Cap The Faucets Before You Move

I’ve been meaning to write this blog for a while but I had forgotten about it. I was showing a home today and there was water everywhere in the laundry room at one of the properties. As I looked around I noted a small trickle at one of the laundry room washing machine faucets.  The water was running down the wall soaking the sheet rock and puddling up on the floor. I made a quick call to the listing agent to let her know.

Dripping and Capped Faucets

Copyright 2010 - Imaged2Sell

It reminded me of a listing I had had in Frisco. The owner had painted the house and put down fresh carpet so it would look nice and sell quickly. She had moved out of state and the house was vacant.  It was a slow time of year and there were not many showings. I dropped by the house one day only to find the new carpet soaked in water! I traced the source back to a dripping laundry room faucet that day as well. Luckily we were able to have the carpet dried and suffered no real damage other than the several hundred dollar clean-up bill for the seller and several hours of my time making sure it was taken care of.

I used to recommend that sellers vacating a property cap off the laundry room and ice maker faucets. After that day, I started providing  my sellers with the caps. I purchase them at my local hardware store and a set of three costs about $10. Not only is it an added service but it might just save the seller a bunch of money and myself a lot of time.

Cap those faucets before you move!

Tom Branch, Broker, CDPE, SFR