If you’re thinking about, or have decided to sell your home, you might also be thinking about ways to increase your home’s value before you sell. If that’s the case, I’ve got 7 ways you can increase your home’s value without sinking a bunch of time and tons of money into projects!

A Fresh Coat Of Paint

A big turn-off for potential homebuyers is dated, damaged, or faded paint. Grab some painters tape, a few brushes, rollers, and a decent bucket of paint + primer with a neutral color (bold does not equal better!) and identify rooms in your house that need some refreshing. 

You can re-paint several rooms in your house over a weekend and give your home a nice facelift on the inside!

TIP: An accent wall can tie a whole room together and transform an otherwise boring room. If you’ve got an ordinarily plain looking room, you can make one wall a different color to create an accent wall to draw attention. 

Bathroom Refresh

Another way you can increase your home’s value before you sell can be found in the bathroom.

Believe it or not, when it comes to selling your home, the bathrooms are almost as important as the kitchen! Evaluate your bathrooms and see if there needs to be some updating to add a little extra appeal to make homebuyers swoon over your home.

Look for things like paint, fixtures, knobs, cabinets, and even the toilets/showers themselves to see if there can be some improvements done. You’d be surprised how much change just painting your cabinets and installing new knobs can make inside your bathroom! 

Kitchen Facelift

The MOST important room in the house for most homebuyers is the kitchen, and your focus on this family gathering area should be put here in a big way! Kitchen cabinets can be painted/refreshed in a weekend and new drawer and cabinet pulls can be installed in minutes. 

What about the appliances? Maybe a total kitchen renovation isn’t in the budget, but new (and matching) appliances can make a substantial difference in the perceived value of your home. Mismatched and/or old appliances can really enhance that “dated” feeling homebuyers would experience, so new and matching appliances can do the trick. 

If you’re feeling the DIY vibes and don’t want to spend money on a new fridge/dishwasher/oven, you can PAINT your appliances! Yes, you can really do that! Just make sure you choose a durable epoxy that’s designed for application on appliances.

De-Clutter

Do you still have boxes laying around from the LAST time you moved? Maybe you have an area in your home where junk has just collected over the years? Or do you have a lot of paperwork and tax documents just laying around on a desk? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then it’s time to de-clutter!

Homebuyers want to be able to visualize themselves living in your home when they walk through. If you have a lot of stuff laying around and in the way, that visualization will be very difficult to achieve. Take a weekend, go through your entire home and identify areas full of clutter that can be cleaned up. Straighten up that bookshelf, organize and put the kid’s toys away, and clearing counters are all things that can be done easily. 

TIP: If you throw a lot of the unnecessary clutter away, that’s just less you have to move with you when you sell your home!

Update Light Fixtures/Switches/Outlets

It’s inevitable. What was trendy some time ago will fade into the “dated” category over the years. When you moved into your home, maybe brass light fixtures and off-white light switches/outlets were the “in” thing. Most of what was “in” decades ago is “dated” now and you don’t want your home to have that feeling when homebuyers walk through it!

You can refresh your light switches and outlets with modern receptacles and faceplates pretty quickly and without spending a ton of money, AND you can do it yourself – it’s easy! Lighting fixtures are also relatively painless to replace, and a quick trip to your local hardware or lighting store can give you all you need to get the job done.

You’ll be amazed how much different and modern your home looks just by updating these features!

Give The Garage Some Love!

Updating your garage can *sound* like a lot of work, but it’s really quite easy and very cheap to create a whole new “look” and add some immediate outdoor curb appeal!

Completely replacing your garage doors is probably out of the question, but you can add accent pieces to give your home a totally different look and feel from the outside. 

There are hardware pieces you can buy for your garage that are completely magnetic, insanely easy to install, and super cheap. You can find them virtually anywhere, but I’ve found a great variety on Amazon!

Don’t Forget The Landscaping!

The final way you can increase your home’s value before you sell has to do with the outdoor landscaping for your home. Do you have overgrown bushes or plants that just “swallow” entire chunks of your outdoor spaces? Trim them back and let the area around those plants breath a little bit. Do some weeding and edge your grass along mulch beds or gardens to really give your yard space a much more refreshed look. 

You can also spruce up the color a bit by adding some planters with colorful flowers to bring up the overall curb appeal to a whole new level. 

Oh, and don’t forget to do some power washing on the outside of your home to remove mold/algae or spots on sidewalks that have shown up over the years!

The Bottom Line

When it comes to sprucing up your home and getting it ready to sell, the 7 ways above can do wonders for improving your curb appeal, increasing desirability, and raising the value of your home. 

If you’re ready to sell your home and are looking for realtors in Lancaster, PA (and the surrounding region), I’d love to talk to you. Reach out with the contact form below or by clicking here. 

You can also call me at 717-585-4522, so let’s connect!