If you’re thinking of putting your home on the market in the near future, it’s only natural that you might be looking for improvements you can make that will make your home more appealing to potential buyers. But since home improvement projects can often be expensive, frustrating, and time consuming, you’ll want to make sure you’re putting your time, money, and energy into projects that will have the most impact. Here are a few types of home improvement projects that can be very effective in helping your home sell.
Basic Maintenance
One of the best places to start is by looking at the basics. Think of the things that, if you were looking for a new home yourself, you’d expect to be in good shape as a bare minimum. For most people, this includes things like the roof, windows, exterior doors, and flooring.
These are the sorts of things that you might not be able to ignore fixing. Unless someone is buying a property for the sole purpose of flipping it, nobody wants to walk into a home and immediately start thinking of how much it would cost to repair or replace something, especially when it’s something major like a roof repair. A leaky roof or rooms full of drafty, old windows can be an automatic deal breaker for many homebuyers. Taking care of problems with the roof, getting vinyl replacement windows, or replacing your doors can make your home significantly more attractive.
Even if the problem is something purely cosmetic, like wear and tear on flooring, replacing it will do a lot to make your home more appealing.
Exterior Improvements
As you research ideas for how to get your home ready to sell, you’ll inevitably see the term “curb appeal” used a lot -- and for good reason. Although we’re often told not to judge a book by its cover, a lot of home buyers will be hesitant to even consider a home that has old, worn-out siding or overgrown trees and shrubbery in the front yard, no matter how fantastic the interior is. If your home’s siding has seen better days, replacing it is a great way to help make sure your home makes a great first impression.
As far as gardening goes, you don’t have to hire a landscaper to plan out an elaborate garden for you. Simply making sure your lawn, trees, and shrubs are neatly trimmed and keeping a simple garden can do a lot to boost your home’s curb appeal. If you have a porch, make the most of it! A lot of people have a hard time resisting a nice, inviting-looking porch.
Kitchens and Bathrooms
Kitchens and bathrooms are two of the best areas of your home to put money into improving. Best of all, you probably won’t have to resort to knocking down walls or completely tearing out existing countertops and sinks to make these rooms more appealing. Actually, it’s often the mid-range improvements for kitchens and bathrooms that tend to have the best return on investment. With kitchens, for example, simply getting rid of old appliances in favor of new, energy efficient ones can help make a home buyer be willing to pay more. In the bathroom, doing basic things like replacing sink faucets, applying new caulking, and replacing other fixtures can make a potential homebuyer very happy.
More extensive kitchen and bathroom remodeling jobs tend to be most worthwhile if the rooms look very dated or have issues that can only be addressed by taking drastic measures. If you’re planning a big kitchen renovation, be careful to not go overboard. Unless you’re dealing with an upscale home in a very upper class neighborhood, going all out and turning it into a very high end kitchen might not have a very good return on investment because it could seem out of place with the rest of the home and other homes in the neighborhood.
