Top 3 Affordable Home Improvements To Make Before Listing Your Home

Selling your house can be a nerve wracking experience. There can be a looming fear that the home will sit on the market or it won't bring the same proceeds as you're hoping for.

To shake some of the pre-listing anxiety, there are things that you can do to attract potential buyers to your property. We're not talking some large-scale break the bank remodeling project, either. We're talking low-cost, simple sprucing up. Chances are high that you'll see a payback on these items.

1. Paint And/Or Clean The Walls

Home buyers will want to be able to envision themselves in the space, and a great way to do that is to start with freshly painted or cleaned walls. Bright or loud wall colors can be a major turn off (even if you love them) and distracting. A updated exterior can also add a more modern and fresh aesthetic. When it comes to painting, it’s vital that the right type of paint and colors are selected.

Zillow did an analysis of over 32,000 images of homes sold and their finding was that rooms painted in pale blue or gray, sold about $5,440 on av

erage above the projected sales price. Bathrooms and kitchens are the top spaces for a full paint job, due to the frequency of use. If your walls are still in great condition and only have a few marks or finger prints, washing them can also produce a similar outcome.

2. Make Your Yard Inviting & Elegant

Landscaping makes or breaks the curb appeal of a home. Stunning landscaping can create a spectacular lasting impression. The National Association of Realtors conducted a survey, that concluded 71% of home buyers take curb appeal into consideration while looking for a home. The landscaping is the first thing a serious home buyer is going to notice about the exterior of the home (in photos or in person), unless you want to give the impression that your house is a fixer-upper, make sure it's in tiptop shape. Luckily there are many inexpensive and simple things you can do to add that curb appeal.

Examples include:

Mowing and edging the lawn on a regular basis

Watering, applying fertilizer and removing weeds

Adding pops of color with annuals, seasonal flowering shrubs, or perennials

Planting a few flowering trees

A quick search shows that the return on investment can be anywhere between 100% up to 1000%. Well worth investing a few hundred dollars into. Hiring a professional can help amplify the results by creating a design that compliments the architecture of the home. Keep in mind not to go overboard, as too extensive of landscaping can be seen as a detriment due to the high maintenance cost. Gorgeous low maintenance landscape is the current trend.

3. Upgrade The Lighting

Does your living space have outdated surface mount lights? Kitchen have the recessed lighting? Aged lighting really date the house. An easy swap to more modern fixtures.

Now is also a great time to update aged light bulbs, ensure that bulbs match within rooms and have proper wattage. Updating to energy efficient bulbs and fixtures can also make the home more appealing as more buyers are looking for higher efficiency homes.

Another huge part of curb appeal is the exterior lighting. Make sure walkways and driveways are well lit and create a welcoming experience.

Natural light is often overlooked by sellers when staging their house. We tend to live in our houses and not think about how others are viewing it for the first time. Open up the curtains and blinds to let some of that radiant light in.

Final Thoughts

The thing that makes these three affordable home improvements distinctive is that all have the potential to immediately change the buyer's opinion of your home and potentially raise the value. You can easily conquer each update, one at a time until it's completed, helps alleviate the cost and the time.

Do you want additional advice or information on other affordable ideas that you can make before selling your home? Please speak to your real estate professional. They’ll be glad to help and share their knowledge.