When preparing to sell your home, you may be wondering, what home improvements will help you sell your house? Some homeowners remodel their homes to make them more livable and enjoyable. But if your goal is to improve a home’s value for resale purposes, you'll want to strategically prioritize your remodeling projects to help you sell your house. That's where a professional realtor can help.
A Fay Realty Team agent can offer home remodeling recommendations to help sell your home faster and at a higher price. We routinely gather feedback from the homebuyers we work with to understand what they like and what they're looking for in a home purchase.
A real estate agent can also help you decide which upgrades offer the biggest bang for the buck in quick and cost-effective staging solutions. Sometimes the smallest changes can make the biggest impact. In fact, the top remodel project recommendation may surprise you: painting!
According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), almost half (48%) of surveyed realtors say they recommend painting a home’s entire interior space before selling, and 38% recommend painting at least one interior room.
Other interior remodeling projects among agents’ top five recommendations are kitchen upgrades (30%), bathroom renovations (26%), and hardwood floor refinishing (22%).
These projects also earned high “joy scores” from homeowners, meaning the projects feel satisfying and the result provide a sense of accomplishment. Refinishing your hardwood floors, tackling some painting projects, or making other interior upgrades can be fun and rewarding and increase the enjoyment and comfort of your home, even if you aren’t preparing to sell your home any time soon.
The NAR's report also examines numerous other interior remodeling projects. Even though real estate professionals were less likely to recommend completing these projects before selling, homeowners who invested in these upgrades still reported high satisfaction with their results.
In particular, new wood flooring, closet renovations, insulation upgrades, adding a new home office, and conversions of attics to living areas earned perfect "joy scores."
This is the first time NAR’s report has included pandemic perspectives. Notably, 40% of realtors acknowledged higher demand for home offices during the pandemic, even though only 3% recommended adding a home office before selling. We can imagine this is because it’s relatively easy to convert a spare bedroom into home office space.
Agents also observed increased pandemic demand for complete kitchen renovations (25%), kitchen upgrades (25%), bathroom renovations (19%), and basement conversions to living areas (17%).
If you're considering making home upgrades in order to increase the value of your home, it's important to speak with a professional realtor to understand the demand in your local market and help you prioritize these projects and make that money back in your sale.
You can use our home worth estimate calculator to find out how much your home is worth today, and call us to find out what specific home improvements will help increase its value.
Sources: 2022 Remodeling Impact Report, National Association of Realtors; Accredited Buyer's Representative (ABR)