Easy Ways To Increase Your Home’s Value

Curb Appeal

The inside of your house might be stunning, but if your yard and grounds are looking a bit shabby, potential buyers will drive right past your house. Worse yet, coming home every day to a “meh” exterior is depressing. Fixing up the grounds is a relatively inexpensive way to add value to your home for resale and it’s a great morale boost for you as well.

Trees and Shrubs

Do you have overgrown shrubbery in your front yard? Trim and shape it so it looks groomed and maintained. If it is completely obscuring the front of your house, you might want to dig it out and replace it with some low ground cover. Not only will this give your house an instant face lift, but it will also remove a potential hiding place for burglars as well as critters.

Flower Gardens

Every spring, home improvement stores are packed to the gills with homeowners buying pretty flowers to plant around the front of their homes. By summer, however, many of those same homeowners have forgotten all about the maintenance of their gardens. Leggy, rangy flowers start to spill over into the lawn and look scraggly. Weeds run rampant, and what started out as a pretty landscape is now a hot mess. It costs exactly zero dollars to get out there and pull up those weeds, cut back the overgrown plants, snip off the spent flowers to allow for new blooms and generally clean things up.

Interior Upgrades

Fixing up the inside of the house is much more expensive than working on the outside, but it can be a great way to significantly increase your home’s value. If you’re just looking for a sprucing up, pick any room you’d like or whichever room’s updating will fit your budget. If you’re preparing to sell, kitchens and bathrooms (which are the most expensive updates) will have the greatest impact on the value of your home. A beautiful kitchen or a luxurious master bathroom will be remembered by any potential buyer who tours your home. Be forewarned, a bathroom remodel can set you back 10% of your home’s value and a kitchen can be twice as costly. Of course, you’ll recoup most if not all of that in increased resale value, particularly if the existing room is outdated or in need of repair.

Exterior Cleaning

The front of your house gets dirty. Cobwebs, bird droppings, tree sap, leaves, dirt and debris all attach themselves to the exterior of your house. Get out your garden hose and give the whole house a good dousing. You’ll be surprised at how much better it looks. If your house is brick, you may want to rent a pressure washer.

Bathroom Update

If you can’t do the entire room, an updated bathtub or shower enclosure will give you the most bang for your buck. If your shower door is clouded with hard water stains or your tile grout is looking a bit sorry, it makes the whole room look sad. There are many options for bath or shower replacement.

Companies like Bath Fitter can come in and put a new tub or shower right over your existing unit. This is inexpensive and quick, but there are drawbacks. Since you’re keeping your current enclosure but hiding it under a new facade, if there is mold or mildew under there, or if the drywall underneath the enclosure is wet, moldy, or damaged, that damage isn’t being taken out. It’ll still be there, lurking in the background.

Most of the “big box” home improvement stores such as Lowe’s and Home Depot sell tubs and showers and can recommend an installer. The installer will remove the old unit, repair or replace any damaged drywall and install the new enclosure in a couple of days.

Kitchen Overhaul

The biggest impact would come from replacing cabinets, since that is the first thing you see when you walk into the room. Of course, this is also the most expensive single item. If you plan to do just this one element of the room, remember that the installation cost is going to be about the same whether you buy an inexpensive product or something that costs more. You’re probably only going to do this once, and it is a huge piece of the value of your home, so don’t skimp here. Buy nice cabinetry.

If you can do it, replacing countertop and backsplash would be a good investment. If your appliances are in good shape, there’s no need to replace them just for the sake of replacing them, but if they’re on their last legs, replace them with something that matches your new look.

Getting ready in a shiny new bathroom, coming home to a pretty exterior, and cooking dinner in a brand new, fresh kitchen will elevate your mood and give you a new appreciation for the home you’re in, and it’ll give potential buyers a new appreciation for the property as well.