How to add additional value to your home

As Spring begins to become at least a realistic possibility, spring-cleaning and home-improvement season also starts.  Now is the perfect time to look at ways to add value to your home, particularly if you’re looking to be moved before the new school year starts this autumn. The experts at PropertyCashBuyers have shared some helpful tips to help you add additional value to your home.

Start with the basics

While there is a market for property in need of refurbishment, people who are looking for a main home often want a house in “move in” condition.  With that in mind, make sure you start by taking care of any structural deficiencies, particularly if they could cause issues for a surveyor.  Similarly make sure that the plumbing and electrics are both in good shape and fully compliant with all relevant legislation.  

If you are having electrical wiring redone (or even if you’re not) it could be a good opportunity to add internet and telephone cabling throughout the house.  Even in these days of WiFi and mobiles, this can be a fairly affordable way to add value. Central heating and double glazing are also essentially must-haves for many of today’s home buyers.  If you have old central heating and/or double glazing, then updating them to something more modern can help add value to your property.  

As well as dealing with the physical aspects of the property, double-check the legal ones.  In particular, if you have a lease you may wish to look into extending it or even buying the freehold (or a share thereof).

Deal with the little things (you’ve ignored up to now)

Houses are a bit like people, once you get to know them, you often stop bothering about their appearance and just accept the odd quirks in their behaviour.  When it comes to selling property, however, appearances do matter and it is also important that everything in the house functions as it should.  

With this in mind, take a tour of your own home starting from the kerb outside your house (from which a buyer will form their first impression of the property) and going through each and every area, literally top to bottom, boundary to boundary outside and in to see what needs to be done to bring it back up to par.  If you find it hard to be objective, see if you can enlist the help of a friend for a fresh pair of eyes.

Add some upgrades

As a rule of thumb, if you’re looking for upgrades to enhance the value of your home then your focus should be on the practical, i.e. improvements which will appeal to everyone, rather than spending a lot of money on cosmetic upgrades, which may only appeal to some buyers. 

The exception to this rule is if you have a period property and restore original, period features.  One of the biggest selling points in the current housing market is storage space, so anything you can do to maximize this is likely to add value to your home.  In particular, parking (which is essentially storage space for a car), is so important that if there is any way you can add it into your property you should almost certainly give it serious consideration, even if it means a hefty up-front investment, for example buying additional land or having (part of) a garden turned into a driveway.