Real Estate Market Home Improvement: Easily Enhance Your Home, Sell Your House Better, or Just Make It Easier to Live In
By Brad Tuttle | @bradrtuttle | August 26, 2010 | + Tweet
By most accounts, the housing market looks bleak. Sales plummeted by more than 25% in July. Explanations are offered that we've experienced the end of an era where homeownership was a path to wealth, and perhaps more gratefully, the end of ever-larger McMansions. A new survey from real estate search website Trulia shows that a surprisingly high percentage (27%) of renters do not wish to ever own a house, and renters who are interested in homeownership say that a solid majority (68%) believe it will be at least two years before they would even consider pulling the trigger and buying a home.
This waning interest, or outright disinterest, in purchasing real estate spells bad news for the economy as a whole, but on a personal level, it means truly terrible things for someone trying to sell a house immediately. And whether you're attempting to sell property or not, it's always a good time to add value to your home through some strategic, manageable DIY home improvement projects. Here are a few suggestions, starting with...
Kiplinger's "8 DIY Projects to Boost Your Home’s Value," all of which can be completed in one day, max two days. What kind of projects are we talking about here? Adding a backsplash, installing crown molding, or replacing the front door — these are explained as win-win scenarios: First-time buyers stepping into your house will more than recoup their investment when they see a new front door. Expect a hefty 129% ROI on a steel door, according to Remodeling Magazine's 2009-10 "Cost vs Value Report." (Note that fiberglass models, which can cost three times as much, yield only 65% of the costs.) Bonus: Buy a qualifying energy-efficient door and receive a tax credit of 30% of your costs (up to $1,500 combined for 2009 and 2010).
A Simple Dollar post meanwhile suggests 22 projects, each taking just a few hours over the course of a week. Not all are strictly related to the exterior (one recommendation involves finding a bank with top-tier conditions and opening an account), and the home projects are generally better suited for owners looking to make life affordable and comfortable in their home rather than unload it to up bids. But the tips can improve your home and life (and private space) in one way or another. For example:
Clean out all your closets, decide what you actually need to keep, and sell the rest. If you're like most of us, your closets are filled with clothes and other items stored away with the good intention of using them later, only to find that this later never comes. Clean out those closets and sell off the stuff in the back that you haven't seen in years, because if you haven't seen it in years, you probably don’t need it. Good advice whether you're selling your house or not — because cluttered closets and attics, along with other forms of disarray, turn off buyers, or at least make them more likely to lower their offers.
Are you a reflexive outsourcer, terrified by the letters strung together as DIY? There are plenty of free resources to help you along. A WalletPop post (highlighted in an earlier tip round-up) lists 10 options for training and tips for DIY home improvement projects, such as reading online forums and blogs: One of my favorites is DIYorNot, which helps you decide based on project difficulty and costs whether to do it yourself or not. Personal blogs by people with similar house structures are another great online source for advice, photos, and ideas.
Finally, due to the terrible state of the real estate market, it might be a better idea to take your house off the market and work on improving your current home, perhaps with the addition of an extension or an incoming renovation for DIY enthusiasts. Such a project will likely still require a contractor, and helpful advice can be found in another Kiplinger story about what you need to know when hiring one. So one must be precise in what they say, especially regarding contracts: Don't simply say you want windows — specify, for instance, Andersen Tilt-Wash double-hung windows — and thus eliminate any "or equivalent" clauses in contract drafts. Such language gives contractors room to choose materials you may not like. If the project is large, like adding an extension to your home, get a lawyer to draft the contract. Lawyers? Access? The big money? On second thought, maybe it's smarter to make do with your house as it is, small and cramped as it may be. The McMansion era is over, remember.
Related: "How a DIY Home Improvement Project Almost Destroyed My Marriage"
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