The Best Ways to Increase the Value of Your Home
Buying a home is a massive investment, as we have covered in so many of our posts. The house (or houses) that you buy throughout your life will probably be the most expensive purchases that you will ever make, and you want to make sure that you make the absolute right decision as to which house to purchase.
With that being said, situations change. The home that you once thought was perfect might not be so perfect anymore. You may be in need of a bigger or smaller home, you may need to relocate to a new area, or you may simply wish to move on and live in a different space for no reason other than having a breath of fresh air. Whatever the reason may be, the reality is that there is a good chance you will wind up selling your home someday.
Your home is more than just a place to live; it is a major investment that can silently make a lot of money for you. The best part is that your house is likely to gain value without any effort on your part! Property values tend to trend upwards in most situations, making your home purchase act as an investment that can turn into an eventual gain.
While your home is likely to make money for you without any direct effort on your end, there are several things that you can do to actively increase the market value of your home. The steps outlined in this post are ways in which you can actively increase the market value of your home, based off of typical market behavior. While these things are not always going to turn your efforts into a positive return on investment, there is a very strong chance that they will. By implementing any of the suggestions below at any point during your homeownership, you enhance your own living experience within the home while also potentially enhancing your home’s future selling price.
1. Upgrade your appliances to meet in-demand features
Upgrading your appliances is one of the easiest things that you can do to add value to your home. This is because it is simply a matter of purchasing the new appliances and swapping them out for the ones that you currently have. Good appliances are not cheap and often you will require some time to actively save in order to afford them. However, once you have saved up the funds that are necessary to purchase the appliances, the hard work is done. Most major hardware stores offer delivery and installation services (often free) and the actual installation takes less than an hour. In addition to upgrading the appliances that you already have, consider adding new appliances to the mix as well. Dishwashers are often a huge selling point, and having one already installed takes the hassle off of the shoulders of the new homebuyer.
This is very favorable, because some of the other things on this list are projects that could take you or a contractor weeks or months to complete. Upgrading your appliances is a quick swap and, apart from the financial aspects, is one of the easiest things you can do to increase your home’s market value. The current in-demand finish for appliances is stainless steel, but black and white appliances have been in the spotlight before and will probably return at some point. Equally important to the finish of the appliances is the features that they offer, as ice makers, beverage drawers, and touchscreens on fridges are becoming much more standard, for example. Often, the professionals at major hardware stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot will be able to point you in the right direction when it comes to purchasing these major appliances.
2. Upgrade your flooring and wall coverings to stay in style
The old daisy wallpaper hanging in your living room used to be all the rage, but now it is considered to be past its heyday. Swapping outdated wall coverings (including almost all wallpapers) for a fresh covering of paint is another relatively easy way to increase your home’s market value. If you are hoping to sell your house soon, talk to your realtor about typical homebuyer preferences when it comes to paint colors. Often the advice is to stick to whites and eggshells, as they give all of the prospective homebuyers the most power to imagine the space as their own. Stripping old wallpaper can be a bit challenging sometimes, and painting a whole house may be daunting. Still, this task is one of the quicker ones on the list as it is a lot more straightforward for a contractor than some other jobs. If you do not want to do it yourself, all you need to do is select paint colors and pay a painter to come handle the rest for you. A professional painter can knock out several rooms per day, getting a small house done in less than a week.
Paint colors are not the only thing you should consider updating! Flooring is easy to give a facelift to as well. Carpet is very easy to replace – especially if you’ve had it replaced since the early 2000’s – and relatively inexpensive. Both the painting and the new flooring should cost less than a set of new kitchen appliances. Short- and medium-length carpets are usually a safe bet for most rooms when neutral colors are selected, and hard flooring is usually advisable for bathrooms and kitchens. There are many high-quality adhesive floorings on the market now that make for an affordable and stylish upgrade to your bathrooms and kitchen if you do not want to shell out for more expensive alternatives. Buyers love hard floors in the kitchen and bathrooms because they are much easier to clean, and softer floors in bedrooms and living spaces as they are more comfortable to walk on. Following this general rule of thumb will possibly lead to a higher selling price for your home.
3. Replace old energy sources with energy-efficient alternatives
This can be very simple or very complex, depending on how in-depth you want to go with it. The easiest thing you can do to address this point is upgrade the light fixtures throughout your home to be new, energy-efficient ones. New light fixtures are unbelievably more efficient than ones from even a decade ago, and they can save you a ton of money on your electric bill over time. This is great because it benefits you while you live in the house and eventually passes that benefit onto whoever buys it. Replacing light fixtures is usually a very easy task that does not require any kind of communication with a contractor, but you want to make sure you turn off the power to the wires you are using before you touch them!
On a more complex level, you can look to upgrade some other appliances to be more energy efficient. Washers and dryers are popular choices, as high efficiency models used shockingly less water than older models. Hot water heaters also get mentioned in this category. Replacing these larger appliances with more energy efficient models adds significant value to your home but costs more money (and possibly time) in the process. Whether you opt for just light fixtures or light fixtures and major appliances, switching to energy efficient alternatives is great for your wallet, great for the environment, and possibly great for the value of your home when it is time to sell!
4. Finish every unfinished space in your home (including that basement)
We wrote a post about the benefits of basements a few weeks back, but this one is easily the biggest value adder on the list. When you buy a home, there are usually some spaces that are unfinished and are not counted in the overall square footage. If you take the time to finish those spaces while living in the house, the sellable square footage goes up. More square feet means a higher selling price! Finishing a basement, especially, is a fantastic investment as it requires less time and money than a full addition while adding a similar amount of value.
Finishing your basement offers several advantages to you as a homeowner, too. Instead of using the space as storage, you can turn it into a kitchen, a guest suite, a living room, a man cave, or something else! Finishing a basement takes a lot more time than the other things on this list, but it also ends with the highest increase in your home price. If you are skilled at home improvement, this can be a great side project to work on in the evenings and on the weekends. If you are not naturally inclined when it comes to home improvement, asking a friend for help and learning from them as you go is a great experience, too!
5. Focus on enhancing your home’s external appearance
This is one that benefits you as a homeowner before benefitting any potential buyer. Giving your home’s exterior a facelift – either by upgrading the house’s actual exterior or the yard surrounding it – is a very easy way to make your house more appealing to you, to visitors, and to potential buyers. Some quick landscaping is enough to increase your own happiness levels, and potentially enough to convince someone to buy the house.
After all, the exterior of the house is the first thing that any potential buyer sees. Everyone talks about the importance of making a good first impression, and this is your opportunity to do so! Investing in having a pretty and clean yard, an attractive finish to the exterior of the house, and some thoughtful decorative pieces is a relatively easy job to do and could be the difference in someone’s mind when they are debating whether or not they should purchase your house.
6. Devote extra attention to upgrading your kitchen and bathrooms
There are three parts of a home that buyers tend to look at the most: kitchens, bathrooms, and closets. These spaces all tend to be smaller compared to other rooms in your home, meaning the changes and upgrades that you make will be much more visible than the upgrades you make in other spaces, like a bedroom. Taking the time to turn your kitchen into your dream kitchen is something that will be clearly visible when people come to take a look at your home. Upgrading all of the aspects of your master bathroom (and any other bathrooms, really) is something that will not go unnoticed.
After all, when you go on a tour of a home, do you spend any more than a minute in the non-master bedrooms? Of all of the spaces in your house, with the exception of finishing a basement, kitchens and bathrooms tend to offer the highest returns on your investment. Choosing to focus your time and money on those spaces is more likely to earn a higher selling price than devoting those resources to another space like a bedroom or living room.
At the end of the day, all of the points in this post are only able to do so much when it comes to actually raising the value of your home. While these things all tend to earn higher returns than some things that did not make this list, the ultimate truth is that the market fluctuates and there are very few certainties. Nobody can promise you that investing ten thousand dollars in a new kitchen will raise your home selling price by twelve thousand dollars. It may only increase it by three thousand dollars. For this reason, it is important to remember that you should upgrade your house for you, and not for anyone else. Do the things on this list that will make you happy, and hopefully in the long run you will recoup the costs that you incurred. After all, this is your home that we are talking about! Turn your home into the space that makes you the happiest, and hope that eventually that love and effort can make someone else happy, too.
Thank you for reading our post the best ways to increase the value of your home. Hopefully this post was effective and helpful and you feel a bit more knowledgeable about some of the best things you can do to ultimately raise your house’s selling price. Some of these ideas provide a higher return on investment than others, so the biggest takeaway from this post is to only invest in the upgrades that you will enjoy. Upgrade your home for yourself and just remember keep these bullet points in mind while you do it. Shelling out money to knock off every item on this list for no reason other than to increase your home’s value will probably leave you disappointed, as the returns on your investment may wind up negative. If you enjoyed this post and are looking for more tips about buying or selling a home, including facts about HOAs, ways to save money on your utility bills, and whether or not a realtor is really necessary, be sure to check out our other posts. Otherwise, thanks for reading and have a wonderful day!
If you visit Myrtle Beach or any other place in South Carolina and fall in love, we’re here to help. We at The Boyd Team are committed to helping you find the right property for your needs and dreams. Any question that you have about moving to the area and finding your dream home by the beach is our pleasure to answer. Feel free to send us an email at eddie@boydteam.com or text or call us at (843) 222-8566, and we will get back to you as soon as we can. Being true natives of the Grand Strand and Horry County and with over 25 years of experience in the local real estate market, whether buying or selling, we can help you make your dreams a reality.
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Written by Greg
