In 2020, homeowners throughout the U.S. spent upwards of $420 billion on remodels and renovations for their homes. A commonly held belief is that nearly all projects will increase a home’s resale value. The truth is that there are numerous home improvement projects that could wind up decreasing your home’s value.
Constant Carpeting
If your home is outfitted with hardwood floors, don’t cover them up with wall-to-wall carpeting. When a carpet isn’t in pristine condition, most buyers would prefer that they be removed, which is why carpeting doesn’t add value to a home.
Information taken from the Remodeling Impact Report, created by the National Association of Realtors, has found that hardwood floor projects have a cost recovery of 118%, which means that installing new wood flooring for $15,000 could add as much as $17,700 to the value of your property.
Adding a Swimming Pool
Swimming pools don’t add much value to a home unless you live in a hot climate. It costs anywhere from $16,000-$44,000 to build an outdoor swimming pool, which doesn’t take into account ongoing maintenance costs. It’s been estimated that swimming pools only increase a home’s value by around 7%. Some prospective buyers may also be scared off by the potential liability a pool brings.
Converting Your Garage into a Living Space
Garage conversions can cost you anywhere from $6,000-$24,000 if you want the room to be turned into a livable space. Even though this conversion will add functionality and square footage to your home, most buyers prefer the original garage space for easy parking and extra storage.
Excessive Landscaping
Enhancing your landscaping can significantly boost your home’s curb appeal and may make the property more enticing to potential buyers. However, it’s easy to make too many changes to your landscaping, which could give your yard a busy and cluttered appearance. At worst, buyers might view your yard as being too difficult to properly maintain. Keep it clean and simple to appeal to most buyers.
Too Much Wallpaper
While wallpaper doesn’t necessarily turn buyers away, using the wrong color scheme or pattern could lead to the pool of potential buyers thinning considerably. Wallpaper installation projects can cost anywhere from $300-$6,000 depending on the size of the room, the type of wallpaper you use, and DIY vs. professional installation.
While these costs aren’t that high compared to other projects in this guide, removing wallpaper is a costly and time-consuming job, which is what some potential buyers will think about when they first see a room with wallpaper they don’t love.
Performing the wrong renovation on your home could result in your property becoming less appealing to prospective buyers. This could mean fewer offers or even a lower sales price. If you want your renovations to increase your home’s value, consider remodeling the kitchen/bathroom areas, upgrading the appliances, or contact me and I can tell you which features have the best return on investment in our area.
