You decided to sell your pretty old house after so many years of living in it. It has come to you that home prices rose up over time, thinking your old home that requires major home repairs would sell-high until you are slapped with the reality that a house that needs extreme house repairs and improvements depreciate its value. The question in your mind is now very clear, Why do I need home repairs before selling my house?
Trulia contributed an article in Forbes enumerating the reasons to make home repairs before selling. It is important to do the needed repairs in the first 30 to 45 days prior to putting your house into house-for sale listing.
10 Reasons To Make Repairs Before You Sell Your Home
If you’re planning to list your home at the start of summer, you now have just 30 to 45 days to tackle all the necessary repairs. Why is it important to check these off your to-do list ahead of time? Money spent on improvements now will be far less than the cost of that first price reduction if your house sits on the market.
Even if your home doesn’t linger for long, you run the risk of a buyer asking for concessions and credits for items you didn’t fix, and the quotes from experts doing the work will almost certainly be higher than your own out-of-pocket cost.
Here are 10 reasons you’ll want to make repairs before you put your house on the market:
Image Source: Forbes
1. Buyers are going to do an inspection, and the inspector will be able to identify all the issues and suggest needed repairs. So, really, there’s no avoiding it. You WILL have to fix any problems, credit money back to the buyer, or drop your price to compensate.
2. So many of the most common repairs are easy to solve, usually inexpensive, and can be done – by you – in a weekend. They’re likely to be the things that were already on your own list of weekend projects for the past year, and if they bother you, they’ll also bother a buyer. Leaky faucets, ripped window screens, ceiling stains, cracks in the plaster: they may seem like minor issues, and each one by itself is, but when you’ve got a whole house full of problems like this, they add up to one big seller headache.
3. Eliminating distracting drawbacks will allow buyers to have a positive experience as they tour your home. That means open house visitors will be able to focus on your home’s positive, not negative, features.
4. Getting your home completely prepped and ready will increase its perceived value because you’re showing buyers that your property is well-maintained.
5. You won’t have to do a price reduction to reflect the estimated (and often over-inflated) cost of repairs!
6. Last minute repairs done on a tight timeline are almost always more costly since you don’t have time to shop around for a less expensive estimate. Plus, your time crunch begs for tradesman to charge higher rush fees for squeezing the work into their schedule.
7. Your actual cost to fix items will always be less than a buyer’s estimate after their inspection.
This is the reason why regular home maintenance check-up is necessary to find both minor and major issues inside the house, repairing them before it gets worse. Elizabeth Weintraub guarantees in her post in The Balance that doing both maintenance repairs certainly returns reward for the homeowners.
Repairs Before Home Selling Return Rewards
Image Courtesy of The Balance
Quick fixes before selling a home always pay off, but which home repairs bring the biggest return? Many sellers, trying to do the right thing, often make repairs that are not required. They tend to make the repairs they would want, which are not necessarily what a buyer expects. Specific answers to this often-asked question largely depend on a variety of factors such as:
Time of year
Location of the home
Market temperature
Competing inventory
There is no hard-and-fast rule. But we can examine general guidelines that apply to most homes. For example, the National Association of Realtors publishes each year the Cost vs. Value Report with Remodeling Magazine, which features various home project costs and returns in four regions, including a national average.
In general, there is no improvement you can make that returns 100% of your investment except for maybe insulation, and I have my doubts about that claim. But you can improve the value of your home with updates, not maintenance issues. Do not confuse the two as they are very different. For example, if you replaced your furnace, that does not add more value to your home. However, if you installed dual pane windows to increase efficiency over those old crank out aluminum windows, you’ve added value.
Flooring Fixes
In my neighborhood, most of the homes were built in the late 1940s, which means the floors are original, hardwood oak. Wood floors are a hot item today, but preferences over the years have changed. Carpeting became popular — like with lots of consumer products — after somebody figured out how to get the government to pay for it. When vets returned home from WWII, housing was at a shortage. Homes were sold with newly installed carpeting because the cost for the carpeting could be rolled into government-insured (VA) loans.
Then carpeting became vogue in the 1960s. Some homes today, sadly, still sport that era of shag carpeting. The final movement away from hardwood happened when installing hardwood floors became too expensive. Plywood was easier to obtain and faster to install. Plus choices in carpeting were plenty. It’s still relatively inexpensive to install carpeting.
Hardwood Floors
If your home has hardwood floors, that’s what buyers want, and it would pay to have the carpeting removed and the floors refinished.
Carpeting
If your sub-floor is plywood, then replace the carpeting with light tan. Neutral carpeting is your best bet for resale. You also have the option to install hardwood, which will bring you more upon resale.
Ceramic
Replace chipped or cracked tiles. Clean or replace the grout. But don’t install ceramic (it’s too expensive) unless it’s for aesthetic reasons in an entry way or you need to get rid of carpeting in the bath.
I recommend that sellers remove carpeting from entertainment areas: the living room, dining room and family room. Buyers today prefer alternate flooring in those areas, and there are plenty of styles to choose from. The most popular are engineered wood floors, which can be installed very inexpensively and, in some cases, you can do it yourself. Learn more here.
It is now convincing that doing home repairs, improvements and renovations increase the overall value of your home when you sell it. But what if you have no idea where to start the repair job? Cara Ameer listed where you must start your home repair job to save time and money.
7 Home Fixes You Must Complete Before Selling
Image Source: Inman
The process of getting a property ready to put on the market can seem daunting enough. There’s clearing the clutter, endless amounts of cleaning, organizing and scrutinizing your property with a fine-tooth comb. What needs attention and what can you leave alone?
Welcome to the new world of “fixing to sell.” Gone are the days of throwing it on the market and seeing what happens. Prepping for sale is a highly choreographed dance of repair along with a bit of renovation and presentation.
Don’t ignore these seven areas.
1. Structural and mechanical
It might not be glamorous, but buyers are looking at big-ticket items like the age and condition of the roof, air conditioning and heating systems, water heater, electrical panel and pipes.
Now, I’m not saying all have to be replaced, but if any of these components are on their last leg, you might seriously need to consider replacing them as these items could factor into the kind of financing the buyer is able to obtain as well as insurability of the property.
Appraisers are notorious for requiring a roof to be replaced, for example, as a condition of a loan when it comes to FHA and VA financing.
Replacing a roof that is at the end of its life before putting your home on the market will go a long way to solidifying buyer confidence in deciding to make an offer.
The buyer (and you) won’t have to sweat what an inspector says, deal with a potential renegotiation before closing or face a price reduction. The last thing you want to be doing is putting on a new roof in the midst of trying to pack.
If you lack the budget to replace these items, get estimates on the cost involved to replace. You can always offer to contribute to the replacement cost in the form of a credit to the buyer’s closing costs and offer a home warranty that can provide some coverage should something fail or need repair.
2. Exterior
How does the exterior of your home look? Is there any wood rot? When was the last time it was painted? Are there any stucco cracks that need attention?
First impressions start from the outside, and the exterior will show up in photos across a multitude of websites, etc. This is definitely an area worth spending the money.
3. Landscaping
Speaking of the exterior, how does your landscaping look? Are the plantings overgrown, worn and wilted? What about the ground cover?
Are the planting beds in need of some fresh mulch, pine straw, rock, etc.? Are there any overgrown tree limbs hanging over the house or blocking the home’s view? For a relatively inexpensive investment, you can transform how your exterior looks by trimming back and freshening things up with new plants and landscaping.
4. Cosmetic
Let’s face it: buyers buy with their eyes, so now is the time to go through the interior in detail. Are there dents and dings on the walls, scratched moldings or worn paint? Now is the time to spruce up the inside with a fresh coat of paint.
Pick light, neutral and on-trend colors. Choose a neutral palette that will transition well with any buyer’s furniture. Read more here…
Before putting your home in a house-for-sale listing. Make sure you do thorough home maintenance checkup to spot the areas inside and outside the house that requires home repairs, improvements and renovations. Make sure to follow the above tips in your repair project, starting to the most important house areas.
After all the needed repairs are done and you want to sell your newly refurbished home fast and easy, we at Dependable Homebuyers are here to help. Visit our site https://www.dependablehomebuyers.com and we’re glad to help you.
Dependable Homebuyers
1402 Belt St, Baltimore, MD 21230
(443) 266-6247
