subject: How To Increase Your Home's Value On A Limited Budget [print this page] If you are going to put your home on the market, it is only logical to want to get as good a price on it as you can. Here are some measures you can undertake, particularly if you do not have the budget to hire exorbitantly-salaried decorators and restorers. Keep in mind that this article is not about home staging. Rather, these are the more fundamental improvements that you undertake before home staging. Home staging can be considered the icing on the cake. The measures in this article are the batter.
1. Update your light switches. Not necessarily the wiring, just the switches. This might be considered slightly deceptive, but it is not really illegal unless you use a three-prong switch on two-prong wiring. Old-fashioned or worn-looking switches may make people think that the wiring in your house is faulty, even if it is actually perfectly functional.
2. Do a little embellishing on corners and ceilings by adding cornices and trim. These are easy to find and fit to your house, especially if it happens to have been built in a common, prefabricated design. White trim on a pale overall wall background looks particularly eye-popping.
3. Get insulation done. This can help a buyer save on utilities. It can also reduce your own bills for the remaining time you have left in your own house. You can then market your residence as being both money-saving and environmentally friendly.
4. Do some research on upcoming construction projects in your area. If you find out that a new school, shopping center, clinic, etc, is going to be built, say so, and you will probably be able to push for a better price.
5. Pay attention to the flooring. If it looks worn, get it re-finished or even re-done. If you have a carpet, get some heavy-duty cleaning done, or even get it replaced just to be safe.
6. Show off your basement, especially if it is clean and does not flood or have other water-related problems. The attention paid to basements appears to be a recent development. In earlier decades, they did not add much value to a house. However, it is now normal for basements to be valued because they can be extra living rooms or even living space for more household members or pets.
7. Make absolutely sure that your house is not harboring dangerous "surprises" like hidden asbestos and/or fungus or mold. Such things can be a serious health hazard to buyers, particularly if the incoming family contains elderly people, infants, or individuals with respiratory problems. If you knew about this and sold the house anyway while keeping the problem a secret, you could get in serious trouble.
8. The rooms that people pay the most attention to are the kitchens and bathrooms. Extensive personalization of bedrooms is expected, but potential buyers will prefer to have a home where they do not have to strip out all the plumbing and kitchen appliances because they were in disrepair or out of date.
