How to Develop Your Homes’ Potential
In a time when finances may be tighter than ever, moving home may simply not be an option, but developing your home and adding to its value could be. You might be completely fed up with certain aspects of your home, so make a list of these, alongside a list of the things that you do like about your home, and start evaluating what may be involved in changing what you don’t like about your home.
Once you start looking around at your friends and family’s homes you may start to notice things that could be changed and developed in your home. For example, you may want to re-fit the kitchen or change your bathroom, but once you start looking around these ideas might develop into something more; such as putting double-doors into your garden from your kitchen, or adding an en-suite to the master bedroom at the same time as getting a new bathroom. If you think of these possible changes before you go ahead with re-fitting what you already have, you could save yourself a lot of money by envisioning where developments can be made at minimal increased costs.
By analysing where you can develop your home you can help change your home into somewhere you get a lot more enjoyment and use out of, as well as adding potential value to your house price.
Getting Value for Your Money
Once you have identified where it is that you would like to develop your home, you will need to start thinking about how much of an investment this is going to be. How much will your building materials cost? how long will you stay in the home after you have made these developments and are you just looking to increase the value of your home?
If you don’t think you’ll be staying in the property for long after you have carried out these developments, then it may be a good idea to look at cheaper building materials in order to make it more cost effective. However, if this is a development for your future in this home, then more expensive materials and fixtures will be a far more worthwhile investment, giving you much more for your money.
In a lot of cases, people will make improvements to their home without even thinking about what sort of value this will add to their home. Equally, people will often carry out developments thinking it will add value to their home, when it really doesn’t and can sometimes lead to a decreased sale price.
Evidently, there are certain developments that are guaranteed to add value to your home; like adding a bedroom, converting the loft, and any other things that create more space. On the other hand, if you are adding the more bespoke of improvements, like a sauna or outdoor swimming pool, you may find this doesn’t really increase the selling price of your home.
Knowing Your Home’s Maximum Price
When developing your home, it’s important to do your research of the area and know just what the maximum price is that you could sell your home for; this is also known as the ‘ceiling’ price. This will be based on your location and the property market at the time of sale; so if the homes along your street are selling for £200,000 then you are unlikely to get anymore than this for your own property.
Therefore, when making improvements, particularly to increase the price of your home, assess whether you want the money back from the development when you sell the property. For example, if you are going to spend £15,000 on a kitchen, don’t immediately expect that you’re going to get an additional £15,000 when you sell your home.
How do You Add Value to Your Home?
As you can see above, it isn’t a case of spending X amount of money on improvements to increase your house price by X amount.
Therefore, if you are looking to increase your property’s value, don’t get too carried away with updating the bathroom and kitchen when you should be assessing other parts of the property, including the damp in one of your walls or the leak in your garage roof. These are essential repairs that need carrying out on your home to help increase or maintain its value.
So, before you look at renovating those parts of your house, look at any problems that need fixing that have the potential to cause long-term damage to your property; look into updating your overall home to give it a more modern/contemporary look that will appeal to more buyers, and look at adding space to your property.
Adding Value through Your Kitchen, Garden & Bathroom
You can add value to your home through your kitchen or bathroom as long as you don’t get carried away with how much you spend. Try to assess how much you can spend in relation to how much your home could potentially be worth when you sell it.
When carrying out the improvements try to ensure that they are in-fitting with your homes overall appearance; for example, a modern kitchen with all of the latest gadgets may not fit in with the character of that quaint cottage your own. However, having a kitchen and bathroom that are of a good quality can add around 10% onto your property’s overall value.
Your garden is often the part of the property that can be overlooked as to where you can add value to it. However, in a lot of cases, by just having a garden that looks easy to maintain and is family-friendly, you could add up to 15% to your property’s final sale price.
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