Selling Your Home? Boost Your Home's Market Value by Thousands
You can ask for and get thousands more when selling your home if you spend a few thousand dollars to increase the appeal of your home. Tips include the obvious:
Clutter -- Get rid of all clutter inside and outside of your home, including personal photographs and knick knacks.
Odors -- Clean your house thoroughly before putting it up for sell. Dirty dishes, cat litter boxes, smelly laundry and the like turn off buyers.
Other simple steps you can take that should increase the value of your home:
Landscaping -- Prune trees and bushes, edge planting beds and plant pretty flowers in the front and back yards. This should cost you no more than $500, but will add at least $2000 to the value of your home.
Update your kitchen -- The kitchen is one of the top selling points for home buyers and modernizing it is one of the best ways to boost your home's value. But you don't have to spend $30,000 to completely update your kitchen. Instead, spend about $2,000 to $3,000 updating your kitchen by (1) replacing the faucet fixtures and the sink if it is old and marred (2) repainting the walls and cabinets and installing new hardware on them, if necessary; (3) Installing new flooring; (4) and removing all the clutter, including refrigerator magnets and such. If you've got the money to buy new appliances, do so. Spending just a few thousand updating your kitchen can result in increasing your home's value by $20,000.
Tear down walls -- Many older homes have walls that separate the kitchen from the family room or the dining room from the living room. Since larger rooms are the rage these days, you might want to tear down certain walls to make one larger room instead of having two smaller ones, which makes your house look more spacious. Note that this does not apply to bedrooms -- do not turn a three bedroom house into a two bedroom house because it decreases your home's value. Doing this could increase your home's value by as much as four percent.
Carpeting -- Many home buyers today want hardwood floors. If you live in a home that has them, but they are covered with carpeting, you might consider pulling up the carpeting and restoring those hardwood floors, particularly if the carpeting is old and worn. This could boost your home's value by $2,000.
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