Does Curb Appeal Really Matter THAT Much?

You probably have a friend or two that’s working on some upgrades or repairs inside their home this month. It’s very common for us to want to improve the area in which our family lives. Everything from carpet to hardwood to fresh paint and sometimes even room additions or kitchen upgrades.

Many times, these small little additions can make it feel like a new home and can really brighten up the mood each time you walk into the room.

From a real estate value perspective, these upgrades can also increase your equity in the property if done correctly. As you push up the value of your home and make it more marketable, you not only get to enjoy it while you live there, but may also sell it for more money when the time comes to move.

It’s common to fix up the inside, but far too often, I see that people forget about the outside of the home. When you look at this from a resale perspective, you quickly notice that all home buyers shop online and they are generally choosing homes to look at or completely skip altogether simply based on the curb appeal. The picture is EVERYTHING so that front photo really matters.

With you and your family living in the home day to day, it can be a pretty good feeling to just paint the front door a different color or add a little bit of landscaping around the entrance. It gives you a fresh feel each time you come home and it helps you in enjoying the pride of homeownership.

As far as overall home value is concerned, the exterior can mean as much or more than the interior. Since marketability is a key factor in real estate, you want to make sure the curb appeal attracts as many people as possible. If you’ve casually browsed homes for sale online, you’ve undoubtedly skipped the ones with a bad looking front picture while you showed interest in those with a gorgeous snapshot of the front.

When the grass is green, the paint is fresh, the roof looks nice and the landscaping accentuates the home, there is something magnetically attractive about the property. And as you know, more interest in a home can mean more money!

All of my clients deserve to have as much equity as they can possibly create within their home. Even if you have no intentions of EVER making a move, it’s nice to know that your net worth is increased and you have something more valuable for whenever you decide to sell the place or hand it down to a loved one.

Coupling that with the fact that you get more enjoyment out of the property with some fresh digs, it makes home improvements (even basic cosmetics) a fun project to consider.

One key factor to remember is that these repairs, upgrades or improvements should all look professionally done. Nothing is worse than poor work in home repairs. It can be fun to take on a do-it-yourself project but most generally, you are better off getting a few quotes from professionals and getting it done by them. You can sit back and relax while the manual labor is dedicated to someone that loves their craft!