Last Sunday’s homework was about how your house looks to a buyer. This one is about how it reads to an inspector, which is the version of your house that actually gets negotiated.
Mid-September is the window. Our first freezing night usually lands somewhere in the back half of October — sometimes early, sometimes not until November — and every year a handful of people get caught by a cold snap that arrives two weeks ahead of schedule. Right now it is still 70 degrees and dry, the ground is workable, and every trade in the county still answers the phone. In six weeks none of those three things will be true.
Here is the list. Most of it is free. The parts that cost money cost a service-call fee, not a project budget.
1. Kill the Outside Water
💧 Hoses Off, Spigots Drained
Disconnect every garden hose and drain it. A hose left threaded on a spigot traps water against the valve, and when that water freezes it splits the pipe — usually inside the wall, where you find out about it in March when the wall gets wet. If you have shutoff valves for the outside spigots (often in the basement or crawl, on the line feeding each hose bib), close them and open the spigot outside to let the line drain.
Frost-free hose bibs handle this themselves only if nothing is attached. The hose is what defeats them. This job takes eleven minutes and it is the single highest-return item on the list.
2. Have the Furnace Looked At Now, Not in November
🔥 Before Everyone Else Calls
The first genuinely cold week is when every HVAC company in Williamson, Franklin and Jackson County is booked solid and running emergency rates. A routine fall service in September is an ordinary appointment at an ordinary price. Change the filter yourself while you are thinking about it, and if you cannot remember the last time you did, that is your answer on whether the service call is worth it.
If you are planning to list this winter or spring, keep the invoice. “Serviced 9/2026” on a receipt you can hand over is worth real money at the negotiating table. A furnace with no service history is a furnace a buyer’s inspector will describe with words like “recommend evaluation by a qualified HVAC contractor,” and that sentence has a dollar figure attached to it.
3. Do the Gutters Twice
🍂 The Second Pass Is the One That Counts
Clean them now, then clean them again after the oaks and maples finish dropping — which around here is closer to Thanksgiving than most people expect. One pass in October is a wasted pass, because half the leaves are still on the tree.
While you are up there, look at where the downspouts actually put the water. If a downspout is dumping against the foundation, add an extension and walk it four to six feet out. Most “wet basement” and “water in the crawl” problems in this part of the state are not foundation problems. They are downspout problems that got expensive.
4. Test the Sump Pump Before You Need It
⚡ Five Gallons of Water, Right Now
Pour a bucket of water into the pit and watch. The float should rise, the pump should kick on, the water should leave, the pump should shut off. If any of those four steps is uncertain, you have found a problem on a warm Sunday instead of during a February thaw on top of frozen ground — which is exactly when they fail, and exactly when you cannot get anyone out.
Check where the discharge line lets out, too. If it runs into a buried pipe that freezes, the pump runs against a closed system and burns up. A battery backup is a couple hundred dollars and, in a finished basement, it pays for itself the first time it works.
5. Get in the Crawl Space
💡 Ten Minutes, One Flashlight, the Best ROI on This Page
A large share of our housing stock sits on a crawl space and almost nobody looks in it. You are checking four things: standing water or mud, a vapor barrier that has torn loose or gone missing, insulation hanging down between the joists, and any pipe or duct that is sweating, dripping or disconnected. Put your hand on the framing near the foundation wall — if it is damp, you have found something worth a phone call.
Every one of those is cheap to correct while it is small and expensive after two more winters. And every one of them is written up, with photographs, by the first inspector who crawls under your house.
6. Look at the Water Heater’s Birthday
🔥 The Sticker Tells You More Than the Tank Does
Find the manufacturer’s label and read the date. Conventional tank heaters generally run somewhere in the ten-to-fifteen-year range, and our water is hard enough that sediment is a real factor here. Draining a few gallons off the bottom valve into a bucket tells you a lot: if what comes out is chalky and full of grit, the tank has been insulating itself with mineral scale and working harder than it should.
Look at the floor around the base for rust stains or a dried mineral ring, and make sure the temperature-and-pressure relief valve has a discharge pipe running down toward the floor. A missing or improperly terminated T&P discharge line is one of the most commonly written-up items on an inspection report, and it is a genuine safety item — not a nitpick.
7. Caulk, Weatherstrip, and the Dryer Vent
🏭 The Hour That Lowers the Ameren Bill
On a breezy day, walk the inside of the house with the back of your hand near the window frames, the door frames, and the outlets on exterior walls. Where you feel air, you are paying for air. A tube of exterior caulk and a roll of weatherstripping is a twenty-dollar trip and an hour of work.
While you are at it, pull the dryer vent hose off the back of the dryer and clean the whole run, including the flap outside. Lint buildup is both a fire risk and the reason your clothes take two cycles. This is a five-minute job that nobody does and every inspector notices.
8. Look Up
🏠 The Roofline, From the Ground
You do not need to get on the roof. Stand at each corner of the lot with your phone camera zoomed in and look for missing or curled shingles, dark streaks of exposed decking, a sagging line, damaged flashing where the roof meets a chimney or a wall, and any place a limb is touching or hanging over the roof.
Get the limbs cut back now, before an ice storm makes that decision for you. And if you see something questionable on the roof, get a roofer out this fall while they are still working — a small repair in October is a repair, and the same spot in April is usually a claim.
9. Write It Down
📝 The Folder That Sells the House
Keep a single folder — paper or a photo album on your phone — with the furnace service receipt, the roof repair invoice, the date you cleaned the gutters, the water heater install date, and a picture of the label on every major system. It takes no extra effort if you do it as you go.
When you eventually list, that folder is one of the most persuasive things you can put in front of a buyer. It answers the questions an inspection report raises before the report is written, and it tells a buyer something they cannot learn any other way: that this house has been looked after. Buyers pay for that. They just usually have no way to verify it.
Why This Is a Real Estate Post and Not a Chore List
Deferred maintenance almost never shows up as a lower list price. It shows up in the inspection response — as a repair request, a credit, or a buyer who walks in week three and puts you back on the market with a stale listing. Nine items done in September cost you an afternoon and a service call. The same nine items discovered in an inspection report cost you leverage, because at that point the buyer is holding a licensed professional’s written opinion and you are holding a closing date.
And this matters more here than in a lot of markets, because our housing stock is older. In our September 11 look at Carterville, the median build year among listed houses was 1972 and roughly a quarter of them were built before 1950. Those are good, solid houses — they are just houses with systems that have opinions about being ignored.
✅ Print This: The Fall Nine
- Hoses disconnected and drained, outside spigots shut off
- Furnace serviced — and keep the receipt
- Gutters cleaned, downspouts extended away from the foundation
- Sump pump tested with a bucket of water
- Crawl space inspected — water, vapor barrier, insulation, pipes
- Water heater date checked, a few gallons flushed, T&P line verified
- Caulk, weatherstrip, and clean the dryer vent run
- Roofline checked from the ground, overhanging limbs cut back
- Everything logged in one folder
One More Thing, If You Are Listing in the Spring
Take your exterior photos now. The grass is green, the trees still have leaves, and your house has never looked better than it does in the second week of September. A March listing shot in March gets bare branches, brown grass and flat gray light. The same house photographed this week looks like a different property, and a spring listing is allowed to use fall photos as long as the house has not changed.
That is one afternoon of work standing between your house and a much better first impression six months from now. Not a bad trade.
🏠 Thinking About Listing This Winter or Spring?
The best time to talk to a broker is before you spend money on the house — some of it moves the number and some of it does not. Send us your address and rough timeline and we’ll tell you what your house is worth today and what would actually be worth doing first.
Fall Prep FAQ
When is the first freeze in Southern Illinois?
Does fall maintenance actually affect what my house sells for?
What's the most overlooked fall job on an older Southern Illinois house?
Should I fix things before I list, or let the buyer ask for credits?
Is fall a bad time to list a house here?
📱 Got a Question About Your House? Text Greg.
Not sure whether something on this list is worth fixing before you sell? Text Greg Holthaus directly — just tell him you saw his blog. He’ll give you a straight answer, match you with the right broker for your situation, and tell you honestly if the answer is “leave it alone.”
Text Greg · 618.925.8654
Who is Greg Holthaus?
Greg Holthaus is the Owner and Designated Managing Broker of Southern Illinois Realty Experts, with 25+ years in Southern Illinois real estate and more than 10,000 transactions closed. He leads a full-service operation — home sales, mortgage, title, and property management under one roof — with offices in Marion, Herrin, and Carbondale. Meet Greg ›
About this post: General home-maintenance and pre-listing guidance based on 25+ years of listing and inspecting homes across Southern Illinois. It is not a substitute for a professional home inspection, an HVAC or roofing evaluation, or any manufacturer’s service instructions — and nothing here is a guarantee of sale price, time on market, or inspection outcome. First-freeze timing is typical for our area and varies year to year. The Carterville build-year figures are from our own September 11, 2026 post and reflect active listings in ZIP 62918 as of that date. Anything involving gas appliances, electrical work, or getting on a roof should go to a licensed contractor. Want a specific read on your house? Ask us for a Comparative Market Analysis and we’ll walk through what actually moves the number for your address.