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Have Your Home Inspected for the Hidden Projects
This first tip isn’t glamorous, but it is super important: You’re going to want to work with a pro to have your home inspected. Not all improvements you make to your real estate are going to be fun and cosmetic, some are just plain necessary: Consider for example that parts of your home may be water damaged and you don’t even know it unless it’s been inspected by a certified home inspection professional. Or maybe your home is missing some necessary insulation. Perhaps your plumbing needs replacement? But enough about that, onto the fun part:
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Increase Your Home’s Curb Appeal
This can mean a lot of things: New roof, new doors and windows, new mailbox, new house numbers, new paint, new driveway tile and garage doors, fresh front lawn, etc. We wrote in great detail about the various ways to increase your home’s curb appeal in a recent post you can read here.
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Paint Everything!
This is such a simple update whose importance cannot be overstated. When it doubt, put a coat of paint on it! Add curb appeal with a fresh coat of paint on your home’s exterior, and brighten up your interior with lighter, neutral shades that will help your home sell.
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Cut Costs & Help the Environment with Energy-Efficient Features
Find ways, from a design perspective, to lower energy costs– the home’s next buyers will thank you! There are a number of ways to achieve this such as: improving the home’s landscape architecture by planting some shade trees, installing solar roof panels, or new doors and windows that help maintain the home’s temperature. All of these options can significantly cut cooling costs and are so helpful for the environment as well. Win-win!
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Bathroom Updates
Even minimal updates to your bathrooms yield BIG returns for home sellers. Update toilets and tile, get rid of outdated wallpaper, faucets, and other hardware like drawer pulls, and replace with sleek, durable, modern upgrades. You may even want to consider ripping out bathtubs and instead building large, luxurious walk-in showers. Another quick upgrade is taking out your overhead lighting and installing attractive wall-mounted sconces on either side of the mirrors.
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Kitchen Updates
Ditto for kitchens! Whether or not you makeover your entire kitchen, upgrades to the space mean big returns on investment. The kitchen is the hearth of the home, so maximizing your home’s potential starts here. Upgrade appliances and cabinetry (sometimes all cabinets need is a few heavy-duty coats of paint and new hardware to look brand new!), flooring tile and backsplashes, and give lighting an upgrade.
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Get Rid of Carpet, Tile Instead!
Carpets are pesky to maintain and more often than not, dated. Op’t instead for tiling throughout your home. We frequently write about the benefits of tile flooring and how customizable all the options building materials for flooring are. A surefire way to increase your home’s value is with updates to its flooring materials. Learn more at this recent post about choosing flooring materials here.
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Create Visual Space
Adding on square footage to your home can be a great idea, but it can be prohibitive for a number of reasons, including costs or building restrictions, but there are other alternatives than can increase your home’s value. Create visual space by restructuring the existing home a bit: Consider knocking out a wall and opening up a space into a great room. Another way to create visual space that’s a bit simpler is to brighten up your space with light, neutral shades of paint and fabrics, and by making better lighting choices. Which deserves it’s own point…
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Brighten It Up!
A great, underrated place to begin making over any room in your home is with the lighting: installing dimmer switches and sun tubes throughout your home create a customizable, aesthetic experience that can greatly increase a home’s value. Installing sky lights is another great way to open up a space, let the outdoors in, and increase value.
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Ceiling Update
This one is totally easy: If you have old, dated, popcorn ceilings, its time to call in a pro to come scrape those clean and drywall over them!
