Home improvement can get cash-intensive or time-consuming sometimes, and many of us don’t really have an excess of these resources. If you’re looking for easy or inexpensive ways to boost your home’s value, these 18 improvements will suffice.
Clean Your Gutters
Homebuyers ordinarily expect you to have a gutter in your home. However, a lot of people neglect their gutters, leaving leaves, sticks, and other debris that could clog them up and turn them into a nightmare. If you haven’t cleaned yours in a while, taking this exercise will keep homebuyers attracted to your home.
Increase Kitchen Storage
Kitchens are one of the best areas for improvement. If you don’t have money or time for a complete remodel, simply increasing storage will do wonders. Those empty walls can be used to mount cabinets or open shelves to increase storage for spices, cookware, cups, cereals, and even some wine.
Paint Kitchen Cabinets
Okay, maybe you don’t have enough money to purchase new storage cabinets or enough space to install them. One of the more affordable things you can do is repaint your cabinets. You give them a new look and, with colors like beige and charcoal gray, improve your kitchen’s value even more.
Paint the Interior Walls
A fresh coat of paint will give your home a shiny, enticing new look. But this isn’t all. Zillow shows that certain colors have more value in the real estate market, and you can use this home improvement exercise to your advantage. For instance, paint your living room or bedroom dark gray to add at least $1,755 to your home’s value.
Give the Exterior New Paint
Your exterior paint contributes to your home’s first impression, and, just like with your interiors, it isn’t enough that you put on a fresh coat. Although your home’s design matters too, gray and beige exteriors can help your home sell for $3,500 more. Yellow is one of the worst to opt for.
Install Crown Molding
Crown molding involves installing decorative molds made from materials like plaster or MDF at the point where your walls meet the ceiling. They have become popular in modern real estate, and they are great ways to give your home that extra sophistication without doing too much.
Install New Window Treatment
Your curtains, blinds, and shades are more crucial than you think. If you have outdated window treatments or treatments that are in disrepair, giving them a new look will easily increase your home’s value. While wooden shades are excellent choices, the Department of Energy says insulated cellular shades have the best ROI of any window covering.
Add Ceiling Fans
If you don’t have ceiling fans installed in rooms across your home, then this will be the best time to do it. This is because, by reducing humidity and improving the quality of air, ceiling fans in main living areas are desirable and even essential to the majority of homebuyers.
Refinish Your Flooring
An alternative to changing your flooring (which gets really expensive) is refinishing your flooring to look and feel new. Curbio shares that getting rid of creeks and giving your hardwood flooring a new shine has a potential ROI of 348%.
Refurbish Your Front Door
You can get started with your curb appeal by either repainting your front door or installing a new one entirely. While a new front door ordinarily offers you an average ROI of 75%, Zillow research reveals black front doors can increase your home value by $6,000.
Get New Fixtures
Whether it’s for the lights, doors, kitchen faucets, or switches, buying and installing new fixtures is a cheap home improvement exercise that can make a huge difference. You should install high-quality fixtures, especially if you have faulty fixtures around your home.
Clean Up Your Landscape
Beautiful landscaping can increase your home’s value by up to 20%. The best part here is that you don’t need to buy expensive stone veneers, install water fountains, or mount stone steps. Simply setting up lights, maintaining a botanical garden, and pressure washing your pathways will do the trick.
Install Programmable Thermostats
Smart, programmable thermostats are more energy-efficient than manual thermostats, as they allow you to manage your home temperature more flexibly. With just under $200, you give buyers a way to automatically readjust energy usage when no one is at home—a cost-saving benefit that will appeal to them.
Install Water Filters
Water filters come with both short-term and long-term advantages. If you don’t have them yet, installing filters gives your homebuyers clean water everywhere, which reduces the chances of corroding plumbing fixtures and promotes eco-friendly use of water (by ditching water bottles).
Install Bathroom Vent Fans
With bathroom ventilation fans, it’s not just about preventing mirrors from fogging or eliminating musty smells. Improving air flow in your bathrooms assures homebuyers that they won’t have to deal with the growth of mold or mildew. This is one health benefit they will appreciate.
Get New Bathroom Tiles
Vinyl on bathroom floors is common and is even considered an excellent choice by many. But it only lasts for, on average, five to ten years. With ceramic tiles, you don’t just introduce a unique style; potential homebuyers will also show more appreciation for materials that Forbes says will last at least 20 years.
Improve Lighting
The majority of homebuyers in the US say they won’t buy a home if it doesn’t have enough natural lighting coming in. Although the size of your windows and where they are installed primarily determine how much natural lighting you get, adding mirrors can help distribute it better. You should also opt for brighter bulbs that eliminate shadows in the home.
Get Clean Carpets
If you don’t have carpets already, they aren’t particularly heavy on the value of your home. However, for those that currently do, make sure the carpets are clean, and if the carpets are worn out, be sure to buy new ones. Clean or new carpets aren’t just aesthetically pleasing; they are also free of allergens that may make homebuyers uncomfortable during inspection.
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