The Best Ways to Increase the Value of Your Home

Making improvements to your home can be very rewarding. Making certain changes to your property not only enhances the comfort and liveability of your home, but it can also boost its resale value. But what changes will give you the best bang for your buck?

Here are our top 3 changes you can make to boost the resale value of your property.

Renovate Bathrooms & Kitchens

Nothing dates a home more than old bathrooms and kitchens. Unfortunately, styles and trends move fast in bathroom and kitchen design. Luckily, bathroom and kitchen renovations are widely considered as one of the best ways to add value to your property. However, you don’t have to go overboard! You can stretch your dollar further by making these simple changes:

1. Updating plumbing fixtures and vanities

2. New flooring

3. Improved lighting

4. Update to more energy/water efficient appliances

Pro tip: Try to avoid overly bold kitchen and bathroom designs, stick with a timeless, understated design to ensure that your kitchen or bathroom does not date too quickly.

Re-imagine your outdoor spaces

An outdoor area is an extension of your home. When adding a new deck or patio, you are effectively increasing the amount of living space available to you. A deck can 20m2 deck can cost between $5000 - $15,000, depending on terrain and materials used. But this cost is considered an investment, as adding a deck has been shown to increase a property’s value by up to 30%. But to get such healthy returns, you must think of your deck as an outdoor living space and provision it as such. Adding an outdoor shade solution in the form of a louvre system and an energy-efficient outdoor heater will allow you to create a comfortable outdoor space that can be used year round.

Consider Subdivision

Subdividing is no longer just a property developers’ game. While many consider the prospect of subdivision to be quite daunting, the rules have changed a lot in recent years, allowing people to subdivide properties as small as 300 square metres in mixed housing urban zone and 400 square metres in mixed housing suburban zones. The subdivision process involves first getting a feasibility report, checking whether your property is suitable for subdivisions. Then you must prepare a council application which includes site reports and proposed design plans. All up, the process of subdividing a property costs between $120,000 and $150,000 (before you build). While this is a large upfront cost, you can expect a very healthy return on investment if you sell one (or both) sections.

For many of us, our home is our biggest investment. Making improvements to your home is an excellent way of insuring your home will fetch top dollar, should you choose to sell. Additionally, making renovations and alterations to a home also improves how we feel within the home – a metric which is difficult to define but can have a profound effect on our quality of life.