Home improvements that aren’t crazy expensive, and really boost your home value.

Alright, listen, it’s hard to pull the trigger on dolling out the funds for home improvements these days. It feels like just buying a solid round of groceries is as expensive as redoing your whole bathroom. It can be tough to justify the cost of doing more than the basics. But the hard truth is, you have to be proactive about the condition of your spot to retain and improve on your home value. 

So, we want to do a quick run down of a few very painless home improvements you can afford, that will give you the most bang for your buck in upping your home value. I know that might not sound like the worlds most exciting read, but some of the things on the list might surprise and delight you!

The first affordable home improvement on our list is getting you a brand-new garage door. On average, a new garage door cost just over 3000 dollars. I know that’s not no money, but it ain’t 30k. So that’s the angle we’re coming at it from.  So, the garage door upgrade has on average a 98 percent return on investment, and that’s pretty dang good. New garage doors give an immediate increase to your homes curb appeal. It would be attractive to potential homebuyers. Also, modern garage doors are very well insulated, which means a better insulated garage, and by extension, your whole house. That leads to improved heating and cooling costs. Win win baby. 

The next item on the list is painting. Paint is not outta the realm of cost possibility. We can make it happen. Chipping paint, faded or out of date colors quickly make a nice house look dingy. Both interior and exterior paint jobs give you a lot of impact in how nice your home looks, for not too much cost. Giving your house a facelift as they say, but actually way less expensive than a facelift really is. There is a Zillow study that shows just repainting your front door black provides an additional 6000 bucks to the final selling price! 

Next up, minor kitchen remodel. The words kitchen remodel strike fear in the hearts of a lot of us. There’s no world in which that’s cheap. Yeah, that’s sort of true, so let’s zoom in on the word minor. We don’t need to be doing some major overhaul here. Let’s pick one busted feature that irritates the heck out of you and let’s get after that. Pick either floors or counters, or maybe your cabinets are pretty nasty, we could go after those suckers. Just redoing one of those aspects of a room as highly valuable and trafficked as a kitchen in any home, gives it an impactful refresh and upgrade. 

Now we’re going to look at sprucing up that basement. 
Again, I know that sounds scary and costly, but it doesn’t have to be. You could do something like installing a dehumidifier if you’ve got moisture issues. Maybe look at doing some better drainage if things are getting too wet. you could pop in some carpeting and a window and call it a rec room; it doesn’t have to be craziness. But the basement is really important to your house’s structural integrity. So, improvements to it really matter to your home value. 

The last idea to blast your way is landscaping. A recent real estate study from Texas University found getting you some nice landscaping can instantly boost your home value by 7 percent. It’s a must if you’re listing it to sell. But even if you’re not putting it on the market, the value increase still applies and it can be a very low-cost project. If you go DIY and buy your own truckload of nice clean gravel, it’s very affordable. Laying down some fresh sod, and putting in new plants also can be very budget friendly if you do it yourself. It shows your friends and neighbors you’re on top of your stuff and capable, you get to brag about the work you did. Also, that value increase ya’ll! 

The over all message we’re sending here is one of home improvement inspiration and hope! Those of us without a lot of extra cash to throw at it, can still afford to spruce things up and increase value kinda cheaply. Increased home value is for all us. And gosh darn it, that feels good.