There are several ways to boost the value of your home before you list it for sale. This article from Daniel Goldstein of MarketWatch offers a digital twist to that list, highlighting the importance of a great Wi-Fi connection and lots of USB ports to charge devices, along with smart doorbells and locks, and new lighting and climate control technologies.
If you’re thinking about selling your home this spring, plant some fresh flowers, give the house a fresh coat of paint – and boost your house’s Wi-Fi router speed.
Sabine Schoenberg, a realtor and luxury home builder in Greenwich, Conn., who runs her own home improvement website, says that when her buyers are interested in a property, the first thing they will do is pull out their phone and check the Internet connection. “I frequently get comments like, ‘I need to know that I can work from home,’” Schoenberg says.
That’s because many Americans are now only connected to the Internet via a cellular or Wi-Fi connection. Almost half (47%) of American homes in June 2015 had no landline, up from about 30% in 2010 and up 3.4% from the same period in 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. (NCHS) Just a decade earlier, only about 5% of American homes were wireless-only, the NCHS said.
The Wi-Fi issue might not seem critical to empty nesters looking to down-size and sell their home, but for potential Millennial-age buyers, it increasingly is, says Schoenberg. More than two-thirds of all adults aged 25 to 34 were living in wireless-only households in 2015, the CDC reported.
Of course, a good Wi-Fi connection in your home isn’t the only “smart” technology out there to attract tech-oriented buyers. Even if many buyers haven’t put much thought into the really smart stuff, there’s one thing they are looking for, Schoenberg adds. Lots of USB ports to charge devices. “In the home I’m building, I’m putting them in everywhere,” she says.
