|
The ever revolving wheel of time has the heaviest hand in determining when properties are listed and sold. These instances tend to hover around life's biggest milestones of marriage, child birth, divorce and death. When you find your self in the midst of one these monumental steps, one tends to feel the pressure to get as much money as possible from the sale to help fuel the next step of life. So below are a few popular options from the last few years that have been proven to increase home value.
1) Replace/paint your garage door and front door. As you can imagine, replacing the garage door comes with a larger price tag, but it does create a more resounding affect. A common trend to improve curb appeal is painting the garage door and front door the same, bold color. Typically this tends to be a tertiary color that plays off both of the homes primary, & trim colors.
2) Remove or replace carpeting. If you're lucky, you'll have some pristine hardwood floors underneath, in which case your value just jumped up a notch. If you find yourself out of luck, you can simply have new carpet installed in place of the old, or upgrade to vinyl or wood floors. If you have older carpets, or pets, than I cannot recommend this idea enough.
3) Landscaping. At a bare minimum the grass should be cut the day before photos are taken and the rest of the yard weed whacked. Most homes have a flower bed or two on either side of the front door or under a window, and I think its well worth it to pay for a weekend of labor to have the beds cleaned up and dressed with fresh soil or bark. Then plant a handful of flowers or plants to add some color. If your property has a cool feature or two such as a pond, greenhouse, gazebo, or shed they should be cleaned up and brought back to life with as much elbow grease as possible.
4) Have your home inspected! This is the cheapest option with a pest inspection typically being around $300-$400 and a general home inspection being around $250-$350. One of the benefits of getting inspections before your property hits the market is that it signifies transparency to all interested buyers, and it promotes a bidding war as it removes any fear that a buyer may have about the homes condition. In addition, it gives you the owner, a realistic idea of your homes condition which will help to accurately focus expectations for the sales process.
Bonus - As you can see in the graphic above, adding stone veneer to the front face of the house and replacing old or damaged siding add a ton of value, but those tend to be more expensive projects. I'll go ahead and lump a fresh coat of paint in there as well, although it can be costly, it does greatly increase ones curb appeal, and in my experience, exterior paint is a better investment than interior paint.
| 
