How to Maintain or Even Increase Your House Price despite the Recession
The outlook for the next few years is a bit somber if you’re a home owner – dropping house prices are making many people fret. Some property owners will find themselves in negative equity later this year or next year, if not already. Still, there are ways to avert this issue. The Solution : to add value to your home. How? By giving your home a makeover. DIY / home improvements can add far greater value to your home than the actual cost of those improvements.
So where to start? A good place to start is to consider the least used rooms in your property. It could be a utility room or an adjoining garage. Knocking down a wall can transform such a rarely used area into a kitchen or living room extension which can bring a great deal of value to your property. Consider also your lighting and plumbing. Dimmer switches can transform ugly bright rooms into cosy, warm rooms just via a dimmer dial – it’s just a dimmer switch, but showing such a pleasant ambience in your home makes the prospective home buyer feel more relaxed! Perhaps your home doesn’t have a downstairs bathroom? Then get one put in where your utility room is – once more this can add a great deal of value to your house.
Possibly your 4 bedroomed house could be converted to 3 bedroom by taking a wall down, and making a much bigger room. This may sound slightly odd, but in reality larger rooms will give you a better sale value, and rather often individuals use a 4th bedroom strictly as a room to store stuff in (meaning it’s not of great importance).
Next up is the garden. Do you have a shed? If not, consider installing one in your garden. Why is this of particular importance? Well, here is one place where you can keep all your stuff that’s clogging up your spare bedroom / garage / utility room. Having a shed helps also with the gardening, and enthusiastic gardeners (read: your prospective home buyer) like a shed in their garden. And get into gardening yourself! If your garden’s been untended, then mow the grass, plant some flowers, cut the lawn edges. Install some decking if you have some room. Just providing a beverage to a potential buyer out in your pretty garden can really help sell the place – viewers feel comfortable in such an environment – so your garden is very important to help raise the price of your property and help sell your home.
Where can you get help? You can’t do it all by yourself. Have a look online! A home and garden directory like homeandgardenlistings.co.uk has all kinds of home and garden websites listed there : including a directory of bathroom fitters, directory of builders, directory of painters and decorators, directory of general furniture suppliers, directory of bedroom furniture and beds suppliers etc.
These are just some basic points on increasing the cost of your house in these tricky times, but hopefully this will get you thinking!
