your corner. And the more deals your agent has on their track record, the more experience they have at the negotiating table, which will work in your favor when it’s time to strike a deal.