On The Home Seller’s Radar: Kitchen and Bathrooms

Posted by Jessica Gopalakrishnan on Dec 21, 2007

Part 1 – HomeGain’s Fall 2007 Home Sale Maximizer™ Survey

What are Realtors® advising homeowners do when it comes time to sell their home?

Turns out it’s what every home seller wants to hear. First, it is not going to cost a lot to see a high ROI. Secondly, it’s not going to be extremely time consuming or challenging.

In HomeGain’s Fall 2007 Home Sale Maximizer™ Survey that included over 2,000 real estate agents across the U.S. the results were just that. The goal of the survey was to find out what agents recommend to homeowners to get their home into home selling condition and maximize their return on investment (at a minimal cost).

By the way, Home Sale Maximizer is a free, online home improvement tool for home sellers. As a Realtor®, it’s a great tool to give to your clients to help them get the home sale process started.

I’m going to list the results for the top six to 10 most recommended home improvements in this part 1 real estate blog post, and then reveal the top four in Part 2.

• Repair electrical or plumbing problems
• Paint interior walls
• Replace or shampoo carpeting
• Repair damaged flooring
• Update kitchen and bathrooms
• Paint exterior walls

According to real estate agents in the West, South and Mid-West, repairing electrical or plumbing problems ranked as the fifth most important home improvement. At a low cost of $450-$650, agents would expect an increase of $1,200-1,600 to the home’s value.

If my math is correct, that could be worth more than twice what you put in. Not too shabby!

Coming in at sixth place in the West is updating kitchens and bathrooms. Nationwide numbers show that 87% of agents recommend this to homeowners. The most expensive of the top 10 on this list, agents expect to still see at least double the return. However, a more involved project, it actually has the lowest return compared to the other easier (and quicker) things that can be done.

Must be a West coast thing.

Ninety-seven percent of agents nationwide recommend painting the interior walls. This home improvement ranked seventh in the East and Mid-West regions. Painting is reported at costing an average of $750 and the ROI can be up to 150%, possibly increasing a home’s value as high as $2,150.

Homeowners can see almost twice the times (154% ROI) times the value for ROI by replacing or shampooing carpeting. Average costs nationwide were reported as $550-$800. Shampooing is the lower end cost, and, actually, at this time, I’ll mention that the disclaimer in this survey.

Disclaimer: It all really depends on the actual condition of your home area. If it can be fixed, great. If it simply cannot be fixed, or shampooed in this case, replacing the carpet is probably the better solution.

Think about it in terms of if you were the individual looking to buy your home! If you don’t think you can be objective enough because you live with it and see it every day, ask a friend or neighbor for advice.

Painting exterior walls ranked fifth in the East and sixth in the South, costing in the range of $650-$950 and potentially getting returns as high as $2205. Still, 88% of real estate agents nationwide recommend this to their clients. This home improvement ranked in last place (tenth) in the West and Mid-West.

Repairing damaged flooring had the highest return on investment in the East. For as low as $600, a homeowner could see an increase in the home’s value as high as $2,000 or more by fixing any damaged parts of floors.

Stay tuned for the top 4 most recommended and highest return on investment home improvements!

For questions about any of this data, please feel free to contact me at blog@homegain.com.

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