Smart move: Upgrading your home before you sell. Bad move: Making the wrong upgrades to your home. If you want top dollar for your home, making repairs and upgrades to your home is smart. But making the wrong home upgrades is a fast way to lose money and even decrease the value of your home.
To help you avoid that, here are 4 home upgrade mistakes to NOT make!
1. Improving too much. A house doesn’t need to be perfect to sell. Buyers like to see nice, move-in ready homes, but they’re often not looking for much beyond the basics: a nice kitchen, pretty bathrooms, and good flooring and paint. Improving beyond that could mean spending money on upgrades buyers don’t really care about, which could decrease your ROI.
2. DIYing and failing. Doing a few DIYs around the house is a great, fast way to increase your home’s value. But DIYs tend to turn into bigger projects, especially if you make a mistake. Sometimes it actually ends up being cheaper to hire the professional from the start. Make sure you’re realistic about your skills before you start a project and consider whether or not it would be better to hire the work out to a professional.
3. Custom renovations. Since you’re doing these upgrades with selling in mind, it doesn’t make sense to do custom work on a house you’re not going to be in long-term. Instead, just take the stock options when you’re renovating your kitchen or bathrooms.
4. High-end upgrades with no added value. Buyers love luxury, but they’re not going to pay $10,000 over asking just because you have a Sub-Zero stove. Keep this in mind when choosing what to upgrade in your house. Most of the time, low mid-range choices will get you the best bang for your buck while high-end will actually cost you more than you make back.
Doing the right upgrades can seriously boost the value of your property and help you make more off the sale—but the wrong upgrades can cost you. Work with your real estate agent to determine just which upgrades are needed to get you the best ROI when selling your home.