Your home is the largest investment most people make in their lives. The hope is that the home only increases in value over time, but there are a lot of additions that can devalue your home. These are often things that the homeowner themselves think will add value and make it more appealing to a buyer.
They later found out they were wrong and struggled to sell their home. In today’s economic climate, having trouble selling a home is the last thing you need as the housing market remains unstable.
You probably have no control over everything that impacts the value of your home. For example, if you moved into a great neighborhood that later went downhill, that’s not something you can control. It will be difficult to get a lot of additional value from that situation.
But for the obstacles that are well within your control, there are hidden problems that most homeowners don’t realize might actually come back to bite them in the end. Let’s look at seven of those factors:
1) Having a Swimming Pool
To you (and most people, we would think), having a pool brings back great memories. It’s a place of relaxation and fun parties. To others, it can be an inconvenient and costly issue that keeps them from buying your home.
Pools can be expensive to maintain, add additional cost to the home they aren’t ready to spend, and might even be considered a danger risk if they have really young children. This is a problem that might lead a lot of potential buyers from walking away.
Ways you can fix this problem, if you haven’t already installed a pool, is to go with an above-ground or non-permanent addition. If you’ve already taken the plunge or you bought the home with the pool already a fixture, you can do the work to ensure it’s safe by adding protective fences.
2) The Cool Carpet You Love Isn’t Cool to Everyone
No one can decorate a home like you can. You did your best Feng Shui that made your living space the most appealing and comfortable as you could with color schemes that fit your mood. The problem is, not everyone is going to dig those blue carpets or purple linoleum that covers the kitchen floor.
Also: http://financialhelpers.com/how-to-make-sure-youre-financially-prepared-for-marriage/
This beautiful masterpiece in your eyes could be an eyesore disaster to others that cause them to walk away. The best thing you can for your home is to update all floor to something modern, like wood flooring or fresh, neutral-colored carpeting.
3) A Bad Floor Plan
If you’ve been telling yourself for years that knocking down that wall would be the perfect way to open up your home, maybe now is the time to do it. It would be especially helpful when trying to sell it.
Your house doesn’t have to be a mansion to make people walk in and feel like they have a lot of great space to do whatever their heart desires. It’s best to let potential buyers see multi-use from as much of that space as possible.
The reason is because the new owners might not have the same lifestyle you do. You might have a children’s room they want to use as a place for storage or require a home office. If you have a lot of single-use space, it will be harder for different people to want to buy it.
4) Turning Closet Space into Something Else
If you have a large closet that you’re thinking might be more valuable to use as a bathroom space or small office, don’t touch it. Let the new owners decide what to do with that space. One of the top things on the list of new owners might be to have plenty of closet and/or storage space.
You may decide that using a lot of dresser space is great for your clothes, but others might like to hang up their stuff in a closet, or have a large collection of shoes or suits. So, what you think will add value my actually decrease it.
5) Not Enough Natural Light
There are a lot of benefits to natural light. Not only does it help cut down on the electric and heating bills to have extra light, it can also help make a place appear more inviting and friendlier. The lack of this type of light can lead to a more stuffy and closed feeling.
If you feel there’s a lack of windows, consider adding a few. This is especially important if you have a great view you can utilize.
6) Having a Converted Garage
You might have the greatest man cave on the planet, but it does nothing for the next people looking to buy it. They may want an actual garage to store their cars in. This is especially true if you live in a northern climate. It’s beneficial to keep your vehicles in a covered space overnight or during storms.
If you converted your garage into a hang-out place, an additional living space, or you have a ton of stuff stored in there, it would be best to clean it all out and restore the garage back to its proper condition.
7) Wallpaper is Ugly
Again, you might love the look of your decorated bathroom space with boat wallpaper to keep up with the nautical theme you probably enjoy. But statistics show that the majority of homebuyers agree that wallpaper is generally ugly and unappealing.
Depending on how much of the stuff you’ve used, it could really devalue your home. It will signal to buyers they’d have to put a lot of extra work and money into fixing it on their own. If you do it on your own, you can recoup a lot of that value while having a clean appearance.
To finish, not everyone likes your styles, and that’s perfectly okay. You’re free to design your home however you want. But if you’re trying to sell it, the best advice is to try and scrub any personal touches out. Try to return it back to its neutral form. It could turn away a lot of buyers who feel they’d have to be a lot of work into it.
