Welcome back to All Things Home with Tina Beliveau. I am here to record an important episode for a question that I get all the time and or that I wish that I got all the time. One of my favorite past clients emailed me yesterday saying hey we're getting ready to do and then she listed several projects to her house and she wanted some contractor referrals which I gladly gave her and then she sent me the important follow-up question which is I'm curious how this impacts our resale value.
Will this increase resale value? Now the projects that she asked about in her example related to were related to landscaping drainage and basically helping with water management, putting a fence around the yard, and putting in a new driveway. And this is one thing that pains me to say but there are a lot of updates that we make to our homes for very good, valuable, credible reasons that don't tend to add to the bottom line in the future house value. The category of things that really don't add to value but are important to do for your home for either function or just overall maintenance include system updates.
Whether that's a roof, new HVAC, a new water heater, managing drainage, putting a waterproofing system in your basement, adding radon mitigation, all of that stuff. I hate to say it but I commit to just being really candid with people. They're a little bit thankless. They're not worthless but I will tell you in my 20 years of doing this, never have I ever walked through a house with a buyer and have them gone, oh all the systems are pretty new, let's pay them extra. It's more all the systems are new, good, I need that. It's just interesting what people associate value with.
Now there's certainly value overall in a house being in overall good shape system-wise. If you come to us and you have a house to sell and there's a lot that is at the very end of its life, the roof looks like it's deteriorating, the HVAC is 20 years old, the water heater is rusting at the bottom, that will impact value and then what happens is your house gets categorized in this fixer upper price category where you definitely get knocked down a peg in the value because people do have eyeballs, they do have brains, they will walk through the house and if they're in there with a good buyer agent, which as you know not all agents are created equal, but a good agent will look at everything and eye it up and start to point out the ages of everything, much of which is readily visible. Not everything but a lot, a lot, a lot.
It's just a nuance where essentially things in that category are expectations, they are not significant value adds. However, anything that borders on to aesthetic starts to add value. If your house has a terribly crumbly driveway and you repave it, that's good and should be done if it's within your budget and you can do what that takes. But I would say it more just helps your house be worth what it should be all along without something detracting from it.
Fencing is nice, people love a fenced yard. Again it's just interesting though, in my experience it tends to be something that people view as more of an expectation than a, oh I'll pay $5,000 extra for that. It's more, oh good I'm glad that's already there. Now sometimes first-time buyers do want very specific things already done. Your mileage may vary on everything but ultimately I think the thing that I always impart to people is the fact that system updates do not create a huge value add.
If you pour money into your roof and your HVAC and do all these things, just know that what you're doing is preserving the value of your home versus significantly adding to it. The things that add to value are aesthetic and functional to some degree opening up walls and fixing floor plan issues if you have a home that's very dated or cramped. It starts with curb appeal.
That's where the driveway comes in right? Any big turnoff in the first impression and I would also include a roof that clearly looks very bad in that category. There's value there but what people really notice is how sharp and clean the house looks overall. Is all the trim painted and in good order? Has the siding been power washed? Is the mulch fresh-looking? Are the bushes overgrown or not? Has the front door got a nice coat of paint on it? Do the front exterior lights look rusted and are they a really old-school style or are they modern and updated? Is the mailbox falling over or needing paint touch-ups? There's a lot exterior that really tends to fall in the aesthetic category and there are certain things that are very expensive.
New siding is expensive. New roofs are expensive. Everything costs a lot more post COVID post inflation and quite just frankly it's a little more painful than ever to put money into these system projects and just not see that return but it is necessary at times. However there are solutions that this is where I encourage you to reach out to us.
I've talked to people about siding a lot. I was just in a conversation this weekend with someone where their siding is in rough shape and I was saying are you sure it can't be repaired? Are you sure it can't be painted? And in their case it really cannot for specific reasons but when I bought my house in Lutherville in 2012 it had the most putrid color vinyl siding you can imagine.
If anyone wants to know text me and I'll show you a picture and it was not at all in my budget at that time to put new siding on the house. It's easily a $20,000 project for a larger mid-sized single-family home but we painted the siding for several thousand dollars and boy it was a complete facelift to the house. Sometimes certain things make sense to just make small incremental changes versus dropping the big bucks and obviously your budget and priorities are going to be a huge dictator of that as well.
Curb appeal is number one. The second layer is the first impression on the main level. How did the floors look? Is the paint touched up and in good order? The kitchen is huge for value and first impression slash kitchens are expensive also more expensive than ever to do all the things.
Paint and flooring are the biggest and paint is one of the cheapest things to do. House update wise flooring can get expensive if you're getting into hardwood so sometimes it's a conversation about refinishing or switching for LVT and the pros and cons of that.
First level is the second priority then I tend to say upstairs again paint and flooring are really what make an impact and then fixtures throughout. Light fixtures, cabinet hardware, door handles. If everything is super dated and you're trying to have the house look a little more modern those smaller easy swap outs have such a bigger return than dropping $30,000 on a brand new bathroom and it could be a lot more than that depending on the size of the bathroom and the grade of materials.
It's rare to put $30,000 or more in a new primary bathroom and then immediately see all of that come back to you in the value of the house. It's incremental, it's over time. One of the best ways to just slowly increase the value of your home is to do one new aesthetic project a year as your budget allows whether that's as simple as repainting one room or changing hardware throughout a certain level of the house.
Whether it's something large or small, slowly improving the aesthetics is the best way to do it. I also think it's good to live in your house for a while and really figure out what makes sense for you.
If you have questions and you're about to load a lot of money into your house and you're just curious and want a gut check from me or anyone at the Beliveau Group about whether that decision makes sense in the context of how long you expect to be in your home, please reach out.
You can email hello at the Beliveau Group and it'll get to one of us and we'll get back to you. Feel free to reach out to me on Instagram at Tina Beliveau and DM me a question anytime.
And of course we would love if you keep us in mind for your own move, for your friends, for your family, and anyone that we can help in the community. We welcome more questions, if there are other things you want to know, let us know and we will keep pumping out these episodes.
Thanks for listening and we'll talk to you soon.
