Renovations To Consider For Increasing Your Home’s Value by Cody Brinkman Brinkman

Every time I walk through a house I’m always looking at ways to maximize the value of the home. It’s just something that’s engrained in me. I can’t help myself. I cut my teeth in the real estate world by doing renovations to beat up rentals and doing house flips. That eventually transitioned into being a short term rental operator and being a real estate broker. I guess those skills have a bit of utility on my current path.

The type or scope of the renovations you’re going to do should depend ALOT on what your goals are. If you’re planning on sticking around for the long term, I say go wild! I don’t personally recommend painting your cabinets salmon or going with turquoise countertops or anything like that. But the longer you’re sticking around the more likely you are to recoup your investment on the remodel in the form of equity.

Time To Get Your Home Photoshoot Ready

If you’re planning on doing a spruce up on your home for the purpose of resale, I highly recommend you keep the design theme neutral. Trends come and go. Those “Golden Oak” cabinets that were so cool in the 90’s make your house look pretty dated now. You can be a little brave with your design, but not too brave!

Another thing you need to take into account is what the end value of your home is going to be worth and what your neighborhood will support for that value. That last thing you want to do is waste money on renovations that aren’t going to pay you back. You probably don’t need $75 sq ft Quartz countertops in a neighborhood where the highest comp is 175k. Laminate countertops will be fine. If you’re having trouble figuring out what your renovated value should be, give your friendly neighborhood realtor a call. Don’t trust the online value calculators like Zillow’s “zestimate”. If you want some ammo on why those can be WAY off – READ MY ARTICLE ABOUT ZILLOW’S ZESTIMATE.

FULL DISCLAIMER – I am not an interior designer. I’m just a guy that sells real estate and pays attention to what sells and what doesn’t. With that out of the way, lets get into it. I’ll try to keep this in order of least expensive to most expensive.

Clean and De-clutter

This is such low hanging fruit that I almost didn’t want to include this on the list. You can hardly call this home renovations, but it unlocks otherwise hidden value. I see listings all the time where owners don’t take the time to do this. This is a requirement, not a recommendation. If you’re working with a Realtor and they don’t mind listing a dirty home, that should give you pause. It costs you almost nothing but your time. If your time is limited, hire a cleaner. Seriously. It’s that important.

Paint and Update Fixtures

This has such a good “bang for the buck” value that it’s probably a glitch in the matrix. Whenever I have clients that are a bit adventurous, but not too handy, this is the step I recommend. If you’re just painting the interior of a house you can probably do this yourself for around $500.00. Tack on fixtures like door handles, lights and cabinet pulls and this can really transform the look of your house on a meager budget.

Landscaping

First impressions are everything, and what screams “I have my life together” better than a well-manicured lawn? I don’t think you need to get too crazy with this either. So long as the grass is cut, branches are trimmed and your hasta plants aren’t dead I think you’ll be fine. Mulch goes a real long way too. I myself don’t have much of a green thumb… that’s why I have rock in my flower beds. Even I haven’t found a way to kill those yet.

“Legalize” Your Illegal Bedrooms

This is one of my favorite renovations. We’re starting to get a bit up there in the “spendy” category but I’ve never had a client lose money on this strategy. I do recommend you hire this one out, it takes some gnarly equipment to cut a hole in a basement wall. The cost to do this ranges between $2,500 – $3,500 but at a minimum you’re going to double your money by adding legal bedrooms. There is one caveat to this. The less bedrooms you have to start the better. If you currently have 2 bedrooms and you “legalize” a 3rd, you’re going to get the most value out of that. If you have 6 bedrooms already and “legalize” a 7th, you’re not going to get as much back for that 7th bedroom. Law of diminishing returns… or something like that.

Flooring

New carpet, tile and flooring go a LONG way to improve the feel of your home. This is another one of those categories where it’s a bit “spendy” though. Laminate flooring is relatively easy to install with a few basic tools if you’re feeling handy. There are cost effective options on laminate flooring as well. Dingy carpets will definitely scare buyers away. At the very least you might be able to get away with cleaning them. If there too far gone, it’s best to replace them.

Kitchen and Bathrooms

Kitchen and bathroom updates. You didn’t think I was going to forget this one did you?!? What home renovations list would be complete without mentioning kitchens and bathrooms! I know you’ve heard this on HGTV a million times that “Kitchens and bathrooms sell the home” but it’s so true! Generally speaking this is about the most expensive thing you can do on this list. That doesn’t mean you can’t make a big visual impact on a meager budget though. Especially if you’re willing to roll up your sleeves.

I’ve got another disclaimer – I’m not a licensed contractor either, I’m just fairly handy. Here’s an example of a kitchen remodel we did last year on one of our places. It started out life as a builder basic 90’s Golden Oak special. We swapped out the counter tops, redid the back splash, painted the cabinets, removed some upper cabinets and added a shelf. All in on this we spent just a shade over $4,000.00 to achieve this look. Now, I know what you’re thinking – “Cody, I thought you said don’t pick any funky colors?? Those cabinets look like a John Deere Tractor?!?” Here’s what I have to say about that. This was designed to stand out because we use this property as an Airbnb and wanted it to attract attention. Best thing I can say is “Do as I say, not as I do”.

I Feel A Conclusion Brewing…

To sum things up, unless you live in a brand new house it’s likely that you’re leaving some meat on the bone in the form of equity. There are lots of ways you can increase the value of your home. Some are listed above, there are still others I didn’t mention. And here’s the tricky part, even if you’re looking to sell soon sometimes it doesn’t make sense to do those renovations, but sometimes it does. That depends on a lot of things like your budget, motivations for selling, timeline etc… Frankly, that’s a discussion for another article.

If you’re curious to know what your home is valued at and whether it’s worth it to spruce it up or leave well enough alone, feel free to reach out to either of us. We would love to be of assistance.

-Cody & Jos-