Are you planning on selling your home and don’t know what repairs are worth making? You don’t want to leave any money on the table by not doing improvements that are worth it and you certainly don’t want to waste money by over doing it. By the time you are finished reading this blog you are going to know exactly what you will need to do to your home to get the most return. Because let’s be real, we all want to get the most money possible. Read to the end for the cheapest and one of the most effective improvements you can make.

One of the most important things sellers don’t realize when they list their home, is how the look or feel of their house will impact a buyer. I’ve had buyers leave a newly built property and say they thought it was too dated simply because the furniture was old. The furniture that doesn’t even come with the house! Selling your home is literally like running a business. If you are going to buy a car and when you see it, the paint is chipped, the tires are old and you open the door and it’s full of trash and disgusting, what are you going to do? Not buy that car. Let’s say for the sake of argument you still want to buy that car, there is no way you are going to pay list price or even close to it, am I right? That car could even have a fair price you still aren’t going to pay it! Now let’s say you take that same car and fix the paint chips, replace the tires, clean it out and clean it up. When you get there this time, its beautiful and you know everyone is going to want it. Suddenly, that list price seems more than fair, cheap even. That’s how you need to look at selling your home. You want it to look the best it can for the lowest amount out of your pocket. The trick is you can’t over do it and you can’t under do it, the sweet spot is where you make the most money.

Now that you understand why it’s important to make a return on your home, I’m going to show you how. Before we get into the repairs themselves, I am going to explain what you need to do to get started. First things first, you need to take your emotion and preferences out of the equation. Don’t look at it as being “your” house anymore. You are going to have to make it appealing to all different types of people and generations. The more people that like it, the more money you make. If you see something in your house you don’t like, 9 times out of 10 a buyer won’t either and if it’s standing out change it as long as its not something huge. Make sure you go the cheapest but on trend route with design changes. You may not like that trend but it doesn’t matter anymore because you are selling it. Also, don’t ever use high end materials, it will defeat the purpose of making money. Try having a bunch of different people give you opinions on what they like and don’t like in your house. Make sure you get people of different ages that have differing styles and don’t take offense to their suggestions, use them to make more money! Finally, before you start have your real estate professional come to the house to make sure you are on the right track and there isn’t anything they would suggest doing differently.