Curb appeal has always been important for
homesellers. With the vast majority of today’s homebuyers starting their search
on the Internet, the appearance of your property is more critical than ever.
You only have a few seconds to catch their attention as they scroll through
listings online to get them to stop and take a closer look.
But the role of curb appeal goes beyond just making
a good first impression. The way your house looks from the street can impact
its value. It can also shorten the time it takes to sell your house.
We asked real estate agents, appraisers, home
stagers, landscape designers, and home inspectors which curb appeal projects
offer the most value when your house is on the market,
both in terms of its
marketability and dollars. Here is what they told us:
1. Paint the house.
Hands down, the most commonly offered curb appeal
advice from our real estate pros and appraisers is to give the exterior of your
home a good paint job.
Buyers will instantly notice it and appraisers will note it on the valuation.
“Paint is probably the number one thing inside and
out,” says Frank Lucco, managing partner of Houston-based IRR-Residential
Appraisers and Consultants. “I’d give additional value for that. If you’re
under two years remaining life (on the paint job), paint the exterior because
it tends to show wear badly.”
Just make sure you stay within the range of
accepted colors for your market. A house that’s painted a wildly different
color from its competition will be marked down in value by appraisers.
2. Have the house washed.
Before you make the investment in a paint job,
though, take a good look at the house. If it’s got mildew or general grunge,
just washing the
house could make a world of difference, says Valerie Torelli, a
California real estate agent with a background in accounting.
Before she puts a house on the market, Torelli
often does exterior makeovers on her clients’ homes, a service she pays for
herself to get higher selling prices. Overall, she says her goal is to spend
less than $5,000, with a goal of generating an extra $10,000 to $15,000 on the
sale price.
Torelli specifies pressure-washing—a job that
should be left to professionals. Pressure washing makes the house look “bright
and clean in addition to getting rid of unsightly things like cobwebs, which
may not be seen from the yard but will detract from the home’s cleanliness when
seen up close,” she says.
The cost to have a professional cleaning should be
a few hundred dollars—a fraction of the cost of having the house painted.
3. Trim the shrubs and green up the yard.
California real estate agent Valerie Torelli says
she puts a lot of emphasis on landscaping, such as cutting down overgrown
bushes and replacing them with leafy plants and annuals mulched with beautiful
reddish-brown bark. “It runs me $30 to $50,” says Torelli. “Do you get a return
on your money? Absolutely. It sucks people in.”
You also don’t want bare spots. Take the time to fertilize the
yard, throw out some grass seed, and if need be, add some sod.
4. Add a splash of color.
It could be a flower bed of annuals by the mailbox,
a paint job for the front door, or a brightly colored bench or an Adirondack
chair. “You can get a cute little bench at Home Depot for $99,“ Torelli notes.
“Spray paint it bright red or blue and set it in the yard or on the front
porch.”
It’s not a bad idea, but don’t plan on getting
extra points from an appraiser for a red bench, says John Bredemeyer, president
of Realcorp in Omaha. “It’s difficult to quantify, but it does make a home sell
more quickly,” Bredemeyer says. “Maybe yours sold a couple weeks faster than
the house down the street. That’s the best way to look at these things.”
5. Add a fancy mailbox and house numbers.
An upscale mail box and architectural house numbers
or an address plaque can give your house a distinctive look that stands out
from everyone else on the block. Torelli makes them a part of her exterior
makeovers “I’ve gotten those hand-painted mailboxes,” she says. “A nice one
runs you $40 to $50.” Architectural house numbers may run as high as a few
hundred dollars.
6. Repair or clean the roof.
Springfield, Va.-based home inspector and former
builder Reggie Marston says the roof
is one of the first things he looks at in assessing the condition of a home.
He’ll look at other houses in the neighborhood to see if there are a lot of
replaced roofs and see if the subject house has one as well. If not, he’ll look
for curls in the shingles or missing shingles. “I’m looking at the roof for
end-of-life expectancy,” he says.
You can pay for roof repairs now, or pay for them
later in a lower appraisal; appraisers will mark down the value by the cost of
the repair. That could knock thousands of dollars off your appraisal. According
to Remodeling Magazine’s 2009-2010 Cost vs.
Value Report, the average cost of a new asphalt shingle roof is more
than $19,000.
“Roofs are issues,” Lucco says. “You won’t throw
money away on that job. You gotta have a decent roof.”
Stains and plant matter, such as moss, can be
handled with cleaning. It’s a job that can often be done in a day for a few
hundred dollars, and makes the roof look like new. It’s not a DIY project; call
a professional with the right tools to clean it without damaging it.
7. Put up a fence.
A picket fence with a garden gate to frame the yard
is an asset. A fence
has more impact in a family-oriented neighborhood than an upscale retirement
community, Bredemeyer says, but in most instances, appraisers will give extra
value for one, as long as it’s in good condition. “Day in a day out, a fence is
a plus,“ Bredemeyer says. Expect to pay $2,000 to $3,500 for a professionally
installed gated picket fence 3 feet high and 100 feet long.
8. Perform routine maintenance and cleaning.
Nothing sets off subconscious alarms like hanging gutters,
missing bricks from the front steps, or lawn tools rusting in the bushes. It
makes even the professionals question what else hasn’t been taken care of.
“A house is worth less if the maintenance isn’t
done,” Lucco says. “Those little things can add up and be a very big detractor.
When people say, ‘I’d buy it if it weren’t for all the deferred
maintenance,’ what they’re really saying is, ‘I’d still buy it if
you reduce the price.’”
Georgia-based freelance writer Pat Curry has
covered housing and real estate for consumer and trade publications for more
than a decade, including covering new home sales and marketing for BUILDER, the
magazine of the National Association of Home Builders.
