DIY ways to increase the value of your home

It’s a seller’s market, but there are ways to make your house stand out from the crowd without spending a ton on renovations or remodeling. Clutter Control Freak has tips on this:

Get the inside of your home free of clutter. Organize and tidy up the home; a clean home gives the house a more spacious appearance and make the home look newer. Clean the windows thoroughly using newspaper and wash the walls. Painting the walls is a worthwhile investment to make your home look fresh and really allow it to stand out.

That’s just one tip – check out the article for more.But most of the tips in the article involve fairly costly renovations. What if you can’t afford that?

1. This is a tip from years ago, before the sub-prime ridiculousness. If your house needs new carpeting, paint or other cosmetic improvements but you absolutely cannot afford them, talk to your realtor about running ads that say the house costs $X, but you will throw in a $5-10k “redecorating bonus.” In this equation, X is what the house would be worth with improvements and the total cost of the mortgage they’ll be taking out, but you will take the $5-10k loss so they can have immediate cash for redecorating (which is probably less than you’d lose trying to sell it outright with no attempt to market its flaws as assets). A few months ago, it was no big deal to roll tens of thousands into your mortgage for repairs, but I suspect those days are over, or will be soon. This should work even in a tight market where loans are highly standardized, assuming your buyer’s credit is sufficient.
2. Ditto on repairs you can’t afford. Call it a “fix-up bonus” or something similar.

But there’s so much you can do to improve people’s perception of your home and its value. Have you seen the TV show “Sell This House”? If not, I strongly advise watching it for ideas. But here are the basics.

• Clear your clutter, even if you have to rent storage. Go look at model homes and note how few wall hangings and objects laying around they have. You don’t need to get rid of everything you own, but moving is a good time to rid yourself of stuff you don’t need. Get stuff off of surfaces, into boxes, into the garage, or out of the house. People want to see clean surfaces so they can imagine their own stuff in the space. They don’t want to see your enormous collection of trolls (I know, they have no taste!).
• You may need to store some furniture. If you have a lot of furniture (again, look at model homes or decorating magazines to see how interior decorators make homes look), it can make rooms look smaller.
• Pull living room furniture out from the wall to create little areas where couches and chairs face one another for socializing. Believe it or not, this makes the room look bigger than does the empty space in the middle.
• Get rid of dark curtains that block light. Wash dirty curtains. If you need new curtains altogether, buy the cheapest white sheets you can find as irregulars at a discount store and buy some inexpensive curtain clips to hang them with. No sewing involved. If the sheets hang down to the floor and beyond, that’s okay; it’ll look stylish. And the white material will let the sun shine into the room softly, making it lighter but not creating harsh glares.
• Rent a carpet shampoo machine for a day and steam clean the carpet. This will improve the look of your carpet more than you can imagine.
• Is the carpet beyond redemption and killing any hope of a smell? Got a cat pee smell you just can’t kill? Check what’s under the carpet. If you have hardwood floors, just rip that sucker out and polish the hardwood. If not, you may be able to paint the floor underneath. This is a trick they did on “Sell This House” just once (that I saw), and as tacky as it sounded, it actually looked pretty good. Hopefully, this won’t be a problem many of you are facing.
• Paint is pretty cheap – it’s the labor that costs. If your walls are in good shape and of a uniform, neutral color throughout, don’t paint(or just patch spots that need it). But if you have crazy colors or funky decorating you’ve done yourself, it may be time to detach yourself from these walls you love so much and realize they’re not everyone’s taste. Grab a neutral shade of paint – an earthy shade of tan, beige, sage, peach, etc. – and get some friends with brushes to help. If you can pick a few colors – maybe a warm reddish color for the kitchen and a light soothing blue or green for the bedrooms and a nice mocha for the living room – even better. It’ll look professionally decorated. Pump the Home Depot paint sellers for instructions on doing it right – that’s what they’re there for.
• Got some little nail holes in the wall you want to cover? Push some toothpaste into them and let it dry. It’s almost as good as caulking. Got big holes? Spring for a caulking gun – it’s not that expensive.
• Got a brick fireplace that’s the wrong color for your new decor? Paint it.
• THE YARD. Like the Clutter Control Freak article said, mow the lawn, take care of the plants, add a few flowers if you don’t have any. Buy a bargain book on landscaping for $5 if you need some big ideas.
• The exterior of the house needs to look good, too. Painted siding should look freshly painted, and the color should be neutral. Porches should be clean and uncluttered, with any furniture or swings on them in good repair. The welcome mat should look clean and like new (or get rid of it). The front door should look like new – if it’s weather-beaten, paint is your friend once more. Don’t have stuff in the yard. And when you have an open house, get ALL the cars and stuff out of the driveway so people have room to park and envision the home with their car and their stuff from the very first impression.
• Sometimes we can’t see our own clutter, or we’re convinced our fuschia and orchid walls are something everyone finds appealing. If you need perspective, ask your realtor to go over your house with you critically and tell you what is putting off buyers. If your realtor isn’t much help… get a new one. But in the meantime, you could invite several friends over and ask for their honest opinions. You might get some great ideas out of that (at least ideas of what’s got to go) because they won’t all agree about everything.

Good luck!

Subscribe to Bohemian Revolution!
Email Post | Print This
Posted in Do It Yourself on October 20, 2008