Curb Appeal? What’s The Deal?

With summer around the corner it is the absolute best time to think about doing remodels and upgrades around your home. Whether it’s a new driveway, a deck, or even just simple gardening, you can add value to your home and improve your quality of life by doing some improvement on your home’s exterior. According to leading online investment sources, a landscaping investment could potentially pay a 215% return while you may only recoup 68% of kitchen renovation fees.

It’s always a good idea to take a look at the outside of your home to evaluate what kind of changes would benefit the whole exterior. It could be painting your front door red to direct the attention away from the large garage or replacing the cracked, weed infested walkway. If you don’t know where to start you can always call on an expert to give you some improvement ideas.

Spend Time With a Pro

A REALTOR®’s specialty is in knowing the ins and outs of the real estate market with an emphasis on your local market. Spending an hour with a Realtor® can be extremely valuable as they can suggest many ideas that you could have missed. Even small suggested improvements, such as paint colors or landscaping tips that can go a long way toward improving the look and feel of your home. It’s always a good idea to start small and work your way up to bigger projects that may require more time and can become expensive.

Start With the Basics

Does your home have a bad paint job? Is your lawn dead or overgrown? Cosmetic fixes are the easiest to tackle and can make a huge difference to your home’s exterior appeal. One thing to look at before making drastic changes to your home is to look around your neighborhood to see what your neighbors are and aren’t doing. If your home is not up to standard of the other houses on the block then a good starting point is to match the quality of the rest of the neighborhood.

Plants and trees are important aesthetic pieces to any yard and can help make any home-front more inviting. If you’re not planning on moving for a while why not plant a nice shade tree? Not only will mature trees make your home more desirable but a fully grown, properly placed tree can cut your cooling costs by as much as 40 percent. Purchase plants that are native to your region or plants that are drought-tolerant; these require less water and maintenance, which means more savings to you and more green in your wallet.

A fresh coat of paint can bring new life to any exterior. You can’t go wrong with white. White is one of the safest, and most popular, colors to paint the exterior. For one thing, white can make your house look larger. It also soaks up the light in a shady yard, and is very clean-looking. One of the nice things about white is that you can paint the trim with a color that makes the entire house pop.

Once you’ve addressed the simpler fixes, move on to the bigger projects.

 The Hard Stuff

When considering additions or remodeling to your home it is a good idea to asses if it will be worth it for you not only economically but in the long run. How long will you be living in your home? Will you get to enjoy the benefits of the new lawn, the new pool, the wrap around porch, or the luxury backyard patio?

If you’re thinking about taking on a project that you can’t fund without taking out a loan it’s always a good idea to talk a mortgage advisor about your options. The Loan Officers at Stanford Mortgage offer free loan analysis services and can show you the best way to finance any large home improvement projects.

Contact me today if you’re looking for a professional I have a preferred vendor list of reputable local companies.