Increase Your Home Value with Some Curb Appeal
Getting ready to sell your home? You will surely want to plan ahead to be sure you get what your house is worth and potentially increase your appraised value.
The first thing that a potential home buyer will see is the exterior of the home so curb appeal is definitely a great place to start. This is especially important if you are having an open house or keep a for sale sign on your yard as many will be passing by the house. If the exterior looks drab and dull, they may just keep going. You want to be able to encourage them to see the beautiful interior of your home.
With that being said, here are some ideas to help improve the curb appeal of your home.
Mowing your lawn – this is such a simple maintenance but oftentimes with long periods of time that a home may be on the market, the desire to keep the lawn trimmed decreases. Keep in mind that you can hire some local lawn companies or a neighborhood kid to help keep this aspect of your exterior taken care of and lets you focus on other more important areas.
Clean up the walkways/porch – this contains things like raking the leaves so the green grass shows, edging the lawn and any flower beds and putting away any toys, shoes at the front door or extra tools lying about. If you have a front porch or patio that has furniture, be sure to wash them off and straighten up the patio for things that are typically left about the porch for lounging.
Pressure wash your exterior walls – regardless of whether you have vinyl siding or brick, surely it has picked up plenty of dirt and/or algae from surrounding trees. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to spray down the driveway and sidewalks as well to get any lose dirt or build up washed away.
Wash your windows – while you are at it with the pressure washing, or hiring a professional, see if you can wash the exterior windows as well. Some companies will do both, otherwise, there are folks out there that will wash your windows, if you can’t or just don’t want to be bothered.
Flower beds – give some love to your flower beds or shrubbery. Trim back the shrubs that need attention and keeping them from pushing into the side of the house. Pull any weed, lay mulch and plant any plants or flowers that need to be planted to fill the holes of those plants that died last winter. Maybe spend a few bucks to edge the flower garden with rocks, bricks or decorative pieces to enclose the flower beds nicely.
Lastly, go down the street, stand at the edge of the driveway and at the doorway and see what else can be tended to. Do you have mini blinds that are missing a row or two? Do you have curtains in one window but not another? What about shutters? Do you have shutters for all windows or none? These are a few other things that can be looked at when trying to dress up your exterior.
Remember, folks will think about the efforts and look of your exterior. If you don’t keep up your home from the outside, chances are you won’t spend the time inside and thus there could be bigger problems lurking under the surface.
You’ll want to spend the time to make the front of your home picture perfect. After all, this is usually one of the pictures that home buyers may only see as they are scrolling through the hundreds of homes on the market. You want them to not only look at that one picture, but to open up your home and want to look more into it.
