How to increase the value of your home

What can increase the value of my home?

There are plenty of changes you can make to a home, from building an extension or adding a conservatory to getting a new central heating system and general painting and decorating. However, not all the changes you make will increase the value of your home. Therefore, which alterations are likely to provide a return on your investment and which won’t be worth the effort?

Improve the heating system

Many buyers could be put off a property if the boiler is old or the system seems a bit rickety. This is because having a new boiler or even a whole new central heating system installed can be expensive and is an investment that would need to be made immediately.

Therefore, making this change yourself could make your home more desirable and would be likely to be a worthy investment. A new boiler can increase your home’s value by around 1.9 per cent. While this may seem insignificant, this could be an increase of around £5,700 on a £300,000 property. Provided the new boiler doesn’t cost this much, you could make a profit on the change and may even sell your home faster.

It’s also worth considering that a new boiler or heating system will likely be more efficient, and therefore you’d be saving money on your energy bills while you continue to live at the property.

Homes tend to be more desirable if the boiler is hidden, too. While hiding a boiler won’t necessarily increase the value of your property, your home could sell faster, which may result in a reduced estate agent fee. You could put it into a kitchen cupboard or paint it to match the walls

Add a new bathroom

In the past, most homes had one bathroom and that tended to be at the bottom of the garden. Now, people want a family bathroom, an ensuite off the master bedroom and a downstairs WC. 

How much does a new bathroom increase home value by?

Did you know that by adding an extra bathroom, you could increase the value of your home by around five per cent? This may not sound like a lot, but this would take a £300,000 property up to £315,000. And it’s likely that it wouldn’t cost £15,000 to have a new bathroom installed, so you’d be making some profit on this addition too.

If you’d prefer not to install a brand new bathroom, there are some smaller adjustments you can make to an existing bathroom. If you have a shower curtain, you may want to consider replacing this with a glass screen. Shower curtains can begin to make your bathroom smell and they don’t look as clean or modern as a screen. You should also check that there’s no mould on the tiles or around the taps and that any peeling paint is scraped off and replaced.

Extend

This isn’t always an option - some people may not have the space or the money. However, if you feel that your home just isn’t quite big enough and would like to increase its value for the future, this is the change to make.

If you wish to extend out at the back of the property, you won’t need planning permission so long as the extension will be less than six metres wide, single storey only and adheres to building regulations.

Alternatively, you could extend over a garage, to the side or the front of the property and even into the loft. The average extension adds approximately 11 per cent to a property and an additional bedroom, such as in the attic, with an ensuite could add up to 20 per cent. As long as you keep the build costs in check, this would be a good investment and makes good use of the space already in the property.

A general respruce

Not all the changes you make need to be substantial or cost a lot of money. Doing a variety of smaller jobs can make a difference to the overall look and feel of the property. These smaller jobs can include:

• Removing peeling paint and repainting
• Getting rid of mouldy sealant and replacing it
• Fixing a dripping tap
• Repainting door frames and skirting boards
• Removing limescale build up around taps
• Replacing broken light bulbs
• Fixing squeaky floorboards.
  
  

All of these things can and probably will be noticed during a house viewing, so don’t ignore them - try to sort them out as quickly as possible. A viewer that notices dodgy lighting, squeaky floors or dripping taps may think that the property is in bad condition or that it hasn’t been looked after. 

Tidy up the outside

We’ve all heard of kerb appeal, and it is true that having a neat and tidy garden can increase the value of your home. Sell House Fast found that a well-kempt garden could add £2,000 to your home’s value. The bonus is that, if your garden is in fairly good shape, it won’t take a lot of work or money to neaten it up for selling. Changes you could make include: 

• Adding storage, such as a good quality shed
• Mowing the grass
• Trimming hedges and trees
• Sweeping pathways
• Deweeding
• Neatening edges
  
  

Sell House Fast also discovered that 84 per cent of survey respondents said they wouldn’t buy a property without a driveway. Having a place to park a vehicle is so important to many buyers. If your home doesn’t currently have a decent parking space, you may want to consider turning your front garden into a space big enough for two cars.