With winter settling down upon the greater Sydney area, now is the perfect time to prepare your home for sale in the coming spring. While the weather is gloomy, you can lift your spirits and raise your home’s value by planning some upgrades that will pay off when your home sells in a few months. We’ve asked some of the best Sydney home staging professionals how best to invest your home upgrade dollars to get the best ROI. Here’s what they had to say.
Add an Attic
Home buyers today are on the hunt for more space for less money. Basements and attics, rooms that already exist but are unused, can add space for relatively little money. Because you need not build out from the house’s footprint, the roof and flooring already exist, saving big bucks.
Finishing an attic will net you an ROI (Return on Investment) of from 70 to 80 percent. Adding this living or storage space can raise the value of your home by 30 percent, which is nothing to sneeze at.
Add a Deck
To the same end – adding living space – building a deck, patio, or outdoor living space can reward you with an ROI of 75 percent. Now is also a great time to find professionals to take care of the job. Most builders who specialise in decks and outdoor improvements enjoy their peak season in the spring and summer.
Invest in a Better Door
These days, a more secure home is a more desirable home. Not only is such a home thriftier to insure, it’s also comforting for all concerned. So – replace your exterior doors with ones made from steel or fibreglass for added security. An investment in a fibreglass door will net you approximately 82 percent return, while steel construction gets an amazing 91.1 percent.
Insulate
With today’s eco-savvy buyers looking for savings down the line, extra insulation is an excellent way to ensure a bonus when the sale is final. Adding more insulation to your home can return as much as 116.9 percent on your investment, according to Realtor.com. The installation of insulation can be accomplished by even those who have little or no experience with home improvements. Nevertheless, we do encourage you to do a little online research first and to follow all safety precautions carefully.
Kitchens and Baths
Adding a bathroom can be one of the best investments going when it comes to adding living space, making your home more attractive. Unfortunately, adding an entire bathroom can be very expensive. This brings your ROI down overall. A bathroom addition can cost $40,000 and will return about $20,000.
Smaller upgrades may make more sense. Upgrading kitchen appliances and attending to other small renovation projects such as painting cabinets and changing benchtops in your kitchen can rack up the cash at sale time. Overall, kitchen projects can be the best place to spend your renovation dollars – but – and this is an important one, don’t invest so much that you price yourself out of the market.
We recommend that you always consult with both your real estate selling agent and your local Sydney home staging expert before you sink much money into your home ahead of listing. There is a tipping point that must be given a wide berth. While it may seem perfectly reasonable to invest heavily in a bathroom renovation to please prospective buyers, you can easily create a masterpiece that demands more money than your home can support, so keeping it all in balance is critical.
When you select a home staging company, make sure they have been in business long enough to understand construction and its costs. Because these companies frequently help homeowners plan and implement larger renovations, a good home design and staging company can be the best sort of safety net to protect you and your investment. Not only do these folks know what features are trending in today’s market, they also know how much such improvements will cost, what they will return, and whether or not your prospective buyer will be as taken with the results as you are. Part of a successful home improvement project is knowing that your final product will, indeed, pay off in the end.
