Top 7 Affordable Ways to Increase the Value of Your Home

Selling your home? You can make it more attractive to buyers without busting your budget. Selling your home can be rewarding, but it can also be a long process. Of course, you’ll want to optimize your home’s selling price. Maybe the most important way to do this is by partnering with your realtor. A good realtor will use their expertise to position your home’s sale price, highlight its features, and stage your house to maximize its buyer appeal. However, there are also many things you can do yourself for little to no cost and minimal time investment that will make your home more attractive to buyers. Here are seven ideas to get you started.

1. Deep and Detailed Cleaning

When preparing to sell your home, it’s always a good idea to go through it and do a deep cleaning. For deep cleaning, go through every room in your home and inspect every surface, corner, shelf, piece of furniture, window, nook, and cranny. Then clean it all, even the parts you don’t typically include in your weekly cleaning regimen. You’ll probably find places you haven’t scrubbed, dusted, or wiped down in a long time. Deep cleaning is typically inexpensive, and you can spread out the effort over whatever timeframe works for you. You can break it up by room by or area of your home, or if you feel ambitious, tackle it all in one cleaning session. A shining, sparkling home gives potential buyers a great first impression.

2. Clean Air Vents & Ductwork

Related to deep and detailed cleaning is a thorough cleaning of your home’s air vents and ductwork. Most people ignore this during routing cleaning, but it can make a difference in your home’s interior air quality. It’s always nice to be in a clean-smelling home!

While you can do a fair amount of this work yourself, for some ductwork, it’s a good idea to hire a professional who will have special equipment and expertise to do this, and they can often be hired for reasonable rates.

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3. Visually Increase your Square Footage

One of the features of a home that virtually all buyers notice is the amount of space inside. You can give your interior a larger visual feel with a few zero-cost techniques.

Replace heavy draperies with lighter curtains paired with vertical blinds or shutters. This will allow more sunlight into a room and give it a brighter, more open appearance. Adding a single large mirror can also visually increase a room’s space.

Another way to increase the feeling of room space is by curing “horizontal surface disease.” Clean up all the clutter that accumulates on shelves, counters, tables, and other horizontal surfaces in your home. A neat, tidy look gives the appearance of more space. Consider adding a shelving unit to an unused space that will let you store clutter out of sight.

4. Update Kitchens and Bathrooms

Buyers often give special attention to kitchens and bathrooms, so updates to these rooms can give you some great return on investment.

Even small updates and renovations can be beneficial. Replacing an outdated vanity or lighting fixture might cost a few hundred dollars, but changes like these can greatly improve the look of a bathroom.

Likewise, a few kitchen updates can reap rewards. Replacing a stained or outdated sink and faucet or installing a shiny new microwave are reasonably-priced changes that will add value to your kitchen’s appearance.

5. Painting Spruces up Interiors and Exteriors

You might be surprised at what a fresh coat or two of paint can do for the visual appeal of your home. Painting is a simple, cost-efficient activity that can provide impressive benefits.

New paint on your home’s exterior can enhance its visual curb appeal, especially if you select a contemporary color that goes well with your roof and other trim colours.

Likewise, picking a neutral paint colour for inside your home will appeal to more people, attracting a larger number of buyers. It can also brighten up your interior and make rooms appear larger and with more space.

Putty, sanding, and a new coat of paint can hide many nicks, dings, smudges, and other wall blemishes that you may not have even realized are there.

About $25 per gallon will buy a good mid-level paint that is perfectly suited for a clean, updated look, and painting supplies are relatively inexpensive as well. Painting is easy to do, and you can complete a lot of painting in a just weekend or two

6. Landscaping: Exterior Clean-up Basics

When preparing to sell your home one of the most important things you can do is also one of the most basic: clean up its exterior. You can do this without a lot of costs and a reasonable time investment. Always start with the most basic tasks, like pulling weeds, raking leaves, trimming overgrown shrubs, and keeping your lawn mowed and edged.

Doing these things cost nothing but a bit of your time and can they give the exterior of your home a well-maintained appearance. When realtors and potential buyers arrive at your home, these basic but important clean-up tasks will give them a great first impression.

7. Landscaping: Further Improve the look

One of the best ways to improve the visual “curb appeal” of a home is with landscaping. Homes with little to no landscaping can look very plain, or worse yet like they have not been well maintained by the owner.

Planting some low-maintenance plants, like a few leafy shrubs and some flowering foliage, will give your landscaping some appealing colors and natural decor. People working in your local home improvement store’s gardening and landscaping department can make some good suggestions here.

A few shrubs and flowering plants will likely cost you less than $100, but you can spend as much or as little as you want in terms of both cost and time. A project like this might only take you an afternoon or part of a weekend and require minimal effort.

The bottom line

When preparing to sell your home, there are many things you can do to improve its value and appeal to potential buyers. The seven ideas above are great places to start, and you can accomplish these yourself with little to no cost and modest investments in time and effort.

Have any questions?

Contact us if you need any support throughout the home buying process, we’re a hands-on, full-service realty team for Carleton Place and West Ottawa area. This checklist is a great foundation, but nothing can replace an experienced realtor.