If you’re thinking of selling your home, you may have some ideas about things you can fix up or even modify to increase your home’s selling price. But before you convert your garage into an extra bedroom, or choose the colors for repainting your walls, this article from U.S. News highlights six renovations that could hurt your home’s selling price, or keep it from selling as quickly as you’d like it to.
When people renovate their homes, they often factor in whether those renovations will add to the resale value. While few homeowners recoup the full cost of home renovations, updated bathrooms and kitchens, plus other improvements, can help you sell your home more quickly, and for more money. The added bonus is if you do the renovations while you live in the home, you get to enjoy the renovated spaces for at least a little while before it goes on the market.
But some renovations can actually damage your home’s value. These supposed improvements not only add nothing to your bottom line, they may make your home less attractive to potential buyers and bring down its value.
According to Remodeling magazine’s 2015 Cost vs. Value report, the home renovations that bring the greatest return when you sell are a new entry door (which brings you 101.8% of what you spend on the national average), the application of manufactured stone veneer (92.2%) and a garage door replacement (88.4%). The ones with the smallest return are a sunroom addition (48.5%), a home office remodel (48.7%) and a bathroom addition (57.8%).
The value of some features varies by geography. A swimming pool, for example, is more desirable in Florida or Hawaii than in Minnesota or Maine, but even in Florida some buyers might not want the added maintenance cost.
Some homeowners see converting a garage as a cheaper way to add more living space than building an addition – and it is. But many buyers would prefer a garage, especially in cold and rainy climates. “That room will always feel like a cold garage,” says Sabrina Booth, an agent with Redfin in Seattle. “A garage is much more valuable than an extra room in Seattle.”
In older homes, combining smaller rooms in the public living space might add to the value because today’s homeowners like large, open spaces. Eliminating a powder room, however, is a bad idea. And turning a bedroom into a master closet or combining two bedrooms to create a large master suite may not pay.
If you love color, paint the walls of your home all the hues of a rainbow – and then paint over them in a neutral color when you’re ready to sell the place. Be aware that aqua appliances or neon tile may not appeal to most buyers. “Everybody has an opinion about a color. Nobody has a strong objection to neutral color,” Booth says. “Even though they can paint over it, their impression of the house is negative.”
