The list can seem endless when it comes to getting your home ready to be sold! You probably don’t want to spend a fortune fixing up your home since you’re getting ready to move, but you know you need to take care of at least a few items to give potential buyers a positive experience when they come tour the house. The main thing that you should be considering is ‘Return On Investment’ (ROI). Oftentimes the best ROI is found in the smaller projects. They’re less invasive, take less time, cost less, and can make a huge difference in the market-readiness of your home. Here are a few of the home improvement projects that will get you an excellent ROI ahead of getting your home on the market:
1. Curb Appeal: There are a number of quick and inexpensive ways to improve the curb
appeal of your home and quite a few of them are DIY friendly. These include pressure
washing the exterior of the home, replacing exterior lighting, adding landscape features
such as flower beds & uplighting, trimming trees/bushes, adding or repairing/replacing
shutters, painting the front door, making sure that your address numbers & mailbox are in good shape, and adding a full-glass storm door. Most of these projects cost less than $1,000 with professional service or installation.
2. Minor Bathroom Updates: A little bit can go a long way in most bathrooms. If your
bathroom is a little on the older side, but is in good condition, chances are that you don’t
need a full overhaul. A few simple changes to make in an older bathroom are paint,
shelving, vanity lighting, vanity mirror, vanity cabinet, sink faucet, toilet, and shower/tub
faucets. This basic facelift of a bathroom is somewhat DIY friendly, but you could expect
the total cost between materials and professional installation to be around $3,000.
3. Minor Kitchen Updates: Similarly to the bathroom, you can make a huge impact on the
look of your kitchen without ripping it all out and starting fresh. The simplest ways to improve the look of your kitchen are a good cleaning, painting the walls, swapping cabinet hardware, and adding a new kitchen faucet. Other high-ROI kitchen upgrades include having a professional paint your existing cabinetry, replacing or adding a tile backsplash, replacing or adding lighting, and upgrading countertops to granite or quartz. The cost of a kitchen refresh is typically around 50% of the cost to fully renovate the same kitchen.
4. Fresh Paint: Oftentimes prospective buyers have a difficult time envisioning their personal belongings in a room that is painted a bold color or they have a hard time getting past holes and stains. We typically suggest that sellers get all wall repairs taken care of and get their entire house painted with a neutral color prior to listing their home. Of course, painting is DIY friendly, but a professional painter is worth every penny. Most individual rooms in your house would cost under $750 to have professionally painted.
5. Fixtures, Finishes, & Hardware: This is the most DIY friendly of the list. Swapping out
, door hinges, light fixtures, switches, outlets, blinds, and other dated finishes
can bring an entirely new feel to your home, especially when combined with any of the
other items on this list. A reputable handyman would be able to take care of this entire
list for you in a single day and you could expect to pay right around $1,000 for labor and
materials, depending on exactly how many of these items you are replacing.
6. Doors: This one doesn’t need much of an explanation… make sure that all of your interior and exterior doors operate properly! Very few things are as annoying to prospective buyers than knowing they need to deal with doors that stick or don’t stay shut.
7. Deep Cleaning: Here’s another DIY friendly item, but in our opinion is really something that you should hire a professional company to take care of. Most reputable cleaning companies will charge around $0.45-$0.50/sqft to deep clean your entire home. A professionally cleaned home makes all the difference when prospective buyers are coming through on appointments.
Remember – when getting your home ready for the market, your goal is to eliminate as many objections as you possibly can in order to provide the potential buyers with the best showing experience possible. The home doesn’t need to be perfect, but you should focus on making it a clean and attractive canvas for buyers to be able to visualize their personal belongings in the space.
