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Understanding Your Home Health Score
Your Home Health Score is a simple 0-100 number that shows how your home is doing overall. Think of it like a wellness checkup for your house — it highlights what's in great shape, where you can make improvements, and what to focus on next.
The best part: your score improves as you take care of things. Every repair you complete, every system you maintain, moves the needle. It's a real-time picture of the progress you're making as a homeowner.
What the Ratings Mean
Your score translates to a plain-language rating so you always know where you stand:
| Score | Rating | What It Means |
|---|---|---|
| 90-100 | Well Maintained | Your home is in excellent shape. Keep doing what you're doing. |
| 75-89 | Good Shape | Things are looking solid. A few routine items to stay on top of. |
| 60-74 | Typical Wear | Normal wear and tear for a lived-in home. A handful of projects to plan for. |
| 40-59 | Needs Work | Some areas deserve attention. Tackling the top items will make a real difference. |
| 0-39 | Priority Items | A few things need your attention soon. The good news: addressing them will noticeably improve your score. |
Most homes land between 55 and 80 after an inspection. That's completely normal. The score isn't a grade — it's a starting point that shows you exactly where to focus your time and budget for the biggest impact.
How Your Score Is Calculated
Your home is made up of systems and components — roofing, plumbing, HVAC, electrical, and more. Each one is evaluated and grouped into categories. Every category gets its own score based on three things:
Condition
This is the most intuitive part. Each item your inspector looked at received a condition rating — Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor, or Failed. Condition makes up 40% of each category's score.
Here's what's encouraging: items that weren't called out as problems are assumed to be in good working order. Inspectors focus on documenting issues, so if your water heater didn't get flagged, it's treated as functioning well. Your score reflects the full picture of your home, not just the problem list.
Repair Needs
Active repairs and replacements make up 30% of each category's score. This dimension only looks at confirmed issues — things that are broken or failing and need to be fixed.
Routine maintenance tasks like changing filters or cleaning gutters don't count against your score. Neither do monitoring items or future improvements. Only actual deficiencies affect this part of your score, which means your score is measuring real issues, not your entire to-do list.
Here's where it gets rewarding: every time you complete a repair, your score improves. Mark a task as done and you'll see the change reflected. It's one of the most satisfying ways to watch your investment in your home pay off.
Remaining Lifespan
The final 30% looks at how much useful life remains in your systems. A newer water heater scores higher than one approaching the end of its expected lifespan — not because the older one is broken, but because planning ahead for replacements is part of smart homeownership.
This dimension is forward-looking. It helps you budget and plan so that replacements happen on your schedule, not as emergencies.
Why Some Categories Matter More
Not all parts of your home carry equal weight in the overall score — and that's by design. Your score prioritizes the systems that matter most to safety, structural integrity, and daily livability:
Structural, roofing, electrical, and plumbing carry the highest weight. These are the backbone of your home. Improvements here have the biggest impact on your score.
HVAC, safety systems, and well/septic are weighted above average because they directly affect your comfort and safety every day.
Appliances, interior finishes, and landscaping carry lower weight. They matter, but a cosmetic issue won't dominate your score.
This weighting means that when you invest in maintaining or repairing a critical system, you'll see a bigger score improvement than fixing something cosmetic. Your effort goes further where it matters most.
Your Score Reflects the Full Picture
Home inspections have a natural quirk: they focus on documenting problems. If your home has 20 windows and 2 had issues, the report mentions those 2. The other 18 are working perfectly but don't appear in the report.
Your Home Health Score accounts for this. Based on your home's size and layout, the system estimates how many items each category should have and assumes the undocumented ones are working well. This means your score reflects reality — a home where most things are working fine, with specific areas where you can make improvements.
How Your Score Improves Over Time
Your score updates automatically whenever something changes. The most common ways it improves:
Complete a repair or replacement. This is the single biggest score driver. When you finish a task and mark it done, that deficiency is removed from the calculation and your score goes up. Focus on tasks in high-weight categories (structural, roofing, electrical, plumbing) for the most visible improvement.
Update an item after work is done. Had a contractor replace your aging HVAC system? Update the item's condition and age. The new system will score well on both condition and remaining lifespan — a double boost.
Stay on top of maintenance. While routine maintenance tasks don't directly penalize your score, the systems they protect do. Changing your HVAC filter doesn't move the needle today, but it helps your HVAC system stay in Good condition rather than degrading to Fair — which absolutely does.
KotiCare tracks your score over time, so you can see your progress. Watching your home move from "Typical Wear" to "Good Shape" after a season of focused improvements is genuinely satisfying.
Making the Most of Your Score
Your Home Health Score is most valuable as a prioritization tool. Here's how to get the most from it:
Start with the biggest opportunities. Look at which categories are pulling your score down. A category rated "Needs Work" in a high-weight area like plumbing or roofing is your highest-impact target. Addressing it will move your overall score more than anything else.
Think in terms of progress, not perfection. You don't need to get to 100. Moving from 62 to 75 — from "Typical Wear" to "Good Shape" — might only take addressing 2-3 key items. That's a meaningful improvement in both your score and your home's real condition.
Use it for budgeting. The score helps you see where your money will have the most impact. A $2,000 repair on a critical system might improve your score more than $5,000 spent on cosmetic upgrades. That's useful information when you're deciding where to invest.
Watch the trend. A score that's gradually improving tells you your maintenance strategy is working. A score that's slowly declining is an early signal to revisit your plan — long before anything becomes urgent.
Your home is likely the biggest investment you'll make. Your Home Health Score gives you a clear, honest picture of how that investment is doing and a roadmap for protecting it. Every task you complete, every system you maintain, is building value — and your score is there to show you the progress.