Sponsored by
How Jennifer Aniston’s LolaVie brand grew sales 40% with CTV ads
The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Aniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.
April is the cruelest month for homeowners who weren't paying attention in March.
The snow is gone, the inspection windows are open, and contractors — who were slow in February — are now booked three weeks out and charging accordingly. Every week you delay a preventive task is a week closer to paying a reactive repair price, and in New York City, reactive repair prices are not gentle.
This isn't a scare piece. It's a checklist. Work through it this weekend.
What April Actually Demands From NYC Homeowners
New York homes have specific maintenance patterns that don't match what you'll find in generic homeownership guides written for suburban ranch houses in the Midwest. Brownstones have masonry concerns. Pre-war co-ops have boiler and steam heat systems that require annual attention. Attached homes in Queens and Brooklyn share walls, which means a neighbor's deferred maintenance can become your water damage problem.
The city also has regulatory requirements that most homeowners aren't tracking — Local Law compliance deadlines, permit requirements for any exterior work, DEP rules for certain plumbing modifications. Missing these doesn't just cost money. It creates violations on your record that complicate sales, refinances, and insurance claims.
Here's what needs to happen in April.
HVAC: Do This First
If you have central air or a split-system, your filters need to be changed before you run the system for the first time this season. Running a forced-air system through a clogged filter doesn't just reduce efficiency — it strains the motor, accelerates wear, and in some configurations, can overheat the unit before July even arrives.
Window units and through-wall ACs need to come out of storage, have their filters cleaned or replaced, and ideally be checked for refrigerant — a task that takes an HVAC tech about 20 minutes and costs far less than an emergency replacement in August.
If you have a boiler (common in pre-war Brooklyn and Queens homes), your annual boiler service should have happened before heating season ended. If it didn't, schedule it now. Boiler techs are less busy in spring than fall, pricing is better, and you want any issues identified before you need heat again in October.
Exterior Inspection: Walk the Perimeter
This takes 30 minutes and can save you thousands.
Walk the outside of your building and look for:
Caulking failures around windows and doors. Cracked or missing caulk around window frames is one of the top sources of water infiltration in NYC brownstones. It's a $20 fix with a caulking gun. Left alone, it becomes a $2,000 water damage repair when the next heavy rain hits.
Masonry cracks. Small hairline cracks in brick or mortar are often cosmetic. Cracks wider than 1/8 inch, especially diagonal or horizontal ones near the foundation or window lintels, can signal structural movement. Get a mason to look at anything you're not sure about before it gets worse through freeze-thaw cycles next winter.
Gutters and downspouts. Last fall's debris has been sitting in your gutters all winter. Blocked gutters overflow against the fascia and foundation — the exact spots where water damage is most expensive. Clean them now. If your downspouts drain near the foundation, make sure the extension is directing water at least 6 feet away from the house.
Roof condition. You don't need to get on the roof. Binoculars from the sidewalk or a quick look from a top-floor window will show you if any shingles are missing, curling, or damaged. Flat roofs — common on rowhouses and attached homes throughout the boroughs — should have any ponding water areas inspected for membrane integrity.
Interior: What Winter Did to Your Home
The heating season is hard on interior materials.
Smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. NYC requires CO detectors within 15 feet of every sleeping area. Test them all in April. Replace batteries. Units older than 7 years (CO detectors) or 10 years (smoke detectors) should be replaced entirely — the sensors degrade over time.
Check your basement or lowest level for moisture. Snowmelt and spring rain are the primary drivers of basement water infiltration. Walk the perimeter walls and look for efflorescence (white mineral deposits — a sign water has passed through the wall), damp spots, or actual standing water. Catch a moisture problem in April; pay to remediate it in April. Miss it until July; pay mold remediation costs in July on top of the water work.
Plumbing. If you have any outdoor hose bibs, they should have been shut off and drained before winter. Now's the time to turn them back on carefully and check for cracks or leaks from freeze damage. Inside, check under sinks for any slow drips that may have developed or worsened over winter.
The Part Most Homeowners Skip: Tracking What You Did
Here's where most NYC homeowners fall down.
They do the work. They replace the filter, call the boiler tech, fix the caulking. And then six months later, they can't remember when the boiler was last serviced, whether the roof was inspected this year or last year, or when they replaced the smoke detectors. Come time to sell, that uncertainty creates problems — buyers' attorneys ask about maintenance records, and "I think we had it done a couple years ago" is not an answer that inspires confidence.
This is the problem HomeZada was built to solve. It's a home management platform that lets you track every maintenance task, service record, appliance warranty, contractor contact, and home improvement project in one place — attached to your specific property.
For NYC homeowners especially, the home inventory feature is underrated. If you have a co-op or condo, documenting what's inside the unit (appliances, fixtures, improvements you made) creates a record that matters for insurance claims and disputes about what was there when you moved in versus what the building is responsible for.
The platform also sends maintenance reminders based on your home's profile — so instead of relying on memory to know that the boiler needs annual service or the water heater has a 10-year lifespan, the system tracks it for you.
At the price point HomeZada charges, it costs less than one hour of plumber time. For a city where that plumber is billing $175 an hour minimum just to show up, the math is not complicated.
The Seasonal Window Is Short
Contractors in New York are busy from April through October. The window where you can call someone, get a fair price, and have the work done in a reasonable timeframe is roughly April and May. After Memorial Day, you're competing with every other homeowner who procrastinated, and pricing reflects it.
Do the exterior walkthrough this weekend. Schedule the HVAC checkup next week. Get the gutters cleaned before the first big spring rain.
April is free to maintain your home. May is when you start paying a premium.
The Metro Intel covers NYC homeownership, real estate, and local business. Subscribe at themetrointel.com.