7 Home Improvements that won’t add value to your home..

If you’re considering investing a lot of money in a home improvement project, but you know you’re not in your forever home, it’s a good idea to ask yourself whether you will get a return on your investment, or if you’re best saving the money for your next home. Not all home improvements add value, so before you start, be very sure that you are doing it for yourself, not for any potential payback further down the line.

We often hear this, when we value a home for new clients: “But we spent such money on it, how can it only be worth the same as the one next door?!” Well, it really depends on what it is you spent such a lot of money on. A home’s value is based upon a triangle of key points: its location, the number of bedrooms, and its overall quality and finish – a scruffy three-bedroom semi-detached in Chorlton will be valued lower than a carefully looked-after three-bedroom semi-detached in Chorlton, regardless of whether the first has recently landscaped rear garden, for example. Here are four things that won’t add value, but will bring joy – it’s up to you to decide whether pleasure is the principal, or not.

1. Upgrading your kitchen appliances

Ovens, fridges, dishwashers – they can cost a little, or they can cost a lot. The thing is, when someone is looking to buy a new home, there are many boxes they need to tick before they make an offer, and the brand of appliances in the kitchen (which they may well want to rip out and re-do, anyway) isn’t one of them. So before you decide to replace your oven with the very latest from Miele, ask yourself whether you will be in this home long enough to really get a return on your investment, or not.

2. Going open plan

Open plan living is very now – people love the expanses of light, the bringing together of family activities in one space – together, yet apart – and the very contemporary feel of the rooms. But, going open plan is a very expensive process – you need to invest in structural surveys, an architect, planning permissions, steels to provide support where walls are removed… If you don’t see the home you’re in as a forever home, or at least one you will be in for many years to come, the cost will exceed any potential increase in your home’s value. Why? Because open-plan is a lifestyle, a design decision, and while someone viewing your house might love what you have done with it, they won’t expect to pay a great deal more for it than for a similar, not so open plan, property in the same street.

3. Losing a bedroom to create a dressing room

The rise of property porn shows on TV and social media has resulted in an increase in people wanting a walk-in wardrobe all of their very own. Just picture it – bespoke shelving for shoes and bags, clothes hung on matching hangers and colour-coordinated in Insta-worthy fashion, but if it comes at the sacrifice of a bedroom, it’s not going to sell your home. The expense of closing off a doorway, creating another from your bedroom, funding beautifully bespoke fitted furniture does not equal the value of an extra bedroom – or not in a home where bedrooms number fewer than five, anyway. Once you go to the upper echelons of property pricing, dressing rooms are a given.

4. Converting your garage into an extra room

Everybody loves an extra room, right? Not right. What most people love is a garage – somewhere to store bulky items, or actually park their car. While you may have found a way to live in a home without this extra space for storage, home buyers will be skeptical.

5. Landscaping your garden

A beautifully landscaped garden, with hard landscaping for seating and dining areas, beautifully constructed raised beds and fabulous planting may draw gaps of pleasure from home buyers, but it won’t be the reason they buy your house. Having your garden landscaped really pays dividends if it’s one of the first things you do when you move into a new home. That way, you get years of pleasure from it, and learn to manage your garden through all its seasons. A garden landscaping can be an expensive project, and a costly planting scheme is something you can’t take with you, and something buyers really don’t put high on their list of must-haves.

6. A swimming pool

Like a landscaped garden, putting in a swimming pool (or sauna, or even hot tub patio and summer house) is something you have to do for yourself and your family, not for any potential future return on investment. They cost a great deal to install, and a great deal to run, and if it’s outdoors, you’re also at the mercy of the Great British weather. For many people, it would actively put them off buying a property, so if a swimming pool is your dream – go ahead, use it and love it and take great pleasure from it, but don’t see it as an investment.

7. An extension

If you are planning an extension to gain an extra bedroom, yes, it will add value – but the cost of extensions rarely equal the uplift in the value of the home you are adding to. A kitchen extension, with no increase in the number of rooms upstairs, will have even less impact upon the value of your property. It will however pay huge dividends in terms of the pleasure of living in your home. A better space for entertaining, enough rooms so you don’t have to put little Alfie on the sofa whenever granny comes to stay, space for a home office and a utility room – all these things add great value to your lifestyle, so are absolutely worth paying for, living with and enjoying, and then not ever thinking about how much it cost, ever again.

So before you spend your money, just ask yourself why you are doing it. If it’s to add value to your home – check with a local estate agent first whether it’s a good idea. If it’s to add value to the pleasure of living in your home, to relieve living space tensions, to create ease of spending time as a whole family, in one space, to just make your life better…well, that’s worth every penny.

(Picture used from Zetland Road, Chorlton).

Eddie – Friday 26th August 2022