Renovating your home before you sell seems like a great way to boost your home value and get more money, right? Sometimes it is. A lot of the time, it isn’t, nor is it that straightforward.
The wrong renovations or the right ones done badly can, and will work against you regardless of what you expected the outcome to be. The thing is, buyers notice more than you might realize, and inspectors don’t miss anything.
So let’s take a look at some renovation mistakes that will come back to bite sellers taking this approach.
Over Improving
There is always going to be a natural ceiling to prices in your local area. Comparable sales will always top out at a certain point, and adding a high-end primary suite to push through this won’t always work. The market sets the ceiling, not the seller or the quality of your finishes. If you’re spending $40,000 on a kitchen renovation for a $350,000 neighborhood, you’ll almost always never recoup those costs. It’ll just make the house more expensive to sell. You need to match the level of finish to what buyers in the price bracket expect and are willing to pay for.
Doing Structural Work Without Permits
Unpermitted work is one of the fastest ways to derail a sale. No one wants to buy a house that doesn’t have the right permits for the work that’s been carried out. Buyers’ attorneys will flag this, as will home inspectors and lenders, who can and do refuse to finance a property without permits for work undertaken on it.
Here’s the thing: if you’re cutting corners and doing the work yourself, and you don’t obtain a permit for that addition you built or the basement you finished, buyers will walk. However, working with expert remodeling contractors means you can uncover the permits you need to ensure all work is carried out legally, and you won’t be putting any potential buyers off.
Personalizing Not Neutralizing
Here’s the thing. You need to make sure any renovations you carry out prior to selling are done so with the future buyer in mind. This means you need a blank canvas. Now is not the time to put your stamp on anything. Bold tile choices here, bright colours, statement walls, or highly specific built-ins are not the change to be made. They narrow your buyer pool, and those who do look around won’t be able to see themselves living in the space, as your choices are everywhere.
The goal is to create a home that anyone viewing it can see themselves living in. They need to be able to imagine how it will look with their stamp on it, not yours.
Ignoring What Buyers Actually Inspect
When you’re renovating, you need to do so with the buyers in mind. What will they actually look at? They’ll look at things like the roof, the HVAC, electrical panels, and the foundations. A home can look great on the surface and still lose potential buyers as maintenance issues have been overlooked. So when you look for aspects of the property to remodel and improve, it’s worth looking into factors like this first before committing to anything.
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