Design Choices that may Decrease the Value of your Home!

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 The days textured ceilings are often associated with cheaper and lo-cost housing. Some real estate websites and many designers call popcorn ceilings the “worst thing modern man has ever invented”. The costs to upgrade to a simple knockdown stipple ceiling during the construction phase of a new home in our area is typically less than $2/sqft.

Simply put, this means that the buyer may consider buying your home but they may factor in replacing the popcorn texture by removing it and either flat finishing or finishing with a knockdown stipple. This can get expensive (thousands for just one ceiling) and extremely inconvenient for the buyer, never mind extremely messy. 

This is a difficult thing during the negotiations to successfully counter-negotiate against, especially if the comparables that were used to determine the price of your home had ceilings without a “popcorn" finish. Smart buyers agents should be advising their clients of this prior to submitting an offer and will factor these costs and inconvenience into any recommended offer price. This may result in an offer that is much lower than the listed price of your home.

There are ways to mitigate this heart wrenching situation prior to receiving or negotiating offers. Feel free to reach out to learn mo

 Having something like a sound system, projectors for movie rooms, cameras, intercoms, web based controls or other smart home features installed in your home can seem like a great idea at the time. Instead of having wires running everywhere, they’re all neatly hidden away, and access to inputs and controls is convenient and easy.

The problem is that potential buyers may not have the same needs as you, and electronics baked into the walls of the home might be wasted on them, and most of these systems become outdated over time. Never mind the issues of retaining all of the documentation, or transferring accounts for internet based control systems. Over time these great features becoming not just an eyesore, but an eyesore that doesn’t even work well. In other words, built-in electronics can appear as future bills to house-hunters, because they may immediately estimate how much it will cost them to remove and/or upgrade them. 

Contact me to learn how to mitigate risks associated with lo-ball offers if you’ve got these features in your home.

When folks don’t ave enough space in their home, they sometimes think it’s a good idea to convert their garage into an additional living space. This might work out well for them, but does it increase the value of their home? The short answer is “NO”.

The general rule of thumb in home renovations versus the value of your home is that removing things is always bad. Bathrooms, bedrooms and closet spaces are great examples. But when you convert a standard 2 car garage into a mother-in-law suite for example, you do gain additional space—but you’re also losing a valuable aspect of the home that most buyers want. Especially in around here as most people enjoy getting into a warm car when it’s minus 20 in the winter. The most important thing I always advise my clients to to keep top of mind when they consider such renovation is what will potential buyers want? Garage conversions in some markets have decreased the value of homes by as much as 25%. 

On a $400k home, that $100,000!

It’s true, many people like carpet in the home. It keeps floors warm in the winter, and high-quality carpet feels good on bare feet. There are a lot of people who think carpet feels snug and cozy. Carpet is especially preferred in areas like bedrooms.

Yet with all of the other great flooring alternatives that are out there these days like engineered hardwood and Luxury Vinyl Plank, hearing phrases like “wall to wall carpeting” in the property description can be a turnoff for many buyers. After all, you don’t put carpet in washrooms or kitchens anymore (yes, we’ve seen that). And remember that even high end carpet will show wear & tear in high traffic areas in a matter of months plus buyers may be kind of grossed out by any carpet that doesn’t look brand-new and spotless.

Contact me to learn how to mitigate risks associated with lo-ball offers if you have a lot of carpet in your home.

Everyone believes they have good taste plus a great a sense of humor but everyone doesn’t all have the same taste when it comes to design. Home decor/design is challenging, because homes are both an investment plus this is where we live! It’s natural to want your home to reflect your personality and taste, but if you go too far in that direction, you wind up restricting the potential buyers for your house to people who are just like you. And the chances of finding someone with your exact same tastes are exceedingly low. 

As a result, too-bold paint colors, funky light fixtures, and anything else that’s overly personal will actually decrease the pool of buyers that may be interested in your home which accordingly decreases your home’s objective value and will likely increase the amount of time it takes to sell. 

There is good reason real estate listings always boil a house down to the number of bedrooms and bathrooms—as any time you add or remove one of these components from your home, you’re changing its value. Whether it’s permanently changing a bedroom into some other room (like an office or closet) or combining two bedrooms into one large bedroom, losing that bedroom will cost you. 

Since adding bedrooms or bathrooms increases your home’s value by potentially tens of thousands, one may safely assume that’s about what you’re losing when you take one of these key components out of the equation.

Just like Bathrooms and Bedrooms, closets and storage spaces are key motivators for smart homebuyers. Sometimes after we’ve live in a home for a while, we start to look at these spaces sideways, especially closets in spare bedrooms or linen closets in hallways. 

The idea of using that square footage to expand adjoining spaces such as other bathrooms, bedrooms or even other closets, seem pretty straightforward especially if you’re not really using that closet to begin with.

Yet this can come at a cost to your home’s value. Simply put - the more closets, the better. Closets may not get front-line treatment in the listing, but people definitely notice their absence when they view the home in person.

Inflexible rooms like a home theater, wine cellar or even a home gym that caters to your lifestyle and interests may seem like a good idea. Who doesn’t want a wine cellar after all? Well...lots of people, actually, and overly specific rooms like these can devalue your home because potential buyers may see them as renovation bills instead of blank slates they can use any way they see fit. And if the potential buyers are already calculating the renovation costs, they will likely be factoring these costs into their decision making.

It may come down to where you live though, and whether comparable homes in the area have similar rooms. For example a wine cellar in wine country probably makes a lot of sense. But a wine cellar for a young family with lots of kids? Perhaps not. 

The rule of thumb I use is that you want to maximize your pool of potential buyers, not limit it. By limiting your pool of potential buyers your home will take longer to sell, and likely at a lower price.

A pool in your backyard might seem like a good thing when it comes to increasing your home’s value — but let’s really think about  that especially in our area with our brutal winters. 

Typically pools aren’t common in our area, so having one will actually drag the value of your home down because potential buyers may see it as something they’ll need to pay to remove—or increased efforts & costs on their part to maintain despite not really wanting or even using it. 

Bottom line - in ground pools are costly to install and maintain and may actually add negative value to your home when it’s time to sell.

When most people buy a house, they want to buy a dream—a comfortable space for their family to thrive. What they see when they walk into a house with a lot of wallpaper (and “a lot of wallpaper” is generally defined as “any wallpaper whatsoever”) is a PROJECT. You’re essentially trying to sell them an unpleasant task that needs doing, and that job is removing all of that wallpaper. This might be ok if you’re selling a pre-flip home, but the majority of buyers  will do a quick mental calculation of how much work that’s going to be, and they may reduce their offer on the home appropriately—if they bother making one at all. I

t costs to put up wallpaper, and if you choose to do it despite this advice, you should assume that you’re never getting any of that money back.