Working with sellers who have some-but not unlimited-cash
for upgrades? Here
are budget-minded enhancements you can suggest to make
their home stand out.
1. Tidy up kitchen cabinets.
"Potential buyers do open kitchen cabinets and
look inside," says Morrissey. "Home owners
can add rollout organizing trays so when buyers peek
in, they feel like there's lots of room for their stuff."
2. Add or replace tile.
"By retiling very inexpensively, you make a room
look way cleaner that it was," says Javier Zuluaga,
owner of Home Repairs and Remodeling LLC in Tempe, Ariz. "Every
city has stores that offer $1 to $2 tile, so home owners
have to pay only for the low-cost tile and labor to replace
a dated backsplash or add a new one. We also use inexpensive
tile to upgrade bathrooms."
3. Add a breakfast bar.
When a wall separates a kitchen from a family room,
suggest cutting out an opening to create a breakfast
bar. "In
one home, there was a cutout in the wall between the
kitchen and living room," explains
Matthew Quinn, a sales associate at Quinn's Realty & Estate
Services in Falls Church, Va., who handles estate and
real estate sales for family members whose loved ones
have passed away. "We left the
structure of the cutout, added an oversized granite breakfast
bar, and put chairs in front of it. That cost about $600."
4. Install granite tile instead of a slab.
"Everybody is hot for granite kitchen countertops,
but that can be a $5,000 upgrade," says John Wilder,
a general contractor and owner of Fence and Deck Doctor
in New Castle, Ind. "Instead,
home owners can put in 12-inch granite tiles for about
$300 in materials and get very high impact for little
money."
5. Freshen up a bathroom without retiling.
"With a dated bathroom, I recommend putting in
a new medicine cabinet for $100 to $150, light fixtures
for about $100, a faucet for $50 to $75, and a vanity
for $200 to $300," says
Wilder. "And
instead of replacing the tile, the existing grout can
be lightly scraped and regrouted, which leaves a haze
that can be buffed out and will make the tile look brand
new. Also install glass shower doors. A French door adds
a lot of panache and elegance for $250, and people will
notice the door, not the tile. With all that, you've
done a bathroom remodel for $1,000 to $2,000."
6. Freshen up the basement.
"If home owners have cement block or poured concrete
walls in the basement, suggest they have a contractor
fill in cracks with hydraulic cement and then paint with
waterproofing paint," recommends
Wilder. "They
can then add a top coat to add color. They can also paint
the basement floor with a good floor paint, which spiffs
it up. The basement may not be finished, but it's no
longer a damp dungeon."
7. Add a room.
Look for large spaces that can be enclosed to create
a new bedroom for just the price of creating a wall. "One
time, we closed off a half-wall to an office and added
a door to the other side of the room, thus creating another
bedroom," says
Quinn. "That
$400 procedure, which took a contractor one day, netted
about $40,000 in the sales price." Zuluaga
has also added bedrooms inexpensively. "In a two-bedroom
house, there was an archway that led to a third room
that was used as a den," he explains. "It
had a dry bar where there would have been a closet, so
we took out the dry bar and created a closet so the owners
had a third bedroom."
8. Spruce up cabinet fronts.
Suggest home owners update tired-looking kitchen cabinets.
Reconditioning is the least expensive move for under
$1,000. "If
the wood is starting to look shabby from use or contaminants
in the air, we take out the nicks and scratches, recondition
it with oil, and put new hardware on," explains
Heidi Morrissey, vice president of marketing and sales
at Kitchen Tune-Up in Aberdeen, S.D. For $1,500 to $4,000,
owners can replace the cabinet doors and drawer fronts,
and for $4,000 to $12,000, they can have all the cabinets
refaced. "With
refacing, owners can change the color of the cabinets
by replacing the door and having a new skin put on the
boxes," says
Morrissey. "If they have oak cabinets today, they
can have cherry the next day."
9. Replace light fixtures.
"In a foyer and in bathrooms and kitchens," says
Wilder, "replacing overhead light fixtures provides
a lot of pop for a little money." If
the kitchen has track lighting, Zuluaga suggests the
home owner spend $450 to $600 to have an electrician
replace it with recessed canned lights on a dimmer switch
to add ambience. For about $700, Zuluaga also suggests
installing pendant lights over a kitchen island or peninsula.
10. Tech-up the garage.
"Sometimes we replace the garage door opener with
a remote touchpad entry system," says Zuluaga. "That
costs about $425 and makes it look like a high-end system."
