What not to fix when selling a house? Or if you’re preparing to sell your house? What do I fix? What do I not fix? What is my rate of return if I fix and spend money and time?
Selling a house is not easy. It’s overwhelming takes a lot of planning and preparation. So I’m going to give you some tips on what not to do when you want to sell your house.
Obviously there’s a whole bunch of things you can do to sell your home. But these are some of the things that are you’re not supposed to do when selling your home if you’re planning on selling your home in the next three months, or one year or two years.
So tip number one do not remodel your kitchen or your bathrooms so why do I say that so let’s say you want to sell your home and you want it to look nice so you say you know what, I’ll remodel the kitchen or the bathroom that looks good. It’s okay if you remodel the kitchen in the bathrooms but the first rule of thumb is if you do any remodel work, especially in these days, September 2021 it’s very expensive to remodel bathrooms and kitchens. So first rule of thumb is remodel to enjoy the kitchen and the bathroom don’t remodel to sell it because you don’t know what your rate of return is an average bathrooms or an average kitchen today at least in Orange County will cost you anywhere from 25 to $50,000. to remodel not counting the bathrooms if you have one bathroom or three bathrooms so it’s not a good idea to remodel just for the sake of selling it. But always remodel if you want to enjoy it. The other reason I say that is because let’s say your house has not been updated. You’ve been owning it for 10 years or 20 years and you don’t have any other updates your bathrooms or your carpets and your cabinets and your windows and drapes and your landscaping and then all of a sudden you remodel all the bathrooms or you remodel your kitchen and nothing else is updated. It doesn’t look right and you may not get the money that you put in so the rate of return may not be there and the rate rate of return I don’t just mean in cash but also your time and effort and the displeasure of not having a kitchen for a month or two month
Tip number two do not change your flooring just for the sake of selling your home. First of all do your flooring. Whether it’s carpet or tiles or wood flooring, do it for enjoyment if you’re going to be staying there for another year or so are you going to sell it after two years and remodel now so you can enjoy it and then sell it to get your money back. But as I mentioned earlier if if everything is not updated and all of a sudden you put brand new carpets or brand new flooring or brand new tiles whether it’s just downstairs or upstairs or just bathrooms or just the kitchen it may not tell because the buyers are smart today. They go online they compare homes these they compare prices, they compare the pictures with other homes that have sold in the area. So here you have a house that’s not kind of updated and you have brand new flooring and they don’t like the color because you like maybe gray and they like blue or purple flooring. I’m just saying that then it doesn’t really help so you have to be careful when you want to spend money on flooring. Like I said earlier flooring is also very expensive carpets are expensive and if you put a carpet maybe the buyers don’t like a carpet because a lot of people are allergic today a lot of the buyers have pets today they don’t want carpet so you may just want to keep your current flooring and just go with it. Now if your flooring is damaged let’s say in the kitchen there is some tiles are really cracked or the carpet has stains or it’s the odor is really strong in the carpet. In that situation. Of course you want to change the carpet maybe everywhere or just in the one bedroom just to make it look nice and seem presentable. So that’s a different thing.
Tip number three do not replace your roof unless it really damaged roofs are expensive. There are composition roof, these tile roofs and there’s metal roofs if you have a tile roof and if it’s damaged badly you may want to fix the area that are there are damage because today as I mentioned earlier September 2021 everything’s expensive composition roofs a few years back used to cost three to $5,000. Now they cost anywhere from eight to $10,000. tile roofs can cost you up up to $25,000. And metal roofs can go up to $40,000 depending on what kind of warranty they provide
putting up to 40,000 into a roof you may not get the money back depending on what other features that you have in the house. What I may suggest is if there is a leak or if you want to tune up the roof, feel free to do that. But I will not recommend changing the whole roof just to get a better price because you’re going to put a lot of money and time and you may get that back. You may not get it back. So it’s something you want to really consider before you do that. I would highly recommend that you take recommendations or talk to few agents or talk to your accountant or talk For the professional to see what’s the best thing to do, should you change your roof or not should you need it but in general, most of the homes that I’ve sold the existing roof is good enough and of course if it’s not in a good condition if you think there is a leak possible then have it fixed and you can always buy a roof warranty when you do sell the house so you feel consciously nice that if something happens to the new buyers, you buying them a warranty so that the warranty will cover it for the buyers.
Tip number four, when it comes to not to fix things and that has to do with Windows a lot of the homes that I’ve sold a lot of the people try to replace the windows sell the home again the same thing applies if everything is not updated, then do not change your windows just to sell the home chain the windows because these most of them are damaged or there’s wind coming through. If there is fog in the windows. If they are dual pane windows, then maybe we’ll replace those but changing all the windows again in today’s market windows are expensive. Depending on how many bedrooms you have and how many windows you have an average homes have 10 to 20 windows that could cost you up top $30,000 just for Windows and on top of that once you change the Windows you may have to change the wood blinds or drapes a double cost. So the rule of thumb again is change the windows if you’re going to enjoy the new windows if you’re going to stay there in your house for a year but you’re planning on selling it in the second or third year and go ahead and do it enjoy the windows. If not depending on if you have everything else upgraded or not, do not replace it. You could fix ones that are cracked or broken or as I mentioned earlier, if they’re followed in the dual pane windows, go ahead and do that. So that’s a tip that I would highly recommend.
Tip number five, don’t do partial upgrades when you want to sell your home What do I mean by their partial upgrade I’ll give an example of way back when I went to a friend’s house and he was so excited he said you know what I did some upgrades in my bathroom and he bought a house it was an older house and guess what he did in the bathroom everything was all the shower the tubs the sink but he went shopping and he loved this sink it was a fountain saying air coming out you know the taps were coming like there’s no tap there. They install that So what I’m saying is don’t put something really fancy if you’re not changing everything else because it does not look good. The other example I can give you is let’s say you have a kitchen and everything is not updated. You have the old cabinets you have the older appliances you have the old flooring and then all of a sudden you just change your appliances and put it put stainless steel appliances because you’re going to sell your house when doesn’t matter. It doesn’t go the buyers are gonna think Wait a minute, everything is old, the countertops are old cabinets are old, the flooring is old, the faucets are old, and here Here you have stainless steel so it doesn’t really match so if the buyer comes in and if your kitchen is not updated, you’re going to price your house accordingly hopefully to the market value but just because you put your stainless steel appliances in there like your range or your dishwasher and microwave you may not get the price that you spent four or 510 $1,000 with appliances, let the buyer do that. Let him come in and tear out the kitchen let him fix it or a lot of the buyers will just barely afford the home and most buyers stretch to buy homes, they may use those appliances and that kitchen as it is for one year, two year three years and change as they go along.
