BE CAREFUL WITH THOSE IMPROVEMENTS

Oct 30th, 2009 by admin in Home Improvement, Staging Tips

In my last three blogs I discussed the top 20 ways to improve the value of your home. Now a couple things to consider before you do any improvement:

1)     Look at how long you are going to be in your home. Some improvements are imperative to make to get your home in sellable condition. Other improvements should only be made if you plan on being in your home for a while.

2)   Check out your Neighborhood. You never want to improve beyond the value of your neighborhood. Being the biggest or best house on the block is not the best thing for resale.

3)   Check out your Market. What is the current housing market in your area? Who is the potential buyer of your home when you do go to sell?

4)   Don’t design yourself into a corner by being too specific. You don’t want to limit who you can sell to. Personalize your home through paint and accessories that are easy to change rather than having to replace walls.

5)    Balance your style and area. Again, keep in mind what will sell in the future if you choose to do so?

If you are planning to make improvements and potentially sell in a shorter period of time, check out the statistics listed on my website on the return on your investment for certain improvements. It can be found at: http://roomswithstyle.com/reasons.html

If you have made any mistakes in your home improvements that you would like to share with others so they don’t make the same ones, please do so. What is your horror story in home improvements? Or, what was your biggest success? I’d love to hear.

In the next blog I am going to talk about MYTHS in home improvements.

2 Comments

  • Nice blog, Shar. Great tips. I am both a licensed contractor and a realtor, and I can tell you that very often my sellers want to do the things that they always wanted to do, and not necessarily what it will take to sell the house. :)

  • Shar, you hit the nail on the head. I so often see in my business, folks who over-improve their home for the market and then can’t understand why I can’t get them more money for their home than their neighbor. A specific neighborhood can only support certain price points. After that, your improvements are for your pleasure only.

    Your tip of factoring in how long you will live in a home is very important. My husband and I would love to remodel our master bath. We will be in this home at least 10 more years. If I remodel now, I will be out of date and need to remodel again when it’s time to sell. Either I remodel now and enjoy it for 10 years or I wait another 7 years and remodel then. With estimates of $25-35,000, we’ve decided that the yellowing floor is ok for us. It’s hidden up where only we see it and our goal is to make a profit on the house in the future. Remodeling twice would not be a good financial move. The home is just 15 years old and perfectly funtional…just not luxuriously pretty. I can live with functional for $30,000.
    Thanks for sharing your great ideas. They are always right on target.