The Vermont Mortgage Company team hopes you are enjoying your week on this fine Friday. As always, we want to show how much we appreciate you. This week, we are showing our appreciation by showing you what can depreciate your home! You may not know it, but there are many things in your house that could be lowering its value. Knowing what could be negatively affecting your home can help you prepare to sell. So what does depreciate homes?
Simplicity over trendy – Lots of things can be distracting. Having bright colors or overly flamboyant choices of decor can detract a potential buyers interest. Simplicity and modern looking decoration is the safest way to go. Avoid busy patterns, ornate furniture, and anything too gaudy.
Go for the wood – As we have noted previously, hard wood floors are the way to go. Having nicely polished hardwood floors are much more preferred to a carpet, and are always likely to give you a return on your money. If you are thinking of moving soon, think about ripping up any wall to wall carpeting you may have.
Taking a dip – While having a pool can be seen as a luxury, think twice about putting one in. Installing one could potentially depreciate your home. Unlike hardwood floors, pools won’t give you a positive return. Thousands spent on a pool will not mean thousands coming back to you. If you have a renovation budget, maybe forget the pool and go for something safer, such as upgrading fixtures in your kitchen or bathroom.
Climate control – This is another big investment, but one that will pay off for you. Ensuring your house is energy efficient and eco-friendly is very important for potential buyers. Ensuring you have good heating and cooling systems, and a secure house so no hot or cold air escapes, is very important in the housing world today. Instead of staying cool in the pool, get a nice air conditioner instead! Your house will thank you.
Most importantly, have a realistic and cohesive house to put on the market. Things like extensive landscaping can actually depreciate your home value, as it can be seen as a huge burden to a potential buyer. Knowing they’d have to fork out lots of money regularly to have a nice lawn is not an appealing scenario. Similarly, having updated appliances in a kitchen from the 1970’s will look out of place. If you plan on making improvements to specific areas, ensure everything works with it. Stainless steel appliances and granite counter tops aren’t an automatic boost if the rest of the house doesn’t work with it. Much like a piece of art, everything must come together beautifully to fight depreciation.
While you make art of your home, we have perfected the art of mortgages! For your next mortgage, make sure you contact us to get the process started. We are here for you at 802-863-2020, on our website, and on our social media pages. We look forward to hearing from you!