To increase the value of your home appraisal before you sell it, use the following 10 value increasing tips to get more money from your sale. Getting an appraisal is a vital part of the home selling process and the value of your appraised is used as a to creating the asking price when you put your home on the market.
You can add more value to your home appraisal by following these simple and cost-effective tips:
- Get a Fresh Paint Job
- Do Some Home Landscaping
- Get Your Home Inspected For Problems
- Repair or Replace Flooring
- Install New Appliances
- Replace Your Popcorn Ceilings
- Do Some Deep Cleaning
- Upgrade Your Kitchen and Bathrooms
- Replace Your Windows
- Improve and Update the Lighting
Get a Fresh Paint Job
It’s amazing how much a single coat of paint can change the look of a home. A fresh paint job can turn any room from frumpy and listless to bright and appealing, and appraisers set values higher when they see rooms looking new and clean.
A fresh coat of paint on the exterior of the house also adds curb appeal and makes the home look newer and more valuable. Selecting a colour for the exterior that is different from the other houses around the neighbourhood will help it stand out and be more unique.
You don’t need to hire a professional either. There are a few interior paint jobs you can do yourself that will make a huge different. Painting a few of your rooms is extremely cost-effective, can easily be performed by the homeowner and it only takes a few hours to complete per room.
Do Some Home Landscaping
A poorly maintained yard conveys a message to potential buyers that the house as a whole, may be poorly maintained. In addition, the condition of your yard is a big part of the curb appeal of your home.
Simply getting rid of the clutter in your yard, clipping the hedges, trimming your lawn, replacing the mulch and planting a few flowers can make a significant impact on how your home is perceived at first glance.
Get Your Home Inspected For Problems
Home appraisers take nearly every single problem into consideration when calculating the value of your home. If these problems aren’t found and addressed before the appraisal process begins, it could greatly affect your home’s assessment.
Instead of taking that risk, have your home thoroughly inspected by a professional. A licensed home inspector can easily find small and large problems that could have a significant impact on your appraisal.
They can also provide you with resources and recommendations for getting these issues fixed properly. Everything from a leaky faucet to a rotting roof should be found and repaired before an appraiser arrives.
You might not be alone in your home. Depending on the area in which you live, you could have a problem with wildlife like raccoons living in your attic.
Wild animals are unsafe and unsanitary to live with, and they could be causing damage to your home or yard by building nests, chewing on wiring, storing food, leaving urine and fecal matter in the walls and on the floors or even causing structural damage.
If there are signs of animals living in your home, it could greatly impact the assessed value.
A professional wildlife inspection will locate any traces of wildlife living in or around your home, and the inspector can provide you with recommendations on how to humanely trap and relocate the animals away from the house.
Repair or Replace Flooring
Your floors suffer from a lot of damage over time, especially if you have a lot of foot traffic from many people living in the home or guests frequently visiting.
For hardwood floors, you can treat the various scuffs and scratches with rejuvenating solutions. You can also use repair markers to cover up some of the more noticeable damages. For carpeting, you can treat stains and dingy appearances by thoroughly steam cleaning it.
If the damages are too severe for deep cleaning or liquid treatments, you may have to replace certain sections of the carpet or have your hardwood flooring professionally refinished.
Install New Appliances
If your appliances are outdated, broken or visually unappealing, it’s a good idea to replace them.
Not only do new appliances make the house more sleek, functional and modern, but they also may increase the energy efficiency of the home, which is another aspect that appraisers take into consideration.
New appliances are also a major selling point for potential buyers because it eliminates the need for them to buy new appliances themselves or move their current appliances to the new house.
Replace Your Popcorn Ceilings
Say no to popcorn ceilings! How many times have you watched a home renovation show where the hosts immediately noted that they had to get rid of the popcorn ceilings?
This quick dismissal of popcorn ceilings in home renovations isn’t simply because the style is very dated and unappealing.
Depending on when the popcorn ceilings were installed, usually before the 1980s, it’s very possible that they contain asbestos, which creates a significant health risk for anyone living in the home.
If your home has popcorn ceilings, it’s best to remove them and replace them with smooth textured ceilings. Have the ceilings tested for asbestos before starting the removal process. If the test comes back negative, you can remove the ceilings yourself rather easily.
If the test comes back positive, it’s a much better idea to get a professional to do the job. They have the skills and equipment necessary to remove and dispose of the material without risking the health of you and your family.
Do Some Deep Cleaning
The look and smell of a freshly cleaned home is appealing for appraisers and potential buyers. Fresh and clean rooms tell visitors that the current homeowners cared about the house and always tried to properly maintain it.
If the cleanup job is too big for you to handle alone or you’d like a deeper cleaning than you can provide, consider hiring a professional cleaning service to give the entire house a thorough cleaning.
Upgrade Your Kitchen and Bathrooms
The bathrooms are incredibly important areas in home appraisals. There are numerous variables within a bathroom that can affect the appraised value including the fixtures, tub, shower, toilet, plumbing, flooring, storage space, ventilation, counter space and much more.
Despite the complexity of these rooms, they’re fairly easy to spruce up for a home appraisal. Wash up or replace the fixtures, give the tub, toilet, shower and sink a very thorough cleaning, fix any leaky faucets or pipes, replace the toilet seat, restore, refinish or repaint the cabinets, and replace any cracked or broken tiles in the floor and countertop.
Countertops are a major component of the kitchen, and they can instantly make or break the kitchen’s estimated value.
Materials like granite, quartz, soapstone and even concrete have exploded in popularity in kitchen countertop trends in recent years, and they are wonderful choices to impress any appraiser.
Additionally, new kitchen countertops are usually easy enough to install without professional assistance, allowing you to save money on installation costs.
Replace Your Windows
Want an easy and quick method to make a room look nicer, increase energy efficiency and add value to your home? Replace your windows.
This option is on the more expensive side, but it’s well worth the investment.
Brand new windows are incredibly appealing to potential buyers, and they usually yield nearly a 75 percent return on investment.
Improve and Update the Lighting
Any room that appears dark is unappealing to look at and frustrating to live in. In addition, even if the room is adequately lit, the lighting fixtures of the room may be ugly or outdated.
Swap out any old or dim lighting fixtures with some stylish modern fixtures, preferably ones that utilize LED light bulbs. Not only do LED bulbs provide brighter light, but they also last much longer than fluorescent bulbs and are more energy efficient.
LED bulbs do last a lot longer than the average light bulb, but no, they won’t last forever. Like all light sources, they eventually fade over time. But remember that our LED light bulbs will keep shining almost as brightly as they did when new for most of their lifetime whereas many other brands start to noticeably fade even after a year. [Source]
The Take Home
If you partake in any of these minor home upgrades, you’ll be able to increase the price of your home before selling and when your home is appraised it will have a higher value. To complete all these tasks should take you no more than a week, and for the most part, you should be able to do them all yourself.
Before deciding to hire a professional to help you, consider asking a friend or family member. You’ll probably easily find someone who will help you for free.
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