Do you have a house that you wish to be worth more than its current value? Or maybe you are in the market of buying a savvy investment opportunity. Regardless, if you're interested in renovation ideas to add value to your home, keep reading to find some clarity and direction....
There is an important question you need to ask yourself before you engage in a renovation... WHY? For a renovation to be a success, you need clarity on why you want to renovate. Lets dive a little deeper... Say you bought a house for a great price, you added a budget to renovate it onto the mortgage, and you plan to rent the property out as an investment once the renovation is done. This is a situation where you may not want to go custom everything, and make it your dream home. This situation, frequently calls for a VALUE renovation.
What is a value renovation? A value renovation, changes key components of a house that cater to curb appeal, functionality, and necessity. A strong value renovation, is both fluent in the tango, and the waltz. It is slow enough to cover the necessary details, yet efficient and fast enough to stay on budget.
Lets start with Curb appeal... What comes to mind? PAINT! Painting can change the feeling of a space. White is a common trend currently as it tends to make rooms feel bigger, more relaxing, and more modern than darker shades. Paint is affordable, and a good paint job can cover up blemishes in the drywall, cracks in the caulking, and gloss the trim up imitating the feeling of new... Flooring might also come to mind when you think of curb appeal. Stained, gross, dusty, bacteria ridden carpet... GONE. However, in this specific situation, you wont gain value with just any product you choose. A 3/4" traditional hardwood for example, although high quality, would not be the best option for value. Hardwood can be easily damaged, is expensive to purchase and install depending on the type of installation (nail down, etc...). Vinyl or Laminate would be the best decision for flooring in this situation (see blog on the value of vinyl floors).
Functionality... How do we make the place function better...? Do we have non load bearing walls that cut the place into maze of doorways? Perhaps we have wasted space that could be used for storage, or a kitchen with a funky layout that is cringy, no matter what eye you close. Open concept is the trend currently. Pushing the cabinets to the exterior of the room and adding an island to the center gives a grand appeal. Do we have a two bedroom basement that sits below the plumbing of the main kitchen of the house? Imaginably, we could put another kitchen in the basement and create a secondary suite. These are examples of adding valuable functionality to a home, through renovation.
Necessity... This can be at times subjective... so lets boil it down to some extreme issues, water and fire. If there are water hazards in your home, like an expired roof, leaking pipes, or cheap fixtures that can potentially cause floods... FIX THEM. Does your house have burn marks around the electrical sockets, and most of them are shorted out because of the aluminum wiring? FIX. These focuses will add value in the long term, even if the price up front is a large amount. Do not put these on the back burner, they can cause your insurance rates to go up, damage future renovations and worse yet, someone could get hurt.
I hope this was helpful, now go and add some value to your homes..
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