Making home improvements is the perfect way to get your dream home without having to move. The only problem is, it costs a lot. Even if you’re fed up of the house and the way it looks, but you still love the area, you might be put off making any improvements because of the price. It’s true that a lot of home improvements do cost you a lot of money but most people forget to consider the impact that they have on the value of the house. That money isn’t lost because you’ve increased the value of your property and when you come to sell it, you’ll make it all back plus more. The overall price of the house is likely to be increasing anyway so by making changes to it that boost the value, you’ll be making a good amount of money back on it.
But what if you’re not going to sell the house? If you don’t think that you’ll sell the house then you aren’t getting any benefit from increasing the value of the house. The thing is, you never know whether you’ll change your mind and sell the house in the end anyway, and even if you don’t sell, increasing the value still has its benefits. If you want to take out a refinance home loan or borrow any other money against the house, you’ll be in a far better position if it’s worth a lot more. That all sounds great, but if you don’t have the money in the first place, it’s all irrelevant. Fortunately, there are home improvements that don’t cost that much money, but still add value to the house. These are some of the cheapest ways to boost the price of your property.
Kitchen
If you’re trying to make improvements on a budget you’ll only be able to make major changes in one or two rooms. The kitchen should definitely be one of them because it’s considered the most important room by a lot of buyers. It’s a multi-purpose room that’s used by the whole family so it’s often the first thing that buyers look for in a house. If it isn’t up to scratch, you’ll struggle to sell. Doing up the kitchen also adds a huge amount of value to the home. You don’t need to spend loads of money getting a brand new kitchen fitted if you can’t afford it. Just give it a new coat of paint, update the handles on the cabinet doors, change taps, and put some new light fittings in. It won’t be that expensive but those small changes add up to make the kitchen look new. If you’ve got particularly old appliances in there, it might be worth looking at getting some new ones, energy efficiency is a big concern for most buyers these days. If the appliances aren’t that old but they look a bit tatty or don’t match the rest of the kitchen, you can just replace the doors on them and make them look brand new without having to spend much money at all.
The only time you need to make any big changes in the kitchen is if it isn’t easy to cook in there. If the layout of the kitchen is bad and you’re crossing the room from the fridge to the oven and the sink is right out of the way, people are really going to have a problem with it and it can have a big impact on the value of the house.
Bathrooms
The bathroom is the next most important room after the kitchen and if it doesn’t look nice, it’ll really put buyers off. Some of the things that people really hate are a dirty, stained toilet or sink, and outdated lino floors. They look tacky and give the impression that the bathroom hasn’t been updated for years. You can sort a lot of the problems by giving the bathroom a good clean but it’s worth making some cheap upgrades as well. Changing the toilet seat will cost you less than £50 but it can make it look brand new. Get rid of that old flooring and put some nice tiles down, it’s fairly easy to do yourself so it shouldn’t cost that much. You can also redo all of the grouting between the tiles in the shower which makes it look brand new right away.
Add Bedrooms
The main thing that increases the value of your house is obviously the number of bedrooms, but you can’t just add more. No, but you can change the classification of some of the rooms to make them bedrooms. For example, if you’ve got an office room in the house, it won’t be considered a bedroom without a wardrobe or bed in there. However, if you change the furniture so somebody can sleep in there, you immediately increase the number of bedrooms and you can list it as a four bed instead of a three bed. That’s going to increase the value by a huge amount of money overnight.
Carpets
Having dirty faded carpets is another thing that immediately makes a house look old and scruffy. It makes a buyer think that the house hasn’t been updated for years and they won’t be willing to pay a good price for it. There’s usually no need to replace all of the carpets because the new buyer is likely to put their own in anyway but they do need sprucing up. Professional carpet cleaners aren’t that expensive but they’ll make more of a difference than you realize. You won’t notice the carpet gradually changing colour over the years but when you get it cleaned, you’ll notice just how dirty it was. Having them clean and fresh gives a far better impression to buyers.
Paint The House
When a buyer pulls up to the house, they’ll make a judgement based on what they can see. Even if it’s much nicer inside, a bad impression will stay with them and certainly affect their offer. Estate agents call this kerb appeal and it’s one of the most important things when you’re selling a house. The changes don’t need to be expensive or time consuming, you just need to repaint the front of the house and the windows and it’ll make the place look brand new.
Follow these simple steps and you’ll increase the value of your house in no time.
XOXO
Debbie
This is a collaborative post
