Adding Value to Your Home or Making it More Marketable

I find that home sellers and their agents sometimes don't understand the distinction between what adds value to a home versus what makes it more marketable. Having worked for an appraisal company (my first job in real estate) I was taught the difference, which really can be easily understood.

To make a home more marketable you do things like clean, polish, paint, and trim. My first broker told me to instruct sellers to plant yellow and blue flowers close to the front stoop or porch. Declutter is preached by almost everyone now. If a paint color is too bright or unusual, paint the walls off-white. Work on the odor of the house, especially if a smoker lived there. Repair everything you can.

But these aren't fixes that will necessarily add value to your home. They won't make it appraise for a higher price. The first thing you must always remember is that finished square footage is king when it comes to the value of a home. When an appraiser looks for comparable properties to your home, he will look for the house that is most like yours in floor plan and finished square footage.

The URAR form, the core of an appraisal, lists many of the value added upgrades which distinguish your house from those comparables in your neighborhood. They list things such as siding, flooring, windows, porches, patios, garages, and there are several blanks available for additional value added features. In these blank spaces I have seen items such as sidewalks, paved or concrete driveways, kitchen cabinetry or counter tops.


Landscaping is nice, but it is mostly ordinary -- everybody has some. Of course if you have a formal English garden in your backyard, that might get an appraiser's attention. But the normal trees and shrubs in your yard, even though you paid a lot for them at your local garden shop, won't add value to your home. They instead will make your property more marketable.

Everyone talks about today's colors. Marketability is what you'll get when you paint your walls with them. Houses all have paint. Your's isn't more valuable because the color is trendy, even when you spent thousands to have it done. But it will make your home more marketable. Nowhere in an appraisal is there mention of paint, unless it is a negative notation. Carpet is similar. You either have it or you don't. Of course if it is very worn, it will be flagged (especially by a VA or FHA appraiser.)

So I said it would be easy to make the distinction between adding value and making your home more marketable. What things are solid and lasting? Beyond adding square footage to your finished and unfinished areas, you could add thermal windows, hardwood or ceramic flooring, an additional bathroom, granite countertops, or new siding. But when you paint, landscape, clean and polish -- you are doing this to make the home more marketable.