If you’re selling your home, you’ve probably had a real estate agent come take a look at it. If they told you that you needed to do work around your home — replace the boiler, paint, and get new cabinets — before it was ready to go on the market, what should you do?
Should you really spend money on everything that your real estate agent thinks is a good idea for you to fix?
You absolutely should fix problem areas that affect your home in important, functional ways. If you have problems with leaks, insect infestations, malfunctioning appliances or anything to do with safety or environmental concerns, you should invest in fixing them. If you have the budget, you can go beyond these essentials. You need to remember, however, that in most cases, anything beyond such fundamental fixes does not actually result in substantially larger offers on a house.
What follows are five areas that you don’t need to pay attention to when you sell your home. If these areas are less than satisfactory, you can still pass them on to the buyer without too many consequences.
Correcting Cosmetic Damage
From peeling paint to scuffed hardwood flooring, cosmetic damage may make your home look run-down; it won’t affect it in a functional way, however. Certainly, you will turn off a few potential buyers when you present a home with cosmetic damage to them. Serious, sophisticated homebuyers, however, will usually overlook cosmetic damage. They know that it is easily fixed.
What they really want to know is that there are no major problems that will be expensive to correct — the roof, the plumbing, and electrical systems, the thermal insulation around the house that saves on energy bills, and so on.
If your house is sound in all these areas, you can usually let everything else slide. What follows are five cosmetic problems that older homes usually come with, that don’t significantly affect their selling price.
Giving Your Kitchen & Bathroom A Makeover
Your kitchen and bathroom may look like they were last updated in the 80s; nevertheless, the decor is these areas won’t really pull down the value of your home. This is because in most cases, people buying older homes look to perform major remodels themselves.
Even if you do put money and effort into redoing your kitchen and bathrooms, you should keep in mind that you may not succeed in pleasing all potential buyers. You may redo your kitchen to reflect modern tastes, for example, and buyers coming in may favor more traditional decor. Rather than trying to guess what potential buyers will like, and wasting your money on remodels that don’t actually win points with them, it can make sense to simply pass on major remodels to them and save your money.
Doing Partial Remodels
If you feel that your kitchen and bathroom are unacceptable and decide to remodel, you should only get started if you have the budget to go all the way. Putting in shiny new countertops while letting the cabinets remain as they are will only draw attention to the fact that your kitchen is ancient.
Selecting Trendy Colors To Repaint In
Color trends happen to change quickly. Bright colors like sharp shades of violet and blue are hip at the moment, for example. If you try repainting your home in these colors, you might appeal to a few potential buyers, but you would be turning off a wider audience. It makes sense to not repaint at all; if you must do it, picking neutral colors will make it likelier that most potential buyers will approve.
Renovating Beyond What Most Homes In Your Neighborhood Offer
If every home in your neighborhood has beautiful landscaping and furnishing and your home doesn’t, your listing will be at a disadvantage. On the other hand, if yours is the only home in your neighborhood that does have these features, you likely won’t be able to command a premium for them. Homebuyers tend to not spend much over the median home price in any neighborhood. Before you remodel with extra features, you need to think about whether you will actually get anything for them when it’s time to sell.
It’s natural to wonder before you sell your home, if investing a great deal in fixing it you will fetch you a better price. Certainly, you should fix structural problems that make your home hard to live in; you should consider everything else to be strictly optional, however. You’ll find it easier to price your home competitively then. Potential buyers will appreciate your pricing.
Skip The Renovations & Sell Your Home Fast
If the idea of taking on renovations just to sell your home sounds like too much of a headache, look into selling your home to an investor. Using an investor eliminates the long timetable of renovations, significantly reduces the time of sale, and provides you with an all-cash deal. At Rise, we’re on a mission to make selling your home for cash in Dallas simple and headache-free. Receive a free, no-obligation cash offer for your home by answering a few simple questions now.
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