Home upgrades can add square footage, make your home feel more spacious, improve curb appeal, and overall add market value to your home, especially when you are looking to rent your place and become a property manager. Today’s home buyers want ample space and numerous other features and upgrades that can make your house stand out. Here are home upgrades you can make to add value to your home.
Finish Your Basement
If your house has an unfinished basement, then you might lose out on a sale, even in a seller’s market. Unfinished basements are not only ugly, but they’re a waste of space because nobody wants to spend time in a dark, dreary hole in the ground. Most homebuyers prefer homes with basements for the additional square footage, which means having a basement, finished or unfinished, increases your home’s value. However, a finished basement can increase it even more with Alexandria Realtor Darren Robertson, stating that it’s not uncommon to achieve an ROI of 80% or more.
Take Down Some Walls
Every trend in the market right now is pointing to open floor plans. Having an open floor plan improves air circulation and can make a house appear larger. Not to mention, homes with this floor plan are better designed for families. As one parent cooks dinner in the kitchen, they can still be a part of the family fun in the living room.
Knocking out the right wall can increase your home’s value by making it seem larger to buyers who tour your home. An open floor plan allows for added natural light, which is something people are always looking for.
Before you decide to knock down a wall, it’s important to consult with a contractor to determine if you can. Some walls provide your home with structural integrity, so you couldn’t knock down any wall.
Make Your Lawn Healthy Again
If in recent years you haven’t been keeping up with your yard work and your lawn is looking a bit sad, it’s time to make it come alive. Curb appeal is important for almost all home buyers, and making sure your exterior looks good can increase your home’s worth. If you can’t figure out how to bring your lawn back to life, you can hire a professional to help you.
Become More Energy Efficient
A more energy-efficient home appeals to buyers because it means they’ll spend less on utilities in the long run. You can make your house more energy-efficient in several ways, such as:
- Low flow fixtures
- Energy-efficient appliances
- Energy-efficient windows
An Accessible Laundry Room
If possible, try moving your laundry room upstairs. Having a laundry machine and dryer in the basement makes no sense when all of your clothes are upstairs. Nobody likes walking up and down the stairs lugging their basket of clothes to do laundry every week. Therefore, with an accessible laundry room upstairs and an open basement, you can intrigue buyers who view the room as a luxury worth having.
Remodel Your Kitchen
The kitchen is one room many homebuyers will spend a lot of time in during the tour because it’s viewed as the heart of the home. For those who enjoy cooking, they’re going to want the best appliances and a beautiful space to cook in.
A kitchen remodel can add tens of thousands of dollars to your home’s value. However, you should never make your kitchen too fancy, especially if you’re not doing any work on the rest of the house. It should also fit with the neighborhood. If your kitchen is too fancy, your home value will be higher than your neighbor’s, which can make finding a buyer difficult.
Repaint Your Entire Home
If you purchased your home a few decades ago and haven’t repainted in a while, your paint choice may be out of style. Now, buyers are looking for modern-looking homes that consist of varieties of gray and white. If you have rooms that are bright fun colors, you might want to repaint before trying to sell your home to appeal to more buyers and drive the price of your home up.
Add a Bathroom
The more bathrooms your house has, the higher its value will be. If your home only has one bathroom, you can recoup your investment by adding a second bathroom. Finding room in your house for another bathroom can be difficult.
Take a look at your floor plan and determine whether or not you have underutilized spaces. You can consider things like closets or areas under the stairs. If your home doesn’t have enough space to add a full bathroom, you can consider adding a half-bath, which requires about 18 square feet. A full bath requires at least 30 square feet.
Add a Deck
A deck will always increase the value of your home, and perhaps help you sell your home fast if you’d like to do that in the future, because outdoor living spaces are desirable to buyers. If you make your deck and your yard more appealing to buyers, your house will be easier to sell for a higher price. The cost of adding a deck will vary depending on the size of the deck and the materials. Of course, you can save a huge chunk of change by doing the project yourself, but if you’re inexperienced and build a bad deck, your home value might plummet because buyers will see it as a project they’ll have to fix once they move in.
Get Storage
While this isn’t technically an upgrade to your home, it is an upgrade to the way you stage your home for viewings. Renting a storage unit will allow you to store some of the things that may make your house look cluttered. Cluttered homes look smaller, which will decrease what buyers are willing to pay. If you’re staging your home yourself, we suggest storing items you believe would be off-putting to buyers, these can be items you love but don’t match your current decor, and more.
Final Thoughts
There are many ways you can increase the value of your home, but you must take a look at your budget. If your budget doesn’t leave much room for any major renovation, start with the small stuff like gardening and painting to make your home look brand new.
