Ideally, every house would look like a model home before it goes on the market. But so often, there’s just not a budget big enough for it. Every seller feels the squeeze, especially when considering they are often paying for inspections, reports, commissions, and more. Of course, good money spent on the right things to get a listing ready to go on the market yields a hefty return on investment. But what do you do if you simply don’t have the funds?
However you can find a way to do repairs (that show cosmetically) and basic remodeling to update your property, plus staging – you definitely should, and you will be nicely rewarded (either by garnering a high sales price, or simply by being able to sell the home). If you are on a tight budget, make sure to let your Realtor know and ask them which elements of your property are the most glaring and need attention. Once you have that list, you can prioritize your budget and dialogue with your Realtor on which items you can afford to do.
Some of the fixes are so inexpensive, you may be shocked. Here are some examples of recent repairs and remodeling efforts our team has employed:
1. One house in Sunnyvale, California had 4″ off-white tiles for the kitchen countertop-this would not have been a horrible problem, but the grout lines were black. We didn’t have money in the budget to add granite to the kitchen. So we bought a bottle of off white “grout paint” at Home Depot and painted the grout lines. The product was $11 and the work was done by the handyman, costing a couple hundred bucks, but this work could easily be done by willing homeowners. The result was a kitchen with very neutral-looking tile instead of the previous outdated effect.
2. That same house had a Florida room addition. None of the rest of the house had wallpaper, but this room did, and it looked very tired. Because the room did not look perfect to begin with, we decided not to spend labor cost on removing the wallpaper. Instead, we took some of the same paint color we were using in the rest of the house and painted over the wallpaper (after using an appropriate primer first). Before painting over wallpaper, it’s good to glue down any unsightly seams. This solution worked wonders.
3. One of our buyers in San Jose had us coordinate his pre move-in remodel – he bought a bank owned property but wanted it to be turnkey before he moved in. The budget for the project was $9000 but needed to include granite in the kitchen & bathroom, plus complete interior painting, all new lighting, all new hardware, plus a new tile floor in the bathroom. The carpet was badly stained, but we had run out of wiggle room in the budget. We decided to consult two carpet cleaners on whether the stains would come out or not. They both gave their vote of confidence that it would be about 90% good, and our client opted to give it a try. However, there were a few very bad stains (red marker, for example) in a couple spots. The carpet cleaner, who has his master certification in cleaning & patching, used a small round cutter to remove the spots and replace it with pieces from a remnant we gained from removing carpet from the bathroom (to put in the tile floor). You could barely tell the patches had been done. The entire condo looked pristine and the carpet issue ended up costing less than $300, much cheaper than replacing all the flooring.
4. This same condo had pretty maple cabinetry that looked worse for wear. We couldn’t bring ourselves to paint it and there was no money in the budget to do a full refinishing. Our painter did a light sanding on the problem areas and re-sealed the cabinets. The cost was under $400 for the whole kitchen and the end result looked about 95% new.
5. Another Sunnyvale property had some dry patches of grass up against one of the flowerbeds that ran the length of the back fence. New listings typically need new mulch put down in all flowerbeds, if there is a budget for it, because it spruces up the yard so nicely. So since the bed was going to have some work done to it anyway, we removed the benderboard and extended it out to encompass the dry patches of grass-with those areas becoming a part of the newly-shaped flowerbed. We had the gardener dig up the soil in those areas. New mulch was put down into the whole new bed, and we added some colorful plantings. This was an inexpensive fix for an otherwise unsightly problem.
6. Often, tubs and shower pans are crazy colors like pink or avocado – or perhaps they are white or off white but have chips in the enamel. There are kits at the big box home improvement stores for re-enameling a tub or shower pan, or sink to be white or off white. It’s a messy job, with fumes involved, but the kits are cheap, running around $40 or less. Make sure to also do an online search for companies in your area that can do the re-enamel for you. We often hire these companies for our listings. However, bear in mind that sometimes buying a new sink is less expensive than hiring a re-enamel company; whereas, typically putting new enamel onto a tub is less costly than replacing it.
With so many great budget tricks to get a property ready to go on the market, be mindful that not every jerry-rigged solution pans out. For example, one bathroom had some cracked tiles covering half of the floor. We were determined to match the tile and salvage the half of the floor that did not show cracking. We went to one of our local tile warehouses and they happily searched for us & found a decent match. However, because it was a discontinued tile, it was $4/square foot. Our contractor installed it, but by the time we finished we ended up with a non-perfect match and could have replaced all the tile in the bathroom for the same price, even including the extra labor, using neutral tile for around $1.50 a square foot instead.
View before and after photos of properties that have been staged on our blog (TheListingLook.com/LookFolio) and let me know if you have any questions I can answer.
Kelsey Lane is a part of The Look Team, a professional team of Realtors that service the Silicon Valley. Kelsey manages The Look Team’s online presence, helps sellers with getting their properties ready for the market (& negotiates the deals/gets them closed!), and helps with pre move-in remodels for our buyers. She is constantly using her resourcefulness to make sure all her clients, both virtual and real, are taken care of!
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