Whether you are moving into a home with your family or trading homes as a commodity, everyone who owns a home would like to see its value increase. Especially since there is a recession coming to the housing market eventually.
The more you do to increase the value of your home now, the more your home’s value will exist independently from the housing market. So, even if it crashes, you will still have something.
But how do you increase the value of a home? You can add zeroes onto the price tag all you want, but an expensive home is not a valuable home. Value comes from how much the home can be used compared to its liabilities. And dealing with liability is an art unto itself.
We are going to go over the top 10 ways experts recommend you improve your home’s value.
Repairs
This is the most obvious place to start, though people still make simple mistakes when doing it.
Repairing your home does not just mean making things look new. What it really means is reinforcing the things which have weakened over time. For instance, tightening up the siding of your home or replacing stripped screws that hold the gutter together.
Addressing Water Damage
A layer of maintenance people frequently forget about is dealing with water damage. Do we mean repairing water damage? No. That should be included in your normal repairs.
What we mean here is plugging up the weaknesses in the home that water leaks through. You see, water damage comes in two varieties. There is the water damage on the surface of the home, and the water damage that finds its way into the home.
The surface of the home is designed to be far more durable to water than the exterior. So, any water damage inside the home should be repairs, and the leak that caused it plugged.
Give it Fresh Paint
Appearances matter for a lot, even more than you would think in the case of homes. A home cannot just look well-built. For many customers, it has to look new and beautiful. The easiest way to give off this appearance is by repainting the home.
Remember though, that applies to both the interior and the exterior. Repainting the front of the house doesn’t matter if the customer finds the living room scratched up.
Install Smart Home Technology
There are layers to how smart home technology saves you money, but even installing it will get you gains in the long run. If you make your home smart home-ready, then you can sell that convenience for more than you paid into it, especially if you did it yourself.
Make Your Home More Energy Efficient
While we are on the topic of smart home technology, this is one of the best ways to get value out of the technology. Smart home technology is, generally speaking, far more energy efficient than standard home appliances. That means it adds lots of long-term value to a home.
Equip the Home with Security Measures
We are including this in the “smart home improvements” line of strategies, but you can actually do this just fine without a smart home. Security measures improve the value of a home by reducing its liability massively, particularly its risk of damage from other people.
When a home is damaged, most insurance companies will try to prove that you caused the damage in some way that they do not have to cover. Security measures can help prove, either through security camera footage or alarm logs, that someone else caused the damage.
Smith Thompson explains how this works the best.
Plant Easily Grown Plants
When people see a handsome tree or a bountiful garden in front of a home, they immediately interpret that home as being well taken care of. Strangely, they do not think of how hard they will have to work in order to keep that tree or those plants alive. But that is not terribly important.
What is important is that you can get a lot more than your initial investment by just doing a little planting around a home you are trying to sell.
Point Spotlights at the Home
Spotlights on the home serve two functions, one more obvious than the other. The really clear one is the fact that a home with good lighting on it looks prestigious and important. It immediately elevates it in the buyer’s mind, much like a spotlight does on a person.
The secondary effect is related to lowering liability. People are less likely to damage a house or try to rob it if it is surrounded by lights that make it obvious when they are approaching it.
Depersonalize Your Home
Anyone who trades homes as commodities will be familiar with this tip, but people trying to sell their own home might have more trouble with it. The idea here is that it is easier to sell a home when you remove decorations that are personally pleasing to you.
Try to keep things plain, as plain things are generally inoffensive.
Clean Every Inch of It
Not that this will blow anyone’s mind or anything, but a deep clean of your house is necessary if you want anyone to look twice at it. That means cleaning the carpet, de-gouting the shower, and disinfecting the kitchen. Everything has to positively reflect cleanliness.
This is much easier if you are not currently living in the house, obviously.
Conclusion
The main thing experts agree on is that a house has to look good in two ways: In person and on paper. Remember, not everyone is going to be viewing the home the same way.
Some people are going to be looking at the home in person, while others are going to take a virtual walk-through online. Some aren’t even going to be people, but companies looking to become America’s landlord by buying all the property in the country.