When you decide to put your home on the market, you’re looking to get the maximum value for your house.
The average home value in America is $231,000, and one of the best ways to do increase that price is to increase the square footage, as, in the real estate business, square footage is king. However, there are other ways in which you can increase the value of your home, in simpler ways than you may have thought was even possible.
From installing solar panels to make your home greener to doing basic fixer-upper projects around your home, if you take the following steps, you’ll be able to raise the value of your home without (somewhat) breaking a sweat.
Bring a Realtor in and Inspect Your Home
Before you engage in other tips that will give your home value a boost, you should first inspect your home to see what changes you should make.
Two people who will be experts at how the value of your house can be boosted is a realtor and an interior designer. In the case of realtors, most will inspect a home out of courtesy, especially if you’re planning on listing your home. However, with designers, you will, more often than not, have to pay a consulting fee for them to come in and see what kind of changes you need to make. Fortunately, designer consulting fees don’t normally cost that much, only around $100.
Still, for some homeowners who are on a budget, that may be a tad bit much to pay for someone to come and look at your home. So, you can take a house tour on your own to see what could bring in extra value to your home.
Give Your Exterior a Fresh Coat
Before a potential homebuyer visits the inside of your home, they’ll first see the outside.
As the old saying goes, first impressions make the best impressions, and if the first impression a potential homebuyer sees is chipped paint on the side of a house, that could easily drive down the value of your home. One should never underestimate what a fresh coat of paint can do to a home, as that coat can revitalize a home and tick its value up.
Re-painting your home is one of the easiest do-it-yourself projects and homeowner can do as you can hit up a home improvement store, buy a couple of gallons of paint, and put a fresh coat on your home. If you’re not the do-it-yourself type, there are plenty of contractors you can hire that specializes in residential painting that can make your home look new.
Do the High Maintenance Repairs Before Listing
If there is one thing that scares away potential homeowners, it’s a house that needs a lot of high maintenance done to it.
When we say high maintenance, we’re talking about roofing repairs, fixes to the water heater, things that will require some cash to repair, and maintenance. Selling a home that needs high maintenance will drive down the value of a home, so before you plan to put your house on the market, make sure that those repairs are done so that it won’t fall on a new homeowner.
By getting those repairs out of the way, you can leave the low maintenance tasks to the potential new homeowner and raise the value of your house, which is a win-win for you.
Retrofit The Lighting
While a dim house may be perfect for you, it doesn’t help in home values. Potential buyers want a bright home, and they don’t particularly like to invest in dim houses. So to up the value of your home, retrofit the lighting within the house. With electrical replacement, you can give your home a fresh, bright look that will be attractive to buyers and will command a higher asking price.
Invest In A Generator
You never know when your house is going to lose power during inclement weather.
If you live in a part of the country that frequently is nailed with inclement weather such as snowstorms and thunderstorms, you are fully aware that power outages are a way of life. To mitigate this threat, people invest in generators that will power the basic power needs of a home before the main electrical grid comes back online. If this is you, then you should strongly invest in a generator that will mitigate having the power go out at inclement times. Not only that, but you can raise the value of your house by having a built-in generator at your home.
There are plenty of generator installers in every market that will make you a good deal on a generator unit that will keep the home powered up when the rest of the neighborhood goes dark. It’s one of the great amenities to have.
Install Solar Panels
Whether you believe in it or not, climate change is affecting the world, which has changed the way home builders construct homes and how homeowners obtain their power.
Solar energy is quickly gaining popularity these days as a cleaner source of power for homes. Granted, not every area of America has warmed up to solar energy. If you live in the Midwest or the Northeast, gloomy winters can present a challenge for solar energy homes. But in sunnier climates like California, Arizona, and other temperate states, homeowners should seriously look into installing solar panels that will raise the value of your house and put the home on a path to reducing its carbon footprint.
Tightening Up The Air Quality Inside Your Home
A lot of homeowners overlook how much air quality plays a factor in the value of a home.
Not only does outdoor air quality play a factor, but the air inside your home can affect home values. You should consider calling in a professional contractor to come in and test the air quality in your home and if it’s a bit poor, there are simple ways you can remedy the problem, like replacing your home with products that are friendlier to the environment or switching out your old carpet with tile or laminated floors.
Cleaning up the air quality within your home will increase your home value and will be an added incentive for potential homebuyers to check out your house.
Upgrade The Appliances
Your 15-year-old stove may still work like a charm, but it doesn’t attract modern-day homebuyers.
The same goes for your aging refrigerator and other appliances that, although still working, is not appealing to homebuyers. As much as you love your appliances, if you’re putting your home on the market, consider upgrading your appliances that can feature as added amenities to your home and raise its value.
Upgrading appliances isn’t just for your kitchen. You should also consider upgrading your HVAC systems as well so that your house will have a modern air conditioning and heating unit that won’t pose a problem for potential homebuyers down the road.
Give Yoru Cabinets A Nice Facelift
A lot of times, it’s the little things that will give your home an added boost in value.
One such “little thing” is your kitchen cabinets. That’s right, cabinet refacing can add some value to your home. Although you may not see your cabinets as needed a facelift, potential homeowners may think differently, which would require you to invest in such a facelift. Just this one little thing could add some value to your home.
Keep Your Roof In Good Shape
As we mentioned earlier, it would be great if you could take care of the high maintained issues before putting your home on the market, and nothing is more high maintenance than your roof.
Nothing damages the value of a home more than roof issues, and you don’t want to offload those issues onto a potential new buyer. So, before you list your home, make sure that you contact a contractor to do basic roof repair to ensure that it will be stable and suitable for a new buyer. Not only will a repaired roof be an eye-catcher for potential buyers, but it will also add some value to your home.
Maintain The Plumbing System
This is another high maintained issue that will work in your favor if you address it before putting your home up for sale.
No potential homebuyer wants to purchase a home with plumbing issues unless they’re buying a fixer-upper, so make sure that the plumbing is maintained and repaired so that it will be a high-water mark for your house value. No new homeowner wants to kick things off dealing with polluted water in their pipes, and neither do you if you want to maintain your home value.
Boost Your Curb Appeal
In addition to seeing a fresh coat of paint on the home, another thing that potential homeowners will see is how the landscape looks around your home.
Having curb appeal is very important for people who are looking to sell their homes, but you can boost your curb appeal to make your home stand out even more, and in the process, raise the value of your house. Part of what makes curb appeal appealing is making sure your lawn is looking nice and trimmed. Next, make sure that there isn’t any trash around your home. Use a residential trash removal service to haul off any trash at your home.
Making sure that your home is looking nice on the outside will bring the value up on your house and could even command a higher asking price for it.
Increase Your Space
If there is one thing that truly impacts home values, it’s square footage.
The bigger the square footage, the more you will be able to get for your home. Take a tour of your house to see where you can make a difference in the square footage of your home. You don’t have to make room in the common areas of your home to make it look bigger. If you clean out your basement, that’s adding square footage to the home. Or, maybe you can build that deck you always wanted? That will add square footage to the home.
Just those odds-and-ends will add on square footage to your home, not to mention cleaning out some clutter that you may have. Increasing the square footage of your home will increase the value of your house.
Make Your Home Smarter
You may think that, if you live in an older home, you won’t be able to make subtle upgrades to the technology of your home. Well, you actually can!
We discussed this in part earlier, but you can buy appliances and other gadgets that will make your home smarter. In addition to adding smart kitchen appliances, you can make your thermostat smarter, and upgrade the smoke detectors and door locks. Also, you can add to the security of your home by installing smart security cameras and lighting. Those additions will make your home more valuable and will command a higher asking price once you put your home on the market if that’s the end goal.
To sum things up, there are a lot of ways you can add to your home value. Even if you’re not planning on selling your home at the moment, increasing the value of your home will be a win-win for the future. The best part is that you don’t have to spend an arm-and-a-leg to increase the value of your home.
Make your home more attractive by re-painting your house and improving the curb appeal around it. If you are planning on putting your house on the market, make sure that potential homebuyers are buying a home that doesn’t have a lot of high maintenance issues such as roofing and plumbing issues.
Make your home more efficient by replacing and upgrading your home’s lighting fixtures and the way your home consumes electricity. Make your home bigger by increasing the square footage of your home, and make it smarter by upgrading the appliances and other home technology.
By following these simple steps, you will be able to increase the value of your home and get an offer that will leave you secured for the future.
