subject: Increase The Value Of Your Home [print this page] Maintaining your home is necessary to retain its value and comfort. Improving your home is taking the maintenance a step further to increase the value, and create a more livable space for your and your family. This article outlines six simple ways to make those additional improvements.
Whether you're talking about a vegetable garden in the back yard, a flower bed in the front yard, landscaped bushes around the perimeter, or all of the above, a well manicured lawn is a great selling feature for anyone out there. When an appraiser comes by to gauge the value of your home, having landscaped property stands out in a big way.
You might not think too much about it, but having fresh paint on the walls and some attractive window dressings can add around ten thousand dollars worth of value to the home. If you spent a few hundred dollars and took a weekend to just freshen some things up, you could be making that money back tenfold or more.
This is something a lot of new homeowners are looking for, and an appraiser is going to notice this and make the necessary adjustments. If you have a large basement, for example, you should put it to use. People aren't only looking for places to put a big-screen TV or a pool table. If you had a separate laundry room, a living area, a bathroom, a bar, etc, in your basement, you are talking about a huge uptick in the price of your home.
Any savvy homebuyer out there is always looking for a home with new windows. They're not only looking for windows that are new and cosmetically appealing, but they also want energy-saving, noise-reducing windows that improve the overall functionality of the home. A little money spent in this department goes a long way.
You can add one of a few different types of conservatory to your home for a small investment. A conservatory could be a greenhouse, a sunroom or a solarium. It doesn't cost a whole lot of money to create the framing and then subsequently place the glass windows in, but the value for this enclosure once finished is far greater than the sum of its parts.
Homebuyers today are looking for sleek, modern kitchens with stainless steel appliances and plenty of counter space. They're also looking for bright kitchens, so think about letting in some more natural light or adding some accent lighting around the room. This might be a larger investment than other improvements, but a kitchen can pay off the most.
Families buy homes at a far greater rate than single people, and families are always in need of an extra bathroom. If you have any large closet, a basement, extra dining area, etc, you can turn this into a bathroom with a moderate investment. You should never eliminate an entire bedroom to do it, but if you have any room at all, you should think about adding a bathroom.
It's not hard at all to add value to your home through home improvements. Of course, you will always have to make a financial investment, but when someone's ready to purchase your home, you will get this money back and then some.
