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Boosting your home’s value is always a good investment of time and money. Maximizing your profits when you sell, making your home more comfortable while you live in it, and increasing your energy efficiency are all great reasons to make some updates. While a new kitchen or bathroom is considered the most valuable upgrade, there are others that can make a big difference in your home value as well. While there is the actual value that your home can assess, there is also a perceived value that potential buyers have when they look at homes.
Simple Landscaping
Having nothing in front of your home can make it feel barren, stark, and uninviting. Sometimes, adding simple things can make your home more appealing. Think about adding a patch of mulch with a few flowering plants. Add stepping stones from the driveway to the front door or from the sidewalk to the door. Hang some flowering plants on your front porch and mow your grass. These simple landscaping things go a long way to adding some curb appeal and may help boost your home’s value when you’re ready to sell.
Thicker Attic Insulation
Energy efficiency is all the rage right now. People focus on buying energy-efficient appliances, but they may not realize that their home is also a source of unnecessary energy drain. They want to help the environment, but they are wasting significant amounts of energy when their home isn’t well insulated. One of the areas that get forgotten the most, especially in older homes is the attic.
Attic insulation keeps the hot air out in the summer and the cool air out in the winter. When you’re searching for Houston, Memphis, or Phoenix insulation installation, it’s good to ask for referrals from people you know. You can even ask them how much it decreased their energy bills throughout the year. Not only does this help you save on your utilities, but it’s better for resale when you can say that a home has thick attic insulation.
Painting All the Things
Make your home more appealing to potential buyers by creating a neutral and relaxing palette. While the paint is easy to fix, when you know you’ll be selling in the next few years, investing in a simpler color palette can go a long way. Buyers like to imagine themselves in a home and using too many colors or very vibrant colors can leave the potential buyers with a negative impression. This is especially true if they hate the color. It becomes hard for them to think about anything else.
Neutrals like white, gray, cream, and even some shades of blue are great options. You can also look to local home decorating trends to find options. Paint the inside, paint the outside, paint your cabinets. You can’t go wrong with adding a fresh coat of paint.
Replacing Your Windows
If your windows are older, it may be time to replace them. While it can cost $5,000 or more, the ROI on new windows, especially the energy-efficient ones, is very high. It improves the curb appeal of a home, makes it easier to open and close, boosts safety, and offers better energy efficiency than older windows. All of these are great reasons to get new windows and when you go to sell someday can be a nice selling point that can improve the value of your home. While fancy custom windows are not essential to get a good ROI, simply buy the best ones you can afford.
Conclusion
Improving the value of your home isn’t a simple formula. There are many factors that go into the value of a home, many of them outside of your control. However, when you want to make your home more appealing to potential buyers, have a comfortable place to live while you’re still there, and even save some cash on utilities, making these updates can have a big impact. You’ll find that better attic insulation means that your rooms all stay at a more stable temperature. New paint can freshen up a dated living room, and new windows can make the old feel new. While it’s not guaranteed, giving your home some new curb appeal can make it feel warm and inviting and maybe boost the price of your home just a little.