The Best Home Improvements to Boost Home Value

Are you a homeowner who wants to add value and beauty to your home?  Are you also apprehensive about making the wrong decision that will not only be expensive but may add no value to your home? In order for you to improve your home value, you might consider making the following improvements:

Upgrade indoor systems

Before you think of making any functional or cosmetic changes to your home, you need to make the proper repairs, replacements and upgrades to all the major systems in your home. These systems include heating, sewer, electrical, and plumbing systems. 

Buyers won’t settle for a house that has a leaking roof or a ruined drainage system. They need the assurance that all the basic systems in the house are in proper working function and will not require any replacement or repairs in the near future. Most of these issues will be covered during the home inspection. One might be required to get an updated plumbing and wiring system if the house is old. An old roof should also be replaced. Make sure all problems associated with air-conditioning and heating are addressed beforehand.

Outdoor replacement projects

Having replacement projects will give you a better value than remodeling ones. Replacement projects are also affordable and give great curb appeal. Consider making necessary replacements to the front door, windows, siding, and garage door. On average, the investment return for these kinds of outdoor projects is about 72%. You can consider getting vinyl windows, steel entry door and foam-baked or fiber-cement vinyl siding.

Kitchen upgrades

Anything that you can do to improve the appearance of the kitchen will up the home’s value. This also means upgrading the appliances. Whether you plan on doing a major facelift or an entire remodel, painting the kitchen in modern colors is the first step. Fortunately for homeowners, paints are relatively cheap. In addition to that you can install new cabinetry, updated lighting and kitchen sink fixtures. Tile or laminate flooring also improves the appearance of the room. 

However, if you’re on a tight budget, painting and new countertops will be enough to add value to your home.

Add an extra bathroom

For a long time, the kitchen has been the buyer’s focal point when buying a home. However, over the past few years, the bathroom has become even more significant to buyers. Having an extra bathroom adds value to your home. If your budget is tight and you can’t afford to have an additional bathroom, then give the existing bathroom a proper facelift. Have it painted with a new floor and better fixtures.

Reinventing a room

Having to reinvent a new room can be expensive and can turn out to be even more costly if you run into unexpected difficulties during the project. However, you can make an investment return of about 50% to 83%. You can use the attic or convert your basement to make an extra bedroom.

Boost curb appeal

It’s not unusual to find a homeowner making expensive changes to the interior and overlooking its appearance on the outside. This becomes a challenge since buyers will not even get past your driveway if the house has a poorly maintained front yard. This can result to about a 10% decrease in value. In order for you to avoid this, trim trees and shrubs and have your yard cleaned from any debris. Having a well maintained front yard works well and it costs less than having to do an expensive landscape.

How Often Should You Replace Major Appliances?

 

Every year, thousands of households invest thousands of dollars on high quality home appliances. While these appliances play a key role in their homes such as making work easier, sooner or later they become inefficient and ineffective. It’s at this point that one has to answer that simple question, should I have them repaired, or should they be replaced?

Since no appliance is designed to last forever, it's important to be knowledgeable about the appliance's lifespan. Failure to do so may lead you to unexpectedly find that the fridge no long works, or that the boiler has gone cold. But since one appliance's lifespan varies from the other, it's wise that you keep a log of each one of them so as to prevent incidences of your family's life being inconvenienced.

 In essence, it's hard to give an exact date of when your appliance will become ineffective. And although some major publications such as Appliance Magazine publishes an annual report showing how long people keep their household appliances, it's worth noting that in most cases, families choose to replace their appliances when they are remodeling rather than when the appliance's lifespan is about to be exceeded.

 How then can one know that it's time to replace their appliance?

 The most reliable way of doing so is by making an approximation or in other words, calculating the appliance's average lifespan. Usually, this is highly determined by the appliance's durability, manufacturing quality, frequency of use, levels of maintenance, the weather, and  how well or how poorly they have been installed.

While a central air conditioning system is designed to last for 15 to 20 years, if you live within the coastal areas, it can end up lasting far less than a decade. In terms of durability and frequency of use, a window air conditioner is more likely to become inefficient a whole lot faster than a freezer. That aside, here's a breakdown on the average number of years some of the major household appliances are likely to last:

Since window air conditioners, washing machines and microwaves are among the most used within the house, they tend to have a lifespan of less than 10 years. To be specific, their approximated lifespan is 5-7, 5-15, and 9 years respectively.

Refrigerators are likely to last for 9-13 years, gas ovens 10-18 years, freezers 10-18 years, kitchen disposals 12 years, dryers 13 years, boilers 13-21 years, and wall ovens 15 years or more.

It’s always important to keep track of your appliance's age. Alternatively, you can pay close attention to the performance of the appliance. Small issues like emitting funny noises and/or frequent malfunctions should be taken as warning signs that the appliance should be replaced.