Selling Your Home? These are the 6 Best Home Remodeling Projects to Increase its Value

In 2017, 5.51 million homes were put on the market and sold. You’re thinking about selling your home too, but you want to maximize the return on your investment.

What’s the best way to do that?

With real estate, upgrades and renovations are a great way to get more bang for your buck. However, you have to make the right upgrades. Some home renovations are expensive and the ROI is very low.

Let’s take a look at some of the best home remodeling projects to maximize your sale price, without unnecessarily draining your wallet.

1. A Fresh Coat of Paint

Repainting is an inexpensive way to give your home a fresh face. Paint doesn’t cost too much and it’s an easy DIY project that you can do on the weekends.

If your walls are faded or dirty, this is a great way to instantly perk them up. Plus, if you have outdated color schemes, you’ll make your house far more desirable by changing up the colors.

Go for neutral colors that will work with most anyone’s furniture. That’s what potential buyers are thinking about when they tour your home.

You might wonder if your color choice can really make that much of a difference. Consider this, simply painting your front door a nice shade of black can add an additional $6,271 onto the sale price. That’s a significant return on the price of a can of paint and a few hours of your time!

2. Up the Curb Appeal

As much as we like to say that we don’t judge a book by its cover, it really isn’t true. First impressions are extremely important-and they always will be.

The same is true for your home. For most buyers, their actual first impression will be the photos they see of your home online. But their first impression of the home in person is just as important.

There are lots of little ways that you can enhance the outside appearance of your home. New siding or entirely repainting your house can get to be a big job. But in many cases, simply repainting the front door and garage door can make a big difference.

Spruce up the landscaping to really make your home look amazing. You don’t have to go all out and do a complete redesign of your landscaping. That could be quite expensive. But adding a few plants here and there, trimming unruly existing plants, and cutting the grass can make a world of difference.

3. Finish the Basement

It’s no secret that extra usable living space can bump up your sale price by quite a bit. However, the costs involved with adding on an extra room are usually too high to allow for an adequate ROI.

But what if you have an unfinished basement full of random junk and old Christmas decorations? Clear that out and finish the space to neatly add usable square footage to your home for a fraction of the cost.

Depending on the size of your basement, you could add a bedroom or two to your home. Or set up a home office. As more and more people are working from home, home office space is a desirable feature.

4. Kitchen Makeover

Everybody loves to eat. That’s what makes kitchens such an important room in the home. However, kitchen remodels can get expensive quickly and not everything will adequately bump up the sale price of your home. Thus, you’ve got to be smart about your kitchen remodel.

Some cost-effective ideas include

• Updating the lighting
• Adding a fresh coat of a light-colored paint
• Replacing cabinet hardware
• Redoing countertops

New appliances may or may not be a good idea. Are they old and outdated? Then you’d probably benefit from replacing them. But if they’re not that old, it may not be worth the expense.

5. Bathroom Makeover

The bathroom is another spot that responds really well to renovations. But again, you need to choose the right renovations. Just like kitchens, bathroom remodels can get unnecessarily expensive.

Focus on little things like re-grouting tile, painting, and re-caulking. If you have a plastic tub, you may want to consider swapping it out for tile. This will be a more expensive renovation, of course, but carries a significant ROI.

You can save money on renovations by doing them yourself, but depending on the scope of your project (and your DIY experience) that may not be the best idea. This website can point you in the right direction when you need help with home renovations.

6. Energy Efficiency Upgrades

Energy efficiency is a hot topic these days. It’s also a highly desirable trait that buyers are on the lookout for when buying a home. In fact, there’s some indication that an energy efficient home can fetch as much as 9% more on the market.

In addition to boosting your ROI, this type of upgrade can help you sell your home faster. Buyers love the fact that the work has already been done.

They may know that they want an energy efficient home but are not interested in doing the upgrading themselves. Thus, if the home has already been upgraded they’ll be far more likely to buy (and spend more on) your home.

The Best Home Remodeling Projects for You

In the end, the best home remodeling projects for you will depend on the state of your home. It also depends on how far into the future you plan on selling your home.

Making some kitchen updates now even though you plan to sell in a couple years can be nice. Not only will you enjoy the nice ROI but also be able to use the updates in the meantime.

However, repainting your interior might not be the greatest idea unless you plan to sell right away. Over a couple of years, the fresh paint look will fade away and you won’t get as much ROI.

To check out more real estate and selling your home-related tips and tricks, be sure to browse through the other posts on our blog.