Successful tips to increase your home value!

Homeownership is not only the place to live your life, but it is one of the best ways to build investment assets. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to predict how much our home will appreciate in value over time, as there are many and ever-changing variables to rely on: the number of possible homebuyers looking for a home, the amount of available homes, and inflation. Is it possible to increase the value of your home beyond standard capital appreciation? Sure! Here are a few, but simple tips to give your home’s value a boost!

Make it more attractive!

Making your home pleasant and attractive is definitely a key point to focus on these days. The So-called “home-staging“, i.e. the showcasing of the property, is considered by sales agents to be an art that can easily increase the value by 1-5% compared to similar properties; according to professionals in the field, intervening on “soft” aspects such as furniture, interior design and decorations, can in some cases generate a 6-10% increase in value. Imagine wanting to sell your home worth $200,000, and being able to tick off an extra $2,000-20,000, that wouldn’t be bad at all, would it? Without having to think about a radical make-up of the house, you can always think about giving it a good clean by focusing on a few key rooms. Commonly, the rooms most in need of “home-staging” are the living room (93%), kitchen (84%), bedroom (78%) and dining room (72%). A partial renovation will certainly increase the overall appeal of your property, increasing its value and the possibility of selling it at an attractive price for you. In the case of the kitchen, the replacement of appliances, cabinets, countertops, sinks and flooring can easily cost more than $20,000, but the project will allow you to recoup between 70% and 80% of the cost, thus increasing the overall value of your home by an amount almost equal to the cost of the renovation.

Make it bigger!

A big house can mean more money…but in what sense? According to recent statistics, the average price of a home, per square foot, has been around $130, and with no decrease in value going up in square footage: so, adding square footage means adding value! And if you just can’t gain square footage, try to imagine your home with larger rooms: could knocking down a few walls open up spaces, and make the house seem bigger? Or by relocating certain rooms (e.g. a bathroom) elsewhere, you could gain useful space where you need it.

Make it energy efficient!

Finally, providing energy efficiency upgrades for your home could be just as functional as the previous points to increase the value of your home. In 70% of cases, real estate professionals have confirmed the usefulness of interventions to increase the value of a property. But which of these should you focus on to really drive up the value of your home? According to buyers’ opinions, the green features they were most sensitive to were: heating/cooling interventions (33%), installation of windows, doors and panelling (29%), energy efficient lighting (23%), installation of energy efficient appliances (21%), repositioning rooms for better energy conservation (10%), and installing solar panels (3%).