If you are a homeowner putting your house on the market, you can make inexpensive updates to sell your home. Many of today’s home buyers are looking for a home that has been modernized, an open floor plan, and lots of natural light. What you may be thinking is that you don’t want to spend tens of thousands of dollars updating your home to give it an open floor plan, to modernize the kitchen and bathrooms, or to update doors or windows to add more light into a home. I am not saying to do that. What I am saying is that by spending a couple of hundred dollars, you could bring thousands more for your home when selling it. Below you will find a list of 15 inexpensive updates to sell your home.
Table of Contents
1. Declutter
The most inexpensive way to make your home seem more open and appeal to buyers is to declutter. Remove everything from your kitchen and bathroom countertops. Put away everything on your bedside tables except for lighting. Remove displayed family pictures around the home. Organize any decorations in sets of 3 and store away anything else.
2. Deep Clean
Deep cleaning is something you could do yourself, or you could have someone come in and do the cleaning for you. Your real estate agent will have some great suggestions for housecleaning services. It may be something you want to pay for while listing the home, so you feel confident in the house each time you show the home to potential buyers. What should you clean? Everything!
- Sweep and mop your floors.
- Clean your baseboards.
- Wash the doors and door frames.
- Dust your fan blades and light fixtures.
- Dust your furniture.
- Clean your oven.
- Wash your walls and use a magic eraser to get rid of any scuff marks.
- Clean your windows and glass doors inside and out.
3. Inventory Light Coming into Your Home
You want as much light as possible coming through any glass in the home. Once the windows have been cleaned, you may even inventory the light coming into the home at the sunniest parts of the day and place a mirror near a window to reflect more light around a room.
4. Revitalize Flooring
Once you have thoroughly given your floors a clean, you can decide if they need any additional revitalization. You may want to hire a carpet cleaner for the carpeting in the home. For tile flooring, it may be worth renting a grout cleaner or hiring it out to a company to clean up all of the grout in the flooring to make the flooring look more appealing to a buyer.
5. Paint Room(s)
Lightening up a room using color is another way to make a room look bigger and more open. If you prefer dark color paint colors, this could be an opportunity to update your home for the cost of a few cans of paint. Start with the communal areas like the kitchen and living room and update your paint color to something light and neutral. A great real estate agent can provide guidance on what a buyer in your area would be interested in. Moving away from dark colors will brighten up your room, make it feel more open and gives a blank palette for your potential buyers to visualize their own furniture and decorations in the room. Try a color in the greige family.
6. Update Window Treatments
Window treatments can be expensive depending on the size of your windows, the quality of your window treatment, etc. Updating your window treatments can provide a frame for the light coming into your home. Think of it like a natural piece of art. Framing that art with some new modern blinds or curtains rather than blinds that may be in need of some repairs will appeal to buyers.
7. Modernize Kitchen and Bathroom Hardware
The cabinet and drawer pulls in your kitchen and bathrooms could be a dead giveaway that you have not made any improvements in those rooms since owning the home. Remove the drawer and cabinet pulls and knobs and replace them with a modern version. Depending on the number of pulls and knobs that you need to purchase, this can be a very inexpensive way to modernize your kitchen and/or bathrooms without paying for a major renovation.
8. Replace Kitchen and Bathroom Plumbing Fixtures
Similar to kitchen and bathroom hardware, the plumbing fixtures can also showcase the age of a home. For buyers looking for something more modern, these can reflect the lack of modernization in the home at a quick glance. You could take updating your hardware a step further and update the faucets to match the finish of those drawers and cabinet pulls in order to tie the room together and to appeal to buyers looking for a modernized look.
9. Replace Light Bulbs
Inventory the lighting in your home. Update lightbulbs so that you are emitting similar light in each room. Consider switching to LED light bulbs to brighten up your rooms.
10. Update Light Fixtures
Consult with your real estate agent on the light fixtures in your home. You may be able to inexpensively update a light fixture above your kitchen table, or in an entryway to create appeal in a particular room that buyers talk about. There may also be a light fixture that you may update to a ceiling fan instead, or visa versa. A great real estate agent can give you some ideas on what would work best for your particular house and what appeals to buyers in your area.
11. Caulk Around the Tub
Update the caulk around the tubs and showers in your bathrooms. This will freshen up the edges of the tub and revitalize the appearance to look fresh and clean. This may seem like a small thing, but in a buyer’s eyes, they will be seeing just a few more dollars that they will have to spend to update your home.
12. Power Wash Home Exterior and Driveway
Power wash the exterior of your house and your driveway to freshen up your home. Living in the south, you may have some discoloration or growth on the exterior of your home. Your driveway could be completely black instead of concrete color. Cleaning the exterior of your home will prepare the buyer for what they will experience on the inside of the home. A real estate agent will help you find a great company to work with to power wash and clean the outside of your home. One that I really love is Sunshine Pristine Clean.
13. Refresh Your Landscaping
The first thing buyers will see when pulling up to your home is the exterior of the home and the landscaping. This can make or break how the buyer feels about your home. To give your home some curb appeal, freshen up your landscaping with some new mulch, pine straw or stone. You may also consider putting out some fresh annual flowers to brighten up the home as the buyers visit.
14. Paint Your Front Door
A faded front door, or one that is covered in scuff marks isn’t how you want to advertise your home for buyers coming in. That is the entry between what they experience on the outside of your home and inside. A small can of paint can freshen up the front door, update the look of the front of the home, and can modernize the home by using certain colors.
15. Upgrade Your House Numbers
The house numbers play a role in the curb appeal of the home. Modern, stylish numbers can give your home a modern look and increase the overall appeal of your home to buyers.
Additional Inexpensive Updates to Sell Your Home: Consult a Real Estate Agent
Appealing to buyers is the key to selling your home. These 15 inexpensive updates to sell your home are meant as a guide to help you appeal to buyers in today’s market. As a homeowner, inexpensive updates can increase your buyer appeal and lead to more money in your pocket at the end of the sales process. If you are looking for some guidance on which of these will help you appeal the most to buyers for your home, reach out to me at hello@yourpcola.com to discuss how to sell your home for the most money and in the shortest amount of time.
