according to a recent study by house and home the average homeowner spent $24,000 on Home Improvement projects last year and with more and more people working from home in the Advent of HGTV the Home Improvement industry saw Americans spend $485 billion on Home Improvements last year now the upside to Home Improvement is that you get to improve the enjoyment of your property and you potentially could add some value to your home but the downside is that if you're not careful you could be spending money on projects that you will never get your money back on
so in this video I wanted to talk to you about the top projects that won't give you that return on investment if you're thinking of selling in the near future and the first rule is that you never want to overspend your neighborhood you want to be careful that you don't over improve the property so that you become the nicest house in the neighborhood that is a Surefire way to lose money on your improvements the second rule would be to try to avoid borrowing at all costs try not to take out a heck for renovations I've
done a video about taking out hel loocks and sometimes it is appropriate to use a helck for renovation but if this is an optional renovation just improving the property updating the property then absolutely try to do it cash it's always a good idea not to leverage your home if the market dips you don't want to be underwater you want to preserve that Equity so you have that when you roll it into the next property and then the last rule is to look at your timeline if you're not thinking about moving in the next 5 or
10 years then you might decide to do a project that does not have have a high return on investment but if you are looking to sell your home in the next 2 3 four 5 years your decisions are going to be much different so you want to be aware of what your projected timeline is in your home because that will determine whether or not you do some of these updates now the first project in the list is going to be high in landscaping and hardscaping now this is a project that you can absolutely overspend and
over customize and you want to be very careful on how you choose these projects Coons and water features that is super customizable and also a little expensive to maintain and it'll only appeal to a very small audience outdoor kitchens custom barbecues outdoor fireplaces hardscaping like that is very expensive you really have to pay attention to what is common in your neighborhood and your area but those are items that typically will appeal to a smaller audience elaborate Gardens is another thing you want to be careful of and that falls under the category of over customization if
you are looking to sell your house in the near future you have to make it appeal to the masses and and not every buyer is going to appreciate all of that gardening they might actually look at it as a negative to the backyard so you just want to be careful with that and then lastly would be smart home lighting now the smart home industry has exploded over the last few years I'm a big smart home fan myself I have some outdoor smart lighting but you have to be very careful because some of these options can
be extremely expensive and you can invest thousands of dollars with permanently installed smart lights only to have the technology ol outdated in a year's time and then the other component is unless you have a buyer that's invested in the smart home industry that smart home lighting will have zero value to that buyer so it's just something to keep an eye on so I would be cautious when you're making decisions on that again if you're looking to sell the next few years now the next project is going to be swimming pools now this is going to
obviously be VAR location specific up in the Northeast where I'm at up in Massachusetts swimming pools add practically no value to the home whatsoever so you're putting any money into it you are not going to get any of that money back when you go to sell the house now if you live in the southern states it absolutely is a different story however you still have to be careful be careful that you don't overspend be careful on how big of a pool what type of a pool and really what is customary in your area the biggest
thing you want to look out for is if you live in an area that swimming pools are common you want to just be careful that you don't over customize the swimming pool over customizing adding hot tubs and different shape pools and pools that take up an entire backyard can absolutely limit your chances of selling the home and possibly distract from the value now the next project on the list which is a little controversial for some people is solar panels now I am all for clean energy I am all for helping the environment and I am
all for a low energy bill for sure however you have to be practical if you're again if you're thinking about selling your house in the next 5 to 10 years you have to to look at the big picture on what these actually cost the average return on investment for solar panels is only about 10 to 20% of what the cost output is and the recapture on your initial investment is about 6 to 12 years so if you're thinking about installing them you want to make sure that you're going to be there for an extended period
of time now there are lease options versus buying options I am not a fan of the lease option yes you can pass the cost of the lease on to the buyer this is sometimes a drawback for some buyers that will be a deterrent and it also means that you are going to receive less of a credit from your electric company when you do a lease so the preferred option is to pay for them outright however the cost savings is not quite there yet if we can see the cost of those solar panels come down over
the next several years then absolutely it'll be a better investment but right now solar panels in terms of how much money you're actually saving it's a long-term situation so you're going to be in the home a very long time then absolutely go for it but if you're not I would think twice now the next project is going to be sun rooms now there's a wide range of sunro types on one hand you have a basic sun room which is basically like a screened in porch and on the other hand it's a fully insulated heated room
now we often see those here in the Northeast because we do have four seasons however depending on where you are in that range will depend on whether you're going to get your return on investment if it is not a Four Season room the likely hood of you getting your money back is very low the return on investment is very low for sun rooms so you just want to be careful and look at also what is customary in your neighborhood you want to look at what the average cost of that sun room is and then you
also want to look at what it actually adds for value for a home in your neighborhood now because Trends vary depending on where you are in the country sometimes it's hard to know what is a good idea what is a good return on investment for your particular property in your particular neighborhood and often times I'll get calls from past clients that will ask me Jen you know what's going on in terms of the return on investment on this and is this a good idea and we're looking to sell in the next two or three years
should I replace the carpet should I do this and I will tell them based on what the buyer demand is now this is what they should do so if you have an agent that you can go to fantastic but if you don't and you need to get some advice there's a link in the description down below for a referral to a local agent click that link I'll give you a call we'll have a quick conversation and I'll connect you to one of the many thousands of agents that I know across the country that will give
you some advice and there's no strings attached they will give you the advice on what you need to hear what what what in piece of information that you need to make that decision on whether it is a good idea for that particular project now moving on to the next item is going to be picking unusual paint colors now this is going to be a little bit of a touchy subject because when you are customizing ing your home you're making it from a house to into a home this is a space where you are spending your
days is very personal you are going to want to surround yourself with the colors that you would want the things that make you happy however you have to keep in mind that when you're choosing wall colors and wallpaper that it's not going to necessarily appeal to the masses and sometimes super super personalized colors bold colors can be a deterrent for buyers so you just want to keep that in mind that when you are painting when you're doing these projects around the house that it might be a situation where if you choose to do it this
way and you decide to sell in the next two three 5 years you may have to repaint or take down the wallpaper for that area in order to maximize your value and then you won't get that money back on all the paint and the cost that it took to make it that color in the first place now since we're talking about the walls we might as well start talking about the flooring and specifically I'm talking about carpet carpet is become a very inexpensive thing to replace because it is low demand and the buyer demand now
is not for carpet it is for hardwood it is for laminate wood it is for solid surface flooring and if you have carpet that is older if it needs to be replaced my recommendation is always don't replace it with more carpet you will not get the money back that you put into it and it might be a turnoff to a potential buyer now the next project that you want to be careful around is combining or converting rooms when you take two bedrooms and combine them into one not only does that decrease the property value because
your property value is largely dependent on how many bedrooms you have but you're also not going to recoup the cost that it took to combine those bedrooms so you want to be super careful if dining rooms are super common in your neighborhood and you convert your dining room to a bedroom or home office you just want want to be aware that you probably will not get the money back on that conversion and then you want to be careful about converting garages up here in the Northeast people actually use their garages during inclement weather converting a
garage to a usable space is absolutely a detriment people want to be able to park their garages during a snowstorm down in the southern states where a lot of homes don't have basement those garages are used not only for cars but for storage so if you take that garage convert it to a family room or a home office or a gym now you're taking away from usable storage space and that will detract from the value of the home and then the last update project that I would be careful about would be high-end updates to modest
homes you want to make sure that you don't over improve one section or one element of your house so there's inconsistency with your updates having a very nice updated kitchen but a super ultra modern stove is not going to give you a return on investment you want to make sure that you have the same level of updates throughout the home you have a home that is in dire need of updates and repairs but the bathroom is stellar and updated to the nines not going to get your money back you will not get your return on
investment on that house just because of the bathroom so you want to be careful when you make your choices on the types of fixtures on the choices for where you put the money in the house again especially if you're looking to sell in the next few years now at the end of the day your home is exactly that it's your home it's not an investment if this was a flip then you would be looking at the numbers you'd be looking at a spreadsheet You' make those decisions based on Strictly the numbers but this is not
an investment this is a home where you relax you enjoy you have parties you have friends over you unwind you want to surround yourself with things that make you happy and if updating that backyard and having elaborate Gardens makes you happy and you don't care about the return on investment then that's what you should do but if you want to make sure that you spend the money on the right things and not over renovate and have regret you're going to want to check out this video I'm Jen Sylvester and I'm here to help you become
a Savvy home seller
