r/homeowners: rules, karma requirements and posting culture

Who posts here

Posts open with lines like "new homeowner here" and ask what a hole, a stain or a noise is. Replies explain without talking down: where to put the meter leads, how to test a leak with a garden hose, which stripper to use on old paint. A question pitched below the level barely exists here. The people who know the trade answer the people who do not.

• First-time buyers in their first year, finding out what the inspection missed.
• Owners of older houses dealing with water, foundations, mould and failing appliances.
• People in a dispute with a contractor or a neighbour who want to know if they are being reasonable.
• Tradespeople and experienced DIYers, including former inspectors and energy auditors, who do most of the answering.
• Owners venting about regret, upkeep, or a house on a busy road.

Karma and account requirements

What it takes to get a post through in r/homeowners.

What you can post

What happens to a new post

Where the most recent posts ended up. Sample size: 400.

• Stayed up91%
• Removed by Reddit's filters3%
• Removed by moderators5%
• Deleted by the author2%

Reddit counts a removal by the subreddit's own AutoModerator rules as a moderator removal, so that share is not all human. Held by AutoModerator means the post is waiting in the mod queue.

What happened when we posted here

We have posted here ourselves. This is how our own posts and comments fared.

Stayed up

100%

Removed by Reddit's filters

0%

Removed by moderators

0%

Period

January 2026 to August 2026

The rules, in the mods' words

1. 1

   No Promotional Content (Spam)

   No promotional content, ever.

2. 2

   No surveys

   No surveys

3. 3

   Do not advise others to commit crimes

   Don't encourage others to break the law. Insurance fraud; animal abuse; harrassment; etc.

These are the rules as archived in January 2025. Rules change. Check the sidebar before you post.

The culture

r/homeowners is where people bring the problem they just found in their house. The typical post is a photo or a paragraph of about 110 words: here is the thing, here is what I have tried, how bad is it and who do I call. It runs at around 37 posts a day and a typical post gets nine comments.

The subjects are what you would expect. Water is the big one: basements, sump pumps, roofs, leaks around chimneys, mould. Then foundations, pests, contractors and neighbours. The posts that go widest are not repair questions at all. They are small stories of owning a house: lights the new owner cannot switch off, a previous owner turning up at the door, an anonymous letter from next door. The top one in our data passed 3,600 points and 400 comments.

There is no real fault line, just a steady split between people who say call a professional and people who say you can do this yourself for the price of a tube of sealant. Neighbour and contractor threads get heated because everybody has a story. The rules are three lines long and one of them exists to stop people advising each other to commit insurance fraud.

What lands

• A photo of something odd in the house with a short, specific question. Mystery fixtures and "what is this" posts draw a crowd.
• A new-owner story with a bit of humour, like inheriting built-in holiday lights with no visible controls.
• A contractor or neighbour dispute laid out with the facts: what was agreed, what was paid, what happened.
• An honest feelings post, such as missing renting or disliking the house a year in. These get dozens of replies.
• A foundation or water worry with clear pictures. One post about a slightly bowed foundation wall drew over 250 comments.

What gets removed or ignored

• Posts from accounts with too little karma or too little age. AutoModerator says so in the removal comment. Moderators removed about 5% of our sample, and the ordinary help questions among them were probably caught this way.
• Promotional posts dressed as tips. Removed examples include a post about finding new customers and a maintenance "tip" that read like the lead-in to a tool.
• Link posts, such as a daily real estate round-up. The link type is turned off.
• Surveys, which have their own rule.
• Posts or comments linking a business or product when nobody asked for a recommendation.

The unwritten rules

• Say where you are and how old the house is. Climate, region and build year change the answer, and good posts lead with them.
• Post the photo. Nearly half of posts are images, and a described crack gets guesses where a pictured crack gets answers.
• Check the new queue after you post. The sidebar admits good posts get caught in the spam filter and asks you to message the mods if yours does not appear.
• Product names are fine inside an answer. People name the paint stripper or the dehumidifier they used. Only about 3% of comments carry a link.
• Expect short, practical replies, around 21 words, and some disagreement between them. Nobody will write you a full repair plan.

Self-promotion

The rule is five words: no promotional content, ever. The sidebar spells it out. The subreddit is not for promotion, self or otherwise, and any post or comment with a link to a business or product that is not a direct answer to a question gets removed. In practice that is how it runs. Product names appear all the time inside genuine answers, and posts that exist to steer people to a service are among the few things moderators remove by hand. A contractor or a brand can take part by answering questions from experience. There is no tolerated way to post about what you sell.

How people write here

Typical post length

111 words

Typical title length

8 words

Titles phrased as a question

40%

Typical comment length

22 words

Comments that include a link

3%

Posts that carry a flair

55%

The regulars

The accounts that showed up most in our sample. Worth reading before you post: they set the tone, and they are usually the first to reply.

Top keywords

The words and phrases that show up far more often here than in other communities, from recent posts in r/homeowners.

• house 150 posts
• water 91 posts
• home 99 posts
• basement 41 posts
• yard 30 posts
• mold 26 posts
• replaced 31 posts
• sump 17 posts
• sump pump 16 posts
• foundation 28 posts
• pump 21 posts
• driveway 19 posts
• bought 44 posts
• rain 21 posts
• wall 38 posts
• backyard 16 posts
• garage 22 posts
• leak 23 posts
• roof 25 posts
• neighbors 16 posts
• door 27 posts
• wood 20 posts
• damage 28 posts
• homeowner 17 posts
• concrete 21 posts
• window 29 posts
• drywall 15 posts
• pipe 16 posts
• old 45 posts
• replace 26 posts
• hole 20 posts
• neighbor 15 posts
• floor 23 posts
• bathroom 22 posts
• drain 16 posts
• kitchen 23 posts
• crack 14 posts
• moved 33 posts
• shower 17 posts
• noticed 35 posts

Recurring topics: house, neighbor, advice, neighbors, water, home, roof, mold, new, hate.

Posts that did well

• My new house came with built in Christmas lights and I can’t find their controls or how to turn them off?!? It’s driving me crazy3.7k upvotes · 401 comments · 🏠 Exterior
• Previous owner stopped by….1.7k upvotes · 394 comments
• Anonymous Passive Aggressive Letter??767 upvotes · 764 comments · 😤 Vent / Rant
• My new approach to handling unsolicted home purchase offers...105 upvotes · 41 comments
• Inspector found slight bowing in foundation wall, how worried would you be?96 upvotes · 256 comments · 🧱 Foundation
• Concrete crack solutions19 upvotes · 34 comments · 🧱 Foundation
• Is it normal to hate the house after living here for 1 year?15 upvotes · 71 comments · 💬 General/Other
• Help me identify what these bugs are?11 upvotes · 33 comments

Growth

1. 20121.1k
2. 20133.1k
3. 20146.2k
4. 20159.4k
5. 201614k
6. 201727k
7. 201873k
8. 2023914k
9. 20242.4M
10. 20252.8M
11. 20263.1M

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Common questions