Is Lawn Care Service Worth The Money In The Long Run?

When you own a house, you have to choose whether to do DIY jobs or hire a professional for a variety of situations. One such job is lawn care. You might need to buy a mower, figure out how to fertilize, and determine how much water you need to maintain your yard. For some people, doing DIY mowing and yard care is a relaxing endeavor. Others want nothing to do with it and prefer to choose the right lawn care company for the yard.

If you're having difficulty deciding between the two options, consider breaking it down from a financial standpoint. Is hiring a lawn care service worth the money? The average total lawn care cost per month is about $300. You might prefer to spend that money on something else, making DIY yard care more appealing.

As another consideration that's a little tougher to calculate, how much is your time worth? Do you want to spend your time away from your regular job working on the lawn? One estimate says the average person spends about 70 hours per year caring for lawns and landscaping. If you find it a relaxing task, you probably don't mind the time required. If you resent having to mow and fertilize, it might be because you have other hobbies you would prefer to spend your time doing, making the cost of paying a professional well worth it.

If you prefer focusing on the hard numbers when comparing DIY yard care and lawn services, we collected some average costs. Lawn mowing services can cost up to $200 per month, depending on the size of your yard. Over six months, the cost will exceed $1,000. For a DIY job, you might buy one of the top-rated self-propelled lawn mowers. You can expect an initial outlay between about $200 and $2,000. Based on those numbers, the cost of hiring a pro to mow for one growing season would roughly equal the price of purchasing a new mower. Of course, that doesn't take into account the time you spend mowing.

The cost of fertilizer and weed treatments can be as low as $50 per treatment and as high as almost $300 per treatment. Buying your own bag of weed-and-feed fertilizer costs $25 to $75, but you'd also need to buy a spreader, which is about $50 for a walk-behind model. You can expect to need four to six different treatments per year, depending on the length of your growing season. Seek some quotes locally for these treatments to see if it's cost-effective to hire a service.

If you want to hire a pro to do lawn aeration in the autumn, it costs about $150 on average. You could rent an aerator for about $100 per day or buy a power machine for around $3,900. If your local lawn care service gives you a reasonable quote for aeration, hiring a service would probably be a good value.

When you have a beautiful lawn, it can increase the property value and curb appeal of your home. Among members of the National Association of Realtors (NAR), 97% say curb appeal plays a key role in attracting buyers to a home for sale. The memorable first impression that a lush lawn and beautiful landscaping provide could increase property value by 15% to 20%. That's a significant benefit. With an average home in the United States selling for about $500,000 right now, having a poor-looking lawn could cost you around $75,000 while attracting fewer potential buyers.

Even if you have no plans to sell your house right now, you can't make a great lawn instantly appear on the future day that you decide to sell. Transforming a yard that is in poor shape could take as long as 18 months, especially if the soil quality is poor. For a lawn that just needs a few improvements to deliver the desired curb appeal, it could still be a 9-to-12-month process. Laying sod is an option to make the process go faster, but that will cost around $2,000 for an average-sized yard. Even sod can take six weeks of focused care to root solidly in the ground, so it's not an entirely instant process, either. Rather than risking needing to suddenly sell your home with a poor-looking lawn, it might be worth it to pay a yard care company to continue keeping the lawn looking great.

When trying to calculate whether it's worth hiring a professional lawn care company, you have to consider some of the less obvious costs of doing the work yourself. For example, when you're operating a lawn mower that you own, you will have ongoing operational costs in addition to the price to purchase the equipment. For a gas-powered mower, you might pay about $2.20 in gas for an average-sized yard. If you mow your lawn once a week in an area with an 8-month, April-to-November growing season, you might mow 30 to 35 times, which could cost $66 to $77 in gas. Gas mowers also require annual maintenance like oil changes and air filter replacements, which might cost another $50.

You might pay around $0.52 in electricity each time you use a battery-powered mower. For the April-to-November growing season, you might spend only $15 to $18 for electricity. But you'll eventually have to purchase new batteries, which last about three years. A new 40V lawn mower battery might cost around $200.

Some other hidden costs include errors made during DIY work. If you make a mistake when applying fertilizer or mow too tightly to the ground, it could cost you $300 to $900 to fix the damage caused. DIY lawn work might result in hidden medical costs, too, as the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) estimates 230,000 people need emergency care each year from lawn-care-related injuries. Hiring a lawn care company lets it take on the risks of hidden costs.