Household Tips

Three ways that you can add the most value to your home.

Monday, December 03, 2012

If you decide to list your home, you’ll want to ensure that it fetches as much as possible, so I’ve put together a list of three ways that you can add the most value to your home.

That said, you don’t need to be planning to list your home immediately to get great value out of these improvements. They’re high-value improvements precisely because of how much they enhance the lifestyle of whoever lives in the home, whether it’s you or someone else!

So, without further ado, here are three great ways to add value to your home.

1. A Fresh Coat of Paint

There’s a reason why the term “a fresh coat of paint” has become an idiom for making something older look fresh and new. Painting the interior of a house, whether to turn a dark space into a calming neutral interior or to make a splash with an accent wall, is at once the quickest, cheapest, and one of the best ways to add immediate value to your home. It’s such a good value-add that most agents will suggest it as a matter of course. This is also a good tactic if you have limited funds for improvement or limited time before you have to sell your home: in marketing-speak, this is the highest ROI (return on investment) you can possibly do.

2. Finishing an Unfinished Basement

Making a dank, rough-walled basement into a bright playroom for the kids or a music studio, home gym or wine cellar for the grown-ups is a great way to add style and square footage all at once. It can be a bit of an expensive proposition, but even a basic renovation that includes “roughing-in” a kitchen or bathroom (that is, putting the necessary connections in place without installing fixtures) can add major value to a home, especially for buyers who wish to put in custom fixtures, rent out the basement for extra income or have a live-in nanny.

3. Bathroom and Kitchen Renovations

These are also expensive, ranging from $5,000 for the most basic bathroom renovation to $30,000 and up for a kitchen gut and rebuild. However, they also have the potential to provide enormous returns in the sale price of your home, especially if the current kitchen and/or bathrooms are significantly older and/or if the fixtures have aged. Plus, a brand new kitchen or bathroom is a wonderful thing to do for yourself, even if you aren’t planning on listing anytime soon.

 

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