20 Tips For Increasing The Value Of Your Home

Spend an hour with a professional: Invite a realtor or interior designer over to check out your home. Many realtors will do this as a courtesy, but you will probably have to pay a consultation fee to a designer.

1. Inspect it: Not every home improvement is cosmetic. Deteriorating roofs, termite infestation or outdated electrical systems — you can’t fix it if you don’t know it’s broken. Hire an inspector to check out the areas of your home that you don’t normally see.
2. Let in the light: Everything from a dimmer switch to the increasingly popular sun tubes noticeably enhances a home’s appeal.
3. Paint, paint, paint: One of the simplest, most cost-effective improvements of all is paint! Freshly painted rooms look clean and updated — and that spells value.
   5. Cut energy costs: The amount of money you spend each month on energy costs may seem like a fixed amount, but many local utility companies provide free energy audits of their customers’ homes.
4. Low-Maintenance landscaping: No question that shrubs and colorful plants will add curb appeal to any home.
5. Beautify your front door: Don’t underestimate the power of a front door. People make up their minds in the first seven seconds of entering a house.
6. Money-Saving luxury: Install a water filtration system in your kitchen to easily purify your water!
7. Improve the air quality within your home: Air quality isn’t just about the conditions outdoors. If you have older carpets in your home, they might be hiding contaminants and allergens. The first step to determine if these need replacing is to hire a professional company to test your indoor air quality.
8. Clean up the lawn: Overgrown or patchy lawns and outsized bushes will cause your home to stand out — in a bad way.
9. Cleanliness counts: The old adage that you only get one shot at a first impression is true. So, make the interior of you home shine from the moment someone walks through the door.
10. Visually increase your home’s square footage: The key is to make each room in your house feel larger. For examples, replace heavy closed draperies with vertical blinds or shutters to let light in… a sunny room feels larger and more open.
11. Small bathroom updates = a big return: Even if you can’t afford a full remodel, small changes such as replacing dated wallpaper with a faux or textured finish and replacing old lighting will help.
12. Add new energy-efficient fixtures: A functional, decorative ceiling fan provides necessary light and, in warm months, creates a soft breeze reducing the need for expensive air conditioning.
13. Any kitchen update equals added value: Start by swapping out just one item, such as a stained sink or ancient microwave for shiny new stainless models.
14. Remove question marks from your house: Don’t give potential buyers to ask, “What’s that?” Fix it or remove it.
15. Replace worn carpets or rugs: Nothing turns buyers off more than the thought that they will immediately need to replace all of the flooring in a home.
16. Keep up with regular maintenance and repairs: Individually, small repairs might not seem important, but if every room has just one thing wrong, those small things will add up to create the impression that your home has been neglected.
17. Stage your property: Proper placement of furniture, the size of furniture, and amount of furniture really does help.
18. Reduce noise: adding insulation, installing double pane windows and doors, installing carpets and rugs to minimize footsteps and placing plants to further absorb noise.
19. Do not over-improve: While you want to improve your property and increase the value, you also want to be cautious so that you do not over-improve your property. You don’t want to spend an amount of money on a renovation where you will not see a return on your investment.
20. Be patient: trust the process.