The Best (and Worst) Home Improvements to Make Before you Sell
When it comes time to sell your home, it’s likely you’re hoping to sell fast, for top dollar, and with as few headaches as possible.
It’s also likely you’re creating a mental punch list of key projects you need to complete prior to listing the home.
What projects are worth your time and energy? What projects will earn you the most money back?
On the flip side, what projects are a waste of time, won’t get you good return-on-investment, or might actually work against you?
Based on our 15+ years of experience selling over 650 homes, here are our top tips for the best and worst improvements you can make prior to selling.
Best Improvements to Make
1. Remodeled Kitchen
In most homes, there is only one kitchen. Therefore, taking on a full kitchen remodel that makes the kitchen non-functional is about the biggest hassle a homeowner can tackle.
No one gets excited about a month without kitchen cabinets (oh wait, a manufacturing delay at the factory just turned one month into three months), washing dishes in the bathtub, living around random piles of canned goods and mac ‘n cheese boxes, weeks without countertops, and moving a 300 lb refrigerator up the front porch steps.
If the alternative for a buyer is purchasing a home with a beautifully remodeled kitchen that saves them all that hassle, they’ll take it 99% of the time.
A gorgeous kitchen remodel has great Return on Investment (ROI).
2. Remodeled Bathrooms
Similar to remodeling a kitchen, half the stress of remodeling a bathroom is the hassle of having to live without it for a couple weeks.
For homeowners who have lived in their home for a long time, it’s easy to get attached to the vintage feel of 1970’s pea green tile and the warmth of a carpeted bathroom floor (who needs heated tile flooring when you can have carpet?), but a buyer in the 2020’s often prefer something a bit more…current.
A fresh, modern remodeled bathroom has huge appeal to buyers and can be a great investment prior to selling.
3. Updated Flooring (New Carpet, Vinyl, or Tile)
Installing new flooring can be a fast, easy, and often surprisingly affordable. High traffic areas such as stairs or hallway intersections often begin to show wear and tear after just 5-7 years, and freshening up the flooring to something clean and new can go a long way in communicating the right message to prospective buyers about the care you have invested in the home.
4. New Paint
As a homeowner, paint is a great way to personalize your home - dark purple and floral wallpaper in the bathroom because it’s your favorite color, bright pink stripes in the nursery, a mural of a baseball field in your son’s room. All great ideas for while you live in the home.
When it comes time to sell, however, the priority shifts from what’s important to you to what’s important, inviting, and inspiring to most potential buyers. This often means replacing personal preferences with trendy neutral tones.
It might hurt, but it’s generally for the best. We promise.
5. Replace your Roof (if it needs it)
Replacing a roof can be crazy expensive if paid for out-of-pocket ($10,000-$40,000). This is why homeowners have hazard insurance with much more affordable deductibles ($1,000-$2,500) allowing them to replace a roof in case of wind, hail, or other storm damage. When preparing to sell, it’s often worth having a roofing professional come to your home for a pre-inspection to see if a roof replacement might be possible by filing an insurance claim. The new buyers will be able to get cheaper insurance because of the new roof, and only paying the price of a deductible instead of paying the full replacement costs out of pocket can earn a 10x return.
Worst Improvements to Make (by ROI)
1. Solar Panels
One of the most common questions we get from clients is “Will solar panels increase the value of my home? The salesman who came to my house said it will.”
Most of the time, the answer is unfortunately no.
First, if you lease solar panels, that lease becomes a debt the future buyer will have to qualify for in addition to the loan on your home.
Second, if you buy the panels, they immediately become a depreciating asset (they go down in value), become less-efficient over time, and are accompanied by costs like their removal, storage, and reinstallation in the event of a future roof replacement.
They do have advantages as some buyers are passionate about ways to increase energy conservation, and they can result in significant savings to monthly utility bills, but in terms of home selling ROI, they are generally not considered a good investment.
2. Expensive, specialty landscaping
There is a difference between functional, attractive landscaping and expensive, speciality landscaping. Maintaining landscaping that offers solid curb appeal is well worth the effort.
Where landscaping becomes a bad investment in preparation for selling is when a yard’s functionality becomes highly personalized. $30,000 worth of large boulders might be the going rate and look nice, but they will not increase your home’s value by $30,000 - especially if where they sit prevents a new buyer from installing a shed, a dog run, or a nice patio fire pit.
Similarly, large homes most-commonly appeal to buyers who are families with children, so a usable backyard is often an attractive selling point. If instead of a yard to play in, the backyard is an extravagant garden of rare flowers and half-a-mile of an intricately installed drip sprinkler system, it can be an incredible back yard, it just won’t appeal to the widest potential pool of buyers.
3. Anything highly personalized
We have addressed this in various ways above, so let this final point serve as a collective reinforcement of the idea.
We believe that homeownership offers the wonderful opportunity to make your house your home. When it comes time to sell, however, it might become necessary to “de-personalizing” many of your favorite parts of your home.
This article is not intended to insult personal tastes, but rather to outline from a financial perspective which investments get a good return and which ones don’t.
Our home sales pre-marketing process involves a personal walkthrough with both our listing specialist and our professional home stager. Their combined expertise is part of what led to our sellers selling their homes for more than $20,000 above their competition in 2021.
If getting the most return on investment (i.e. making the most money possible) is important to you when you sell your home, let’s chat.
—
We hope this content serves you well as you seek to be savvy homeowners and make wise financial decisions for your future. If you'd like to chat further or are considering moving in the coming months or year, let's get a meeting scheduled today!
- Josh & The RAGE Team
This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for tax, legal, or accounting advice. You should consult your own tax, legal and accounting advisors before engaging in any transaction.
