If you own a home, then there’s a good chance that it’s your most valuable asset. Sure, you might have some money stashed in an ISA or company shares, but if you’re like most British people, the majority of your wealth is in the four walls that surround you right now.
Your home is your security: your retirement fund. It’s what’s going to provide you with the wealth you need to stop working so hard and take time out once you finally retire.
If you’re like most people, you probably think about the value of your home a lot. While the market will generally determine how much your house is worth, there’s a lot that homeowners themselves can do to push up the price. Home improvements can go a long way to boosting equity in your home, upping its value to buyers when you eventually come to sell.
The question is, what are the best home improvements to build equity? Which should you choose?
Before we get started, it’s worth talking about financing. In general, a person would look for the best guarantor loans to get capital for an investment project. It’s often worth borrowing for home improvements because they are an investment that will pay off in the long term. Plus it saves you from having to spend time building up capital now.
With that said, what are the most cost-effective ways to build equity in your home?
Forget Refitting The Whole Kitchen, Try New Paint
Refitting a kitchen can cost anywhere from £3,000 to £50,000. But unless you plan on becoming the next Gordon Ramsey, parting with that kind of money probably isn’t worth it, especially if you’re going to be selling your home anytime soon.
One of the most cost-effective ways to upgrade the appearance of your home is to give it a fresh lick of paint. Yes, you’ll want to paint the walls, but applying paint to kitchen cabinets can make a tremendous difference too. Wood-effect cabinets are out of fashion right now, but you can immediately bring them up to date by painting them a fresh cream colour.
Repainting a kitchen will cost about £200 if you do it yourself. Hire somebody to do it for you, and you’ll be looking at between £600 and £1,200 – more than if you did it yourself, but much less than you’d pay to refit the entire kitchen.
Reface Cabinets
Although a fresh coat of paint will work wonders in some kitchens, there’s sometimes no escaping the fact that your kitchen cabinets are antiquated. The critical thing to remember about kitchen cabinets, though, is that the only difference between most of them are the cabinet fascia’s. The rest of their construction is block-laminated MDF – nothing special.
A cheap way to give your kitchen a refresh, therefore, is to leave the MDF backing in place and replace the cupboard and drawer frontages. Modern doors and drawer fittings are cheap to install (you can do it yourself) and make it look as if you’ve had an entirely new kitchen fitted, especially when done in conjunction with a fresh paint job.
Give Your Bathroom More Storage Space
Home improvement website HGTV suggests that people can get back between 80 and 130 per cent of the money they spend on a bathroom. What’s more, many of the highest-value-added ways to spend your money are cheap.
One of the best ways to add value to your bathroom is to add storage space. Adding a dresser or a new bathroom cabinet can boost the appeal of your bathroom. Just make sure that any units you install are attractive to buyers.
Convert Existing Space Into Something You Want
If you’ve ever watched a home improvement program where the owners decide to build an extension to provide more living space, you’ll have noticed how budgets seem to go out of the window. Building new sections of a building is a costly enterprise, and a lot can go wrong. A £15,000 budget can quickly spiral to more than £30,000.
It’s often a lot more cost-effective and cheaper to convert existing, unused space into something potential future buyers will want. Attics can be transformed into bedrooms, basements into games rooms, and spare bedrooms into additional, luxurious bathrooms.
Install Energy-Efficient Windows
Finally, today’s buyers are more interested than ever before in the energy efficiency that a home offers. With heating and electricity prices on the rise, people want homes that cost less to heat so that they have money left over for the things that they want. Install energy efficient windows for a handsome return.
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