Many people plan to stay in their own homes until the lending market stabilizes. Perhaps that will happen when the new proposals that will toughen the mortgage market are approved.
This waiting period seems like a good opportunity to improve the value of your current home by decorating and renovating it. There are still safe lenders that will lend you a little cash based on the equity you have built up in your home. Your original lender is the best place to start. They have proven to be trustworthy and will have to participate in any other loans as they probably have the deeds to your property. Some home improvements are “worth more” on the real estate market than others, one of the first questions to ask yourself is whether you are really trying to improve the property for yourself or for resale value.
It seems that the renovation has been popular this year. National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) President of Remodelers Mike Nagel sees the amount of renovations being done as a positive sign for real estate. “Although slightly down from the prior quarter, the remodeling market is not experiencing the drop in production and sales that the new home construction sector of the industry is experiencing.”
Also, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, spending on residential remodeling and home repairs has risen steadily, setting a new record this year. If you’re not sure which upgrades to actually spend, you’ll be interested to know that there’s some good advice written about it.
Surveys have been conducted to see what type of renovation will add value to what type of home (homes are categorized into a low, medium, or high price range).
For example, if you are on the bottom level of your area, then a new fireplace or flooring comes in at 6 or 7, while remodeled windows and a new paint job are tied at 4 and 5. The top three they are bathroom renovation, kitchen renovation and new roof, in that order.
It only gets interesting when you see that, for example, windows rank third in importance in the mid and high price brackets, which seems more logical. A kitchen ranks first in both price ranges, but in the mid-price range, a renovated bathroom is second on the list and a roof is fourth. If your house is in the highest group, then the roof is the number two priority with a bathroom only on the fourth list, the floor is fifth.
Some of these results were quite surprising, but they are based on actual calculations. In all groups, kitchen, bathroom, and roof were in the top four, albeit in a different order. Perhaps the bad news is that if you were planning a cozy fireplace, it may not be the buyer’s trap I thought it was, although it would be for me!