Curb Appeal for Beginners: How to Boost Your Home’s Value With a Stunning First Impression
From simple, inexpensive home improvement projects to the craft and care of professionals, curb appeal makes your house more impressive to buyers and easier to sell. Most importantly, it gives homeowners a sense of pride and excitement every time they come home — before they even walk in the door. So, are you looking to enhance your curb appeal but don’t know where to start? Here are a few tips to help you get started.
Understand the Space You Are Working With
Before you start tearing up your lawn and planting hundreds of dollars of foliage, consider what will thrive in your space. Does your front lawn get a lot of sun or shade? Are there patches that flood in the rain? Are your current trees and shrubs healthy? Is the ground mostly composed of dirt, clay, or rock? Get to know your yard before you start making changes.
Tips: Daisies and lilies like shade, while hydrangeas, pansies, coneflowers, and sage benefit from the full sun. If you don’t want to plant in the ground, consider creating a front-porch container garden with some of these bright and alluring flowers.
Set and Stick to a Budget
You can significantly alter your home’s curb appeal with a few hundred dollars if you know where to put your time and effort. Additionally, you can make the impact more dramatic if you consult with a landscaping expert. Decide how much you can and want to spend so that your improvements stay within scale. If you’re putting your house on the market soon, working with an expert landscaper to maintain the health and beauty of your lawn can be a major stress-reducer.
Tips: A landscape professional can assess your lawn and make subtle changes that enhance curb appeal. Hire them to come back once a week or bi-weekly to take care of mowing, weeding, watering, and general upkeep to ensure your home looks fantastic. Don’t look solely at price; HGTV recommends reviewing portfolios before settling on your favorite landscaping professional.
Know What Buyers Want
Before you paint your front door red or plant dozens of rose bushes along a walkway, tour similar homes for sale in your area to find out what appeals to buyers. There are curb appeal trends that last and curb appeal trends that fall out of favor pretty quickly. You want to make sure you’re putting your money into designs that create the right first impression.
Tips: Do your audience research. Who is moving into your neighborhood? Per Credit.com modern, minimalist styles are frequently in style for millennials. Meanwhile, spacious green lawns tend to draw the attention of parents of young children.
Take a Look from the Curb with a Critical Eye
When you pull up to your house, what’s the first thing you notice? Peeling paint? Crooked address numbers? Try to view your house objectively. Maybe your lack of curb appeal isn’t as easy to spot, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. Take pictures from the curb at different angles and ask your friends and family to share their impressions.
Tips: Do not forget your gutters! If you’re uncomfortable doing this task yourself, hire professionals who can safely and securely remove any debris from your gutters without damaging your home. Just keep in mind that you’ll need to budget around $106 to $197 on average for this service — $350 or more if the job is bigger than most.
Balance Beauty with Ease
If a beautiful yard looks complicated to maintain, it could turn away more buyers than it draws in. When making your curb appeal upgrades, think about creating an aesthetic that is simplistic and elegant on its own but could also be a foundation for someone to do more if they are inspired.
Tips: If you wouldn’t want to maintain the curb appeal, it’s likely buyers will see it as a burden, as well. Choose perennial plants that thrive in all weather, neutral colors that can easily be changed, and flower beds that don’t require too much weeding or watering.
Curb appeal is a very important part of selling a home. Television shows like “Fixer Upper,” “Divine Design,” and “Property Brothers” have put a spotlight on curb appeal. Potential buyers will be more excited to open the front door and come inside if they see a lively and engaging outside. While determining an exact impact on value can be subjective, one thing is for sure: curb appeal is your first chance to wow house hunters.
For trustworthy advice and service when you hit the housing market, be sure to connect with Streamline Realty! Call (844) 477-2170 for more information.