Controlling the Value of Your Boston Home!

In a homeowner’s world, home value means everything. No matter where you are in the process, you care about home value. If you’re buying a house in Boston, you want one with a high value that is worth your investment. If you’re selling a house in Boston, you want to get the most money possible for it. If you are simply living comfortably in your Boston home, you want it to preserve its value for when you decide to sell it in the future.

In the Boston Real Estate market, you hear a lot about how to increase your home’s value, but not always about what could hurt it. I came across this MSN Money article that explains the concept well. While there are some factors to your home that you can’t change, such as how good the school system is or how busy your street traffic is, there are other aspects that you can control.

As your Boston Real Estate agent, I feel the need to share factors from the article that I found to be most valuable, and possibly surprising. When focusing on your home’s value, this is what you don’t want:

• A home that significantly sticks out from others in the neighborhood. You probably know that if your home is painted bright pink or orange, or the yard is filled with a clutter of toys or yard ornaments, this won’t help your home’s value. But what you might not realize is that sticking out in an overly good way doesn’t help the value either.

Sometimes, too much of a good thing isn’t good in the end. If your home is dramatically more upgraded or sized than the homes around it, it could lose value. If you added a whole lot of space onto your home, and it sticks out like a sore thumb, you won’t get the money back that you spent. Why? As the article suggests, buyers who want a big house will look in a neighborhood full of big houses. You want your home to fit in with the style of your neighborhood.

• A home that is missing a specific feature. These days, buyers are very particular about what they’re looking for. If you live in a neighborhood full of families with kids, chances are, your buyer will want a lot of bedrooms. Also, most buyers want traditional rooms, such as a family room, kitchen, living room, dining room and so on. While this doesn’t mean that you should add on if you don’t have one of these rooms, it does mean that you should stick to traditional when possible.

This means that if you planned on remodeling a spare bedroom into a media room or a fitness room, with high-tech technology and built-in features, reconsider your target market. If you live in a young, hip side of town, this might be what your buyers seek. If you live in a family-oriented area, you might want to stick with modeling the room as a bedroom.

• A home with random updates throughout. This means that while upgrades can help with an appraisal, they can also hurt the value. Don’t think that upgrades are always a good thing. Often, home sellers are so eager to look better than their competition, they dish out oodles of cash on upgrades here and there and end up with a mismatched house. In the end, you have a $500,000 kitchen and a century-old family room. Or, if you upgrade the whole house, you risk standing out too much from your neighbors and still losing value.

When it comes to upgrades and renovations, a good rule of thumb is to choose changes that will still fit with the look and feel of your home, but at a higher level of convenience to your buyer. For example, upgraded appliances in the kitchen are always well received by a buyer, but make sure they fit in with the rest of the kitchen’s décor. Or, freshly painted walls looks great in a housing ad, but make sure the colors are neutral and corresponding throughout.

When it comes to appraisals, a well-maintained home is worth more than the cost it would take for you to upgrade it.

As your Boston Real Estate agent, I’m telling you to really consider the changes you want to make to your Boston house before making them. When you do decide to add upgrades, make sure they aren’t too extreme, they fit into the style of your home and neighborhood, they will raise the rating of an appraisal and they don’t cost you an arm and a leg.

Not sure if you should upgrade? Need more assistance? Contact me! The Boston Real Estate market is ready for you, so let’s get your Boston home sold!

Patti Fine
Phone: 617-642-7585
Email: pf@pattifine.com
Patti Fine Real Estate
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