Home repairs ROI

In My Humble Opinion
1

OK I have a number of home repairs I am considering. Anyone out there tell me what impacts resale value positively, what is a wash, and what projects are generally money losers?

A little background…this house is a former, neglected rental property that is structurally sound, but needs mostly cosmetic work. I want to fix it up and get rid of it!

Some projects I am considering…

revinyl kitchen

new carpet throughout

interior paint

vinyl siding replacing aluminum

new kitchen counters

new kitchen cabinets

new dishwasher

replacement windows

replace front and rear porch

replace rundown privacy fence (or just remove)

ANY ADVICE IS APPRECIATED!!

2

It somewhat depends on the surrounding neighborhood. If it is a nice area, fix up the house and you should get a decent return. If its a ghetto, don’t waste your money on things like cabinets, carpets etc. Just make it livable (barely). A good rule of thumb (at least it has worked pretty well for me) is to have the worst house on the best street. Let the other homes bring your value up instead of you carrying them. I would say put a little money into it and KEEP IT! Rent that thing out and have someone else pay your mortgage for you and build equity for your future.

Have fun.

3

Last time I read anything about it, the only thing with a positive ROI was paint. Anything else (remodelling the bathroom, kitchen, etc) increased the value of the house, but not as much as was spent on the remodel.

Kinda discouraging.

4

IMHO, in dealing with rentals, or a quick sell for someone else to do the rental thing, one, two and three should be done and can be done very inexpensively. Also, replacing the privacy fence. Gives it a clean look. Appliances and major refurbishment aren’t a good ROI unless the neighborhood is comin’ on up…

5

As a contractor, i do a lot of remodeling, and am remodeling an old rental now. The customer wants to do the same as you.

My 2 cents:
revinyl kitchen- Yes, buyers hate bad floor coverings.

new carpet throughout- see above

interior paint: definitely. Paint is one of the cheapest ways to make a house look good. Use a good stain blocking primer, especially if smokers lived there.

vinyl siding replacing aluminum- No, with a caveat. unless the siding is badly decayed all over, just replace damaged pieces. However, look at soffit, facia, etc (outside trim) and repair/replace as necessary. You want to fix things that will draw the eye of the prospective buyer.

new kitchen counters- no, unless they are in very bad shape.

new kitchen cabinets-no, but you might consider repainting/staining. Also you want the doors and drawers to have no problems opening/closing, etc

new dishwasher- no

replacement windows-no but consider new weatherstripping on all doors and windows

replace front and rear porch- This can be iffy. You damn sure don’t want anyone falling through a rotting porch. You might need to replace some flooring, depending on condition, and also make damn sure the railings are stout. And make sure the steps are sound!

replace rundown privacy fence (or just remove) w/o seeing the property, I can’t offer an opinion.

You didn’t mention one of the main things, the roof. Leaks kill drywall. I have seen whole ceilings just fall down because of a few months of drips. I LOVE those jobs!

Also, if the house is very old, electrical/plumbing/HVAC needs to be checked out.

Other buyer peeves are such like doors that bind, squeeky floors, dribbly shower heads and so on, basically stuff that irritates people.

My point is, you want to get max bucks for the house for the least amount on repairs without doing halfass work.

I don’t know if you plan on doing this work yourself or contract it out. If you contract it, some advice:

MAKE SURE THE CONTRACTOR IS LICENSED, BONDED AND INSURED! I can’t emphasize this enough.

This protects you both. If you get burned, you have legal recourse same with the contractor.

Get at least 3 bids and compare.

Demand references. Most reputable contractors will happily give you refs, and quite a few even have a “portfolio” of pictures documenting previous jobs. We are quite proud of our work! :slight_smile:

Read the bids thoroughly.

Pardon the long post…I am sure I missed/screwed up some stuff, having had a few brews, but I hope this helps

6

If they’re older style wood windows, they would be relatively easy to replace with new windows. When I worked for Pacesetter, we could do an entire house in about 6 hours (two guys). Just be careful removing the trim so you can put it back up. Might not be D-I-Y. But, if it’s only a sell out and your’re not going to live there, I would leave them. As long as they’re in good repair.

The painting and vinyl you should be able to do yourself, if you’re relatively handy. Do the paint before you replace floors.

Carpet laying is usually not a do it yourself type of job. I sub it out.

Siding can be tricky. Often, the style used on older houses is no longer available. A good power washing can get rid of years of grime. Be careful of bad spots! You may leak to the inside! You can collapse your entire ceiling if you get too happy with the water wand around soffit vents! I’ve had to repair some unfortunate D-I-Y projects because of this.

The porches. Are they good enough just to renail/screw some loose places? Or are they a safety hazard? Replacing is usually out of the league of D-I-Yers. Hire it out.

Forget the new counters, unless they are just horrible. TSP can clean them up.

Get all the grout clean in any tiled area. That can go a long way in buyer’s eyes.

7

Good point on the grout NoClueBoy. One I forgot. Buyers see stained grout and think "Eewww, Icky, especially in bathrooms. Same with nicotine stained tile.

Re windows you should see the old sash windows in this 70 yr old adobe/plaster house I am doing now. Trim sunk into the walls, quarter inch rock halfass applied over shaky plaster with DIY tape/float job…

And I’m sure you will agree it is such a rush to fix stuff like that, stand back, look at it and say “Damn we’re good!”

8

You are right!

I sometimes feel that, if the home owner doesn’t notice something I did, that I succeeded. Because it doesn’t stand out or look weird.

Same thing with the faux finishes. If it looks faux, do a better job next time!

Even though it has some drawbacks, I think our line of work is highly rewarding.

9

Yes, but don’t do what we did on our house (previously a rental). We got the whole house painted, then got new carpeting throughout. The problem? The new carpeting - a berber - was shorter than the old carpeting. Along every baseboard, you can see 1/4 inch or so of the old trim color. Ick!

10

Good point, Athena.

In my mind, I knew what I meant. But, for clarification:

If you are going to replace carpet or flooring,
1 - pull it up,
2 - then paint,
3 - then lay new carpet/flooring.
You will have to touch up, but not like the problem you ran into.

11

Athena, couldn’t you get some base-shoe molding to cover it up? It’s that quarter-round shaped stuff, real cheap at the home store.

12

Here’s a quick rule-of-thumb I’ve heard, possibly complete BS but worth considering, IMHO:

Only two home improvement things provide a positive return on your investment–

  1. Painting the FRONT of the house;
  2. Planting some flowers in the front, visible from the curb.

The other stuff may or may not be necessary in order to sell the place, depending upon each specific situation, but won’t necessarily provide a positive return on your investment.

13

This stuff about ROI is a little misleading. The only return it’s considering is the immediate impact on resale value. Of course, that’s the only value the OP is interested in, but most every bit of maintenance on a house has a positive ROI if you account for long term opportunity costs of not doing them - damage done to structure when shingles aren’t maintained, damage to wooden siding left unpainted, etc.

Describing the lack of ROI in terms of resale value as “depressing” requires one not to care about the structural integrity of their house, or the unpleasantness of living somewhere with cracked plaster and threadbare carpets.

14

Our real estate agent says the same thing, Pablito. She calls it “curb appeal” and says it’s the number one thing people look for. Inside, floors are a bigger deal than paint, but a fresh coat of paint will go a long way.

We replaced major stuff in our current home: Furnace, patio, most windows, complete new 200amp service electrical panel, the list goes on and on. We mainly did all this for ourselves as we knew we’d be here for at least 5 years. According to our agent, the most important ROI stuff we’ve done is repair and plant shrubs in the front garden, fix the side fenced area (visible from the street: the old owners had a dog run in there, and the grass was destroyed) and the new roof. Everything else is "iffy’ according to the agent and you’ll still really only get what similar homes in the area are worth, more or less.

I was surprised that windows aren’t a big ROI. I really thought they’d be worth more to do but apparently they aren’t.

15

Windows are worth more if you consider impact on heating/cooling bills, unless you’re about to move/sell.

16

It WAS a long post, but very informative. Thanks for taking the time to write it out.

I wish I knew more about this. The house I am in now was a house I had rented out for years. The last tenants screwed me over so I am moving in to repair the damage they did.

My plan is to sell this place and buy an older farm house and restore it. I know next to nothing about restoration, but I am reading up on it. Am I crazy?

17

You might get some permits from the city if they are required. Nothing sucks more than your neighbor ratting on you & the city putting a big red sign on your door to keep you from doing anything.

18

Are you planning on re-selling it to a prospective landlord who will sublet for rental income, or as a primary residence? If it’s the former, ask someone in the business what they look for when house shopping. If it’s the latter, my priorities would be[ol][li]Interior paint (A neutral white for a neat appearance when showing)Replacement windows (It’s one of the 1st things an engineer looks at in his survey report in colder climates)[/ol]Are all the other repairs critical? If not, I’d avoid them. They are relative and a matter of personal taste. What good is replacing a kitchen or carpets if they don’t appeal to the new buyer?[/li]For example, if I saw a house with vinyl fooring in the kitchen or carpets (no matter how new), I’d be on the phone to get a price on hardwood flooring & granite tile before I even negotiated a price. Odds are, I’d be tearing the fence out too.

19

For $15 you can get a copy of this book which goes into calculating how much you should be able to get from any given house, and how much work is the optimum for improving the value. I have a friend who makes his living by buying repo’d or run down houses in fairly nice neighborhoods and repairing them until they are up to market value, he makes at least $20k per house, but he shops for just the right house before purchasing anything.