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3 Budget Projects To Add Value To Your Home
Every year thousands of home owners do major renovations on
their house in order to improve the value as well as enjoy their
improvements. Some home improvements are very costly and many do
not have a good return for the money spent. If you want...
Decorative And Faux Painting Is Fun But Don’t Start Until You Read This
I think decorative and faux painting techniques look great, are fun to do, and add a personal statement to a room. I’ve been adding my personal look to the walls in my homes ever since my husband and I purchased our first “fixer-upper.”
When I...
Designing Professional Porch Railings
If you plan to install a professional looking porch railing for the first time you want to ensure you do it right the first time. This requires among other things proper design and proper planning. Properly designed railings require...
Start Your Next Home Improvement Project With Tools and Hardware You Buy Online
One of the mistakes most do-it-yourself homeowners makes during significant home improvement projects is in trying to complete the job without the right tools. How many times have you tried to use a flat-head screwdriver instead of the right wood...
What is Injection Waterproofing? -
Injection waterproofing is often used to fill and seal cracks and crevices. The material is most often made from a polyurethane compound. The compound is lightweight and expands up to twice its original size when applied to a surface. Many...
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Home Improvement – Don’t Exceed Comps In Your Area
For most homeowners, the pride of ownership includes a consistent home improvement effort. While this makes sense, be careful you don’t improve the property so much that you can’t recover the costs when it is sold.
Home Improvement
You’ve picked up a heck of a deal on a home in a nice neighborhood. The purchase price was $200,000 and you put twenty five percent down [$50,000]. The comparable homes, “comps”, in the neighborhood appraised for $300,000. Yes, your home is a bit run down, but that’s why they have Home Depot and weekends! You’ll just fix the ugly ducking up and pocket a quick $100,000 in equity when all your projects are done. What a country!
This situation definitely has potential. The value of the home is so low when compared to the comps that a relatively quick equity grab certainly looks possible if the home can be fixed up. Off to Home Depot we go…
Let’s do an evaluation of our ugly ducking. Put another way, what needs to be done to get it on par with the other ducks in the neighborhood? Okay, we need new doors, new windows and landscaping in a very big way. The drive way looks like a toxic dump sat on it and we aren’t even going to get into the peeling, ugly paint on the home. Pricing everything, deciding to use homeowner labor as much as possible and so on, we find it is going to run roughly $50,000 to makeover our ugly duckling. It’s going to be a lot of work, but that’s what weekends are for. We should still come out with a $50,000 gain and $100,000 in total equity considering our $50,000 down payment.
Budgets and Temptation
The problem with the above scenario is it is very hard to stick to a
budget. If you’ve owned a home, you’re already familiar with this problem. If you are buying a home for the first time, watch out!
With homeownership, the structure you own quickly evolves into “my home.” Once this occurs, you tend to view the quality of your home as a statement to the world and you want to show the world your best. Instead of buying moderately priced cabinets for the kitchen, you buy custom pieces that would make Bill Gates envious. Counter tops soon become marble counter tops. Refinishing the driveway evolves into putting in an entirely new one with brick inlays. And so it goes.
You are no longer trying to bring your home up to the standard of the neighborhood homes. You are trying to turn the home into a swan and swans are expensive. After making all your improvements, you are distressed to find the total cost being $90,000 instead of $50,000. For all your hard work and effort, you’ve realized only a $10,000 gain in equity.
In Closing
Make sure you objectively budget improvements and stick to those budgets. While there is something to be said for making a home glow, make sure it makes financial sense.
About The Author
Raynor James is with http://www.fsboamerica.org - providing FSBO homes for sale by owner. Visit our "sell my home?" page at http://www.fsboamerica.org/seller.cfm to list and sell your home for free for one month. Visit http://www.fsboamerica.org/buyer.cfm to see homes for sale by owner.
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Online shopping for Home Improvement from a great selection of Tools & Hardware; Electrical, Plumbing, Hardware, Heating & Cooling, Building Materials ... |
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Home Improvement |
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