Beauty is in the eye of the beholder is especially true when it comes to real estate. Just because you prefer a certain look or upgrade, doesn’t mean a buyer will feel the same way. Here are some of the top home renovations that can hurt your home value.
1. Wallpaper – With the textures and patterns available, wallpaper is a huge gamble. Wallpaper can easily overwhelm a room and a buyer. It also takes away from the “blank canvas” recommendation that allows buyers to envision themselves living in your home. Few things scream personal taste quite like wallpaper. Also, wallpaper is notorious for being hard to remove. Buyers might steer clear of what they perceive to be a potentially difficult upgrade they’d have to make.
2. Bright and Bold Paint Colors – Similar to wallpaper, bright and bold paint colors take away from the blank canvas buyers need to be able to envision themselves living in the home. Repaint with neutrals before listing your home if you have bold and bright paint colors in your home. Let the buyers choose where they want to put color.
3. Combining Bedrooms – Knocking down walls to combine two or more bedrooms into one large room will nearly always hurt your home value. Buyers, particularly buyers with families, prefer more bedrooms – even if they’re small. When it comes time to sell, that one big room will cost you as each bedroom adds as much as 15% to your home’s value. Eliminating a bedroom is a home renovation that can hurt your home value.
4. Fancy Light Fixtures – Lighting trends change quickly and what looked lavish and high-end a few years ago looks dated and old today. Plus fancy and lavish light fixtures can be harder to clean. Not the look you want to show buyers.
5. Unusual Tile Choices – Choosing a textured tile or unusual tile choices or installation patterns can detract from your home’s value. While that black and white checkered tile pattern might look fun to you, a buyer would likely see that as an update they would need to make to the home. The more updates they believe they’ll have to make, the less likely they are to buy the home. Unusual tile choices also work against the blank canvas recommendation.
While there are a number of home renovations that can hurt your home value, these five are some of the most common. Choosing patterns or bold colors for walls or floors can and usually does backfire. Combining two or more rooms into one large room lowers the number of bedrooms available in your home. Dated lighting can look more funky than fancy. The best thing to do is to follow the blank canvas recommendation from the real estate industry and make your home as much of a blank canvas as possible to allow the buyer to envision themselves living in the home.
