Five Tips on How to Add Value to Your Home

Whether you’re looking to sell in the short or medium term, or just want to make home improvements that will enhance your quality of life, here are a five suggestions for Adelaide homeowner to enhance the value of your property.

Make Your Home ‘Move in Ready’

It’s a hotly debated point as to whether money spent on making your home ‘move in ready’ for a prospective buyer is actually worth the cost in terms of adding to the purchase price. Some in the real estate industry say that beyond the simply cosmetic things like a fresh coat of paint in the bathroom and kitchen, modernising or renovating these crucial rooms isn’t ultimately worth it because these are areas of a home that homeowners are keen to personalise, and so are most likely to be remodelled or refurbished anyway by the new owners.

While there may be some validity to this, it needs to be remembered that not everyone has the time, money or inclination to take on renovations themselves when they move somewhere new, especially if the actual purchase price of the property has been a stretch.

Therefore, if you have an old, unmodernised Adelaide home it may be worth undertaking at least some basic remodelling to bring the bathroom and kitchen in particular up to date, even if you don’t opt for a complete refurbishment or renovation. While there’s no doubt that many new home buyers relish the opportunity to make their stamp on a new property but gutting a kitchen or bathroom and starting again from scratch, there are equally those who simply want to move in and get on with enjoying life in their new home. Not everyone wants the hassle and stress of moving to be followed by renovations straight away.

Therefore, take some advice and look at other properties in your area and the features they have, as this may help you to decide whether you go the whole hog and undertake a complete bathroom or kitchen refurbishment before you go to market, or whether it makes more sense to do no more than make it presentable, letting the new owners re-fashion it to suit their particular tastes.

Adding a Second Bathroom

It’s hard to find a modern, newly-built Adelaide home without a second bathroom, and this is certainly a feature where many older suburban properties are found wanting. Whether that second bathroom in an en-suite off the master bedroom or a guest room, an additional bathroom with easy access from the outdoor living area for when you’re entertaining, or simply another bathroom for the kids to use, this is a feature that can undoubtedly add markedly to the re-sale value of your home, particularly if it’s an older, more established property.

A new bathroom can be designed either to match the existing style and feel of your period home, or can serve as an ultra-contemporary addition that breathes new life into your property. However, the quality, look and convenience of a second bathroom definitely impacts significantly on a family’s lifestyle, which is why this is a home addition that can add considerably to the value of your home when you come to sell.

A home addition like this may require some remodelling and reconfiguring of the layout of your home, which in turn may lead you to reconsider how you utilise space in the rest of the house too, and it may be that the process has the added benefit of helping you to discover ways in which you can re-shape your property in other spaces as well.

Open Plan Living

Adelaide homes today are less rigidly divided into defined areas and the concept of having a separate living room, dining room or study has become less popular in favour of what is termed open living – that is, flexible spaces that can be used for a multitude of functions by all the family.

Of course, most homeowners will still want clearly-defined spaces within their homes that are to some extent shut off from the rest of the house and where they have some privacy, but the contemporary trend is very much in the direction of open plan living.

If you have an older home where the different living spaces are not especially well connected, exploring the option of opening these out may be well be a way to make your house more attractive to a greater range of prospective buyers.

Connect Your Indoor and Outdoor Living Areas

As a further extension of the open plan living idea, connecting your outdoor living areas to the interior can create a flowing, uninterrupted space that makes your home feel bigger, more airy and makes moving from indoors to outdoors simpler and more convenient.

This can be achieved in a number of ways. It might be possible to add sliding glass doors that lead directly to your outside living space, for instance. Another alternative could be covering the exposed area between your house and an outdoor space, effectively connecting the two and creating a form of home extension. Depending on the configuration of your home, there are any number of ways in which you can effectively join the great outdoors with the rest of your home.

See The Light!

Because of the way older Adelaide homes were constructed before the days of air conditioning, there was a conscious effort to design and build them so as to keep the hot summer sun out. While this can still be a real bonus in that your home is naturally cooler in summer (cutting down on energy use, which is hideously expensive in Adelaide), it nevertheless can have the effect of making your home seem unnaturally dark, especially when compared to more open and airy contemporary properties.

Installing a skylight in a corridor or entrance hall is a home improvement that you might consider in order to make your house seem more appealing on a first view. These can be designed and installed so as to blend in with the overall look and feel of your home without altering the essential fabric too dramatically. Making a first impression counts, so if you think your property may look a little dark and unwelcoming to someone seeing it for the first time, getting a skylight installed may well be a simple and relatively inexpensive improvement that can quickly add value.

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Tags: Adelaide house values, home extension builder, home improvements, home renovation builder, how to improve your home, how to increase the value of your home, renovate your home

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