If you are thinking about listing your home this spring and making a list of all the repairs or updates you need to get done, this blog post is for you. 

A common question many homeowners ask me is what do you suggest that I fix or update before we list the home.  The answer to that is very dependent on the home itself, the item in need of repair, the area and the current competition.  It also depends on the strategy of how you plan to sell it- are you selling as-is, targeting flippers/investors, marketing it as a family home, etc.  One concept that I wanted to share is this- when buyers are walking through a property they tend to over-estimate what it costs to repair or update something.  This over-estimation can sometimes be DOUBLE or TRIPLE of what it really costs to repair it.  If a buyer ends up seeing past whatever repair issues they immediately notice and still wants to put an offer on the property, they may want to offer less due to those items.  If they don’t offer less initially, they may wait for the inspection period to ask for the items to be fixed or a credit at closing towards the repairs.  The credit they ask is most likely more than the repair costs, but they put in added cost for the ‘nuisance’ of it.  It’s another thing on their long to do list that they don’t want to address. 

So, in a lot of cases, you as the seller would be saving money by fixing it yourself.  You get the advantage of choosing how it gets fixed as well- whether you fix it yourself or hire a contractor you trust and that is reasonably priced.  It also becomes one less thing you will have to negotiate about during the transaction which is always a good thing and makes for a smoother transaction.

As for recommended updates to make to your home, I will save that for another blog post but, as I stated above, I would definitely recommend taking a look at the competition.  If all your competition has at least 2 full baths and a half bath and your home only has 1 full bath and a half, it may make sense to price out what it would cost to either convert the half bath to a full or add another bath.  Updates can be tricky and a lot people make updates to their home and never see the value from it because they either updated something that isn’t important to the market or updated something beyond what the market is asking for.  For example, most people at a $200,000 price point aren’t expecting heated floors in the bathroom so adding that in when updating the master bath wouldn’t make sense.

If you are reading this and wondering what you should update or fix, just give me a call and I’d be happy to come out to your home and give you my opinion.  I also have a great list of vendors that do great work at great prices. 

Thanks for reading!

P.S.  Also, food for thought, I mentioned above waiting until the spring to list your home but that may not net you more money.  Real estate pricing is based on supply and demand and in the spring time, there are more homes put up for sale which increases supply and lowers demand.  That could mean less money in your pocket.  Just something to think about…