Should We Renovate Before We Sell, or Leave It Alone?
It’s one of the first questions sellers ask us.
“Should we fix this before we list?”
Sometimes the answer is absolutely. Sometimes it’s absolutely not.
Before putting thousands of dollars into a kitchen, bathroom, flooring or other renovation because you think it will make your home worth more, it’s worth looking at the house through a buyer’s eyes.
The goal isn’t to make your home perfect. It’s to figure out where your money and effort will actually make a difference.
Start With the Things That Look Neglected
There’s a big difference between a home being dated and a home looking like it hasn’t been maintained.
Buyers can usually live with an older kitchen or bathroom. What tends to concern them more are things that make them wonder what else hasn’t been taken care of.
A dripping faucet, damaged trim, holes in walls, broken door handles, missing lightbulbs, peeling paint or a half-finished project may seem minor, but several of these things together can change the way a buyer sees the entire house.
Before spending money on major renovations, deal with the obvious repairs and unfinished jobs.
Paint Can Be One of the Best Places to Spend Money
You don’t necessarily need to repaint the entire house.
But if some rooms have very strong colours, walls are badly marked or there’s obvious wear and tear, fresh paint can make a noticeable difference without requiring a huge investment.
The goal isn’t to make every home beige. It’s to make the space feel clean, bright and easy for buyers to picture themselves living in.
Sometimes a few hundred dollars and a weekend of painting can have more impact than a much more expensive improvement.
Should We Renovate the Kitchen?
This is where sellers can get themselves into trouble.
You may look at your kitchen and think it’s outdated. That doesn’t necessarily mean a buyer will want the kitchen you would choose to replace it with.
A full kitchen renovation can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars, and there’s no guarantee you’ll get all of that money back when you sell.
If the kitchen is functional but dated, smaller improvements may make more sense.
Painting, updating hardware, changing a dated light fixture, repairing damaged areas or replacing something that’s clearly at the end of its life can sometimes be enough.
If the kitchen truly is hurting the value of the property, then a larger renovation might be worth discussing. But we wouldn’t automatically renovate just because the cabinets aren’t today’s trend.
What About the Bathrooms?
Bathrooms are similar.
A clean, functional older bathroom isn’t necessarily a problem.
A bathroom with cracked caulking, leaking taps, mouldy grout, broken fixtures or obvious damage is different.
Before ripping everything out, look at what can be cleaned, repaired or refreshed.
New caulking, updated hardware, a mirror, lighting or a fresh coat of paint can sometimes change the entire feel of the room.
Should We Replace the Flooring?
It depends on what’s there.
Dated flooring isn’t always worth replacing. Damaged, badly stained or heavily worn flooring may be.
There’s also no point spending thousands installing flooring that your eventual buyer plans to tear out because it isn’t their taste.
This is one of those decisions we like to make based on the property, price range and likely buyer rather than applying the same answer to every house.
What About Bigger Items Like the Furnace, Roof or Windows?
This is where the conversation changes.
A 20-year-old furnace doesn’t necessarily need to be replaced simply because you’re selling. Neither do older windows or a roof that’s still functioning properly.
But buyers will take the age and condition of major systems into consideration when deciding what they’re willing to pay.
Certain features can also affect marketability. An older heating system, for example, may concern some buyers because of operating costs, insurance considerations or the cost of eventually replacing it.
Before replacing an expensive system, we want to determine whether spending that money is likely to improve the sale enough to justify the cost.
Sometimes it will.
Sometimes adjusting the price accordingly makes far more sense.
Don’t Forget the Outside
You don’t need professional landscaping and a magazine-worthy backyard.
You do want buyers to feel good when they arrive.
Cutting the grass, trimming overgrown shrubs, cleaning up gardens, pressure washing where needed, repairing obvious exterior damage and making the entrance look welcoming can go a long way.
Buyers start forming an opinion before they ever walk through the front door.
What Usually Isn’t Worth Doing?
This will vary from property to property, but we’d be cautious about taking on expensive projects immediately before selling simply because you think buyers expect them.
That could include:
A complete kitchen renovation
A major bathroom remodel
Finishing an entire basement
Expensive landscaping
Replacing perfectly functional systems solely because they’re older
Highly personalized upgrades
Renovations based on your own taste rather than what buyers in your price range expect
There’s nothing wrong with any of these improvements if you’re staying in the house and will enjoy them.
Doing them specifically to sell is a different calculation.
Sometimes Doing Less Makes You More
We’ve walked through homes where sellers had a long list of things they thought they needed to do before listing.
Our advice was to leave half of it alone.
We’ve also seen homes where spending a relatively small amount in the right places would make a significant difference in how the property showed.
That’s why we would much rather see the house before you start renovating.
We can look at what’s currently selling, what buyers are expecting in your price range and how your home compares to the competition.
The answer might be a renovation.
It might be paint and a really good cleaning.
It might simply be fixing five small things you’ve stopped noticing because you’ve lived with them for years.
And sometimes the answer really is: don’t spend the money.
Before You Spend $20,000, Give Us a Call
Preparing your home for sale isn’t about making it perfect. It’s about putting your time and money where they will have the greatest impact.
Before you replace the flooring, order new countertops or start tearing apart the bathroom, let us come through.
We’ll tell you what we think is worth doing, what we’d leave alone and where your money is likely to have the biggest impact when it comes time to sell.
Because we’d much rather help you keep $20,000 than watch you spend it on something your buyer plans to change anyway.
