Thanks, everyone. And this is correct in our area - the square footage of our house as listed was without the finished part of the basement. The finished basement added about 200 sq feet.
I think we’re just going to go ahead with the kitchen/mud room floor right now because my dad and uncle even said they’d come help lay it - we’ll just buy the materials. The kitchen is somewhat outdated, but mostly the countertops and flooring - we updated the hardware on the cabinets when we moved in, and that made a huge difference - the cabinets are still in great shape.
I didn’t even think about that there might be hardwood floor underneath our carpet. We’ll probably leave the dining room (I thought there was a seam between the dining room and living room, but there’s not, so we’d have to do both rooms), but we may see if there’s hardwood under the master bedroom floor and the guest bedroom floor - if so, we can probably refinish it in a weekend (or two, we suck at home improvement) project.
When we do sell, we’re not expecting to make much, if any, of a profit on the house due to the area. So we’re pretty aware that the improvements that we’ve made thus far are mainly for our benefit (although we did paint over the hideous mustard yellow in the living room and the horrible green in the kitchen - the next owners should be grateful ).
Agreed - with the proviso that while some improvements will not pay back what you invest in them, they could still help your house sell more quickly (this obviously is local market-dependent).
Some sellers put a lot of money into new landscaping and there are landscapers/garden designers who’ll advise you that this is a good idea. Mistake!! Many buyers will see elaborate landscaping as extra work or not to their tastes and it’ll be a turnoff. Cleanup and tidiness are more important for outdoor spaces.
Side mini-rant: how did real estate agents ever get people to start calling them Realtors? We don’t refer to Doctors, Lawyers or NBA Basketball Players. Considering what real estate agents do and the conspicuous lack of exclusivity inherent in the job, the capital letter (with or without TM) isn’t warranted.
Absolutely. A great example of this is my basement laundry room. I painted it a clean white, walls and floor. It won’t add value when we go to sell the house, but it will make it more appealing and sale-able; people won’t look at it and say, “Well, the laundry room is kind of a dark hole.”
Sometimes I feel a little medieval and capitalize a whole bunch of nouns.
I am not a realtor, but I am a remodeler, and I agree with pretty much everything here. Most of these things you can do yourself. As has been said, make it pleasing to the eye.
Kitchens are a drawing card. If you can afford it, ceramic tile instead of lino or vct on the floor. Same for bathrooms.
Paint everything right before you market if needed. Patch dings and holes in the walls. Fix everything people actually touch. Cabinet doors, towel racks, stuff like that. Fix doors that swing on their own or bind when opening or closing. Fix that loose gutter and replace that rotted trim around the back door.
Believe me from experience, although not structural issues, messed up doors and such will lead some prospective buyers into the “Damn, this place is falling apart” thing. Cracks in walls/ceilings freak people out, even if you know it’s just a surface problem. Fix that.
I have done a fair amount of work for a couple of realtors who “flip” houses on the side, and am probably forgetting things at this late hour, but you get the idea.
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