How important is curb appeal when selling a home? Curb appeal gives potential buyers or renters their first impression of a property, and sets the tone for how they’ll view the rest of the house. It can be easy to overlook the exterior and focus mostly on the interior, but it is actually a crucial piece of your marketing plan.
Curb appeal is how a house presents itself to someone viewing it from the street. Investors can spend a lot of money redoing everything on the inside of a home, but at the end of the day, if you don’t create something enticing on the outside, people won’t be able to envision themselves living there.
If your house isn’t living up to its curb appeal potential, here are a few changes that can add up to a fantastic front-of-house facelift:
Landscaping & Lighting
Your curb appeal should start with the condition of the landscaping, and any other foliage on the property. Landscaping improvements can be as simple or as complex as you want to make them. A well-manicured lawn with established trees, shrubs and plants will always instantly boost a home’s curb appeal (and increase its value).
Additionally, lighting makes a huge impact on a home’s curb appeal, while also providing safety and security. Add accent lighting to trees or the house to highlight its best features, or illuminate a walking path. If there’s existing fixtures on the house, look at replacing or freshening those as well so that they match the style of the home.
Exterior Paint
A worn-out exterior is something that should not be ignored. New paint on the exterior of the home can do wonders for curb appeal and make your home appear more expensive than your initial investment. Focus on utilizing a cohesive color palette that will make your home look more refined and well-kept.
When painting or selecting new colors, try to stick to 2 or 3 to create a more polished look. Too many colors will create a muddled exterior, which will inevitably turn away potential buyers.
Roof Repair
While not always thought of as the most aesthetically pleasing part of a house, an old, dilapidated roof will turn away prospective buyers faster than any other feature of your home. A roof covered in moss and debris or dirty unaligned gutters can spoil your curb appeal, plus cause costly damage. An updated roof can produce outsized returns and boost your ultimate sale price.
Make Your Front Door Shine
What is the one part of a house that is impossible to ignore each time you walk into a home? Your front door. While you can replace the door entirely to match the new aesthetic of the house, you can start by seeing if a fresh coat of paint will be enough to give it an updated look. Improvements to the front door will be money well spent and will improve the ROI on the home.
Walk This Way
Well-designed walkways make your home feel warm and inviting. For a dramatic improvement to a straight concrete path, replace it with stone or brick. If you want to keep your budget low, focus on just filling in cracks or evening the path out. Improving the way people actually get to your house is just a small – (but mighty!) – tactic that can provide an outsized increase to the value of a property.
Learn more about The Best Renovations For Your Property
In competitive markets, it could be a big mistake to leave curb appeal unattended. There are dozens of small, inexpensive home improvements that can boost your home’s curb appeal, in addition to some larger, more expensive, but sometimes necessary ones. A few upgrades can add up to a finished look that you can take pride in, and that will get you the biggest return on your investment.