The outlook for the next few years is a little grim if you’re a home owner – dropping house prices are causing a great worry for many people. Some home owners will actually experience negative equity shortly, if not already. All the same, there are means to head off this problem. Namely, to add value to your property. How? By making home improvements. DIY / home improvements can bring far greater value to your house than the effective cost of those improvements.
So where to start? A good place to start is to think about the least used rooms in your property. It could be a utility room or an adjoining garage. Knocking down a wall can transform such a rarely used area into a kitchen or living room extension which can bring a great deal of value to your property. Think also about your plumbing and lighting. Dimmer switches can transform ugly bright rooms into cosy, warm rooms just via a dimmer dial – it’s just a dimmer switch, but showing such a pleasant ambience in your home makes the prospective home buyer feel more relaxed! Possibly your property doesn’t have a downstairs lavatory? Then get one installed where your utility room is – again this can add much value to your property.
Maybe your 4 bedroomed house could be reformed to 3 bedroom by knocking a wall down, and producing a much larger room. This may sound slightly odd, but in reality bigger rooms will hand you a better sale value, and quite often people use a 4th bedroom strictly as a spare room.
Next take a look at your garden. Do you have a shed? If not, consider installing one in the garden. Why? Well, here is one place where you can stock all your gear that’s overloading up your spare bedroom / garage / utility room. Sheds encourage gardening also, and enthusiastic gardeners (read: your potential house buyer) like a garden with a shed. And get into gardening yourself! If your garden’s been overlooked, then mow the lawn, plant flowers, trim the garden edges. Install some decking if you have some room. Just providing a beverage to a prospective buyer out in your pretty garden can really make the place sell itself – they feel comfortable in such an environment – so your garden is very important to help raise the price of your property and help sell your home.
Where can you get assistance? You can’t do it all by yourself. Have a look online! A home improvement directory like homeandgardenlistings.co.uk has all kinds of home and garden websites listed there : including a directory of bathroom fitters, directory of builders, directory of plumbers, electricians, directory of general furniture suppliers, directory of bedroom furniture and beds suppliers etc.
These are just some fundamental points on raising the value of your property in these bad times, but we hope this will spur you into some action!