Showing posts with label Home Seller Tips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Home Seller Tips. Show all posts

How Landscaping Affects Your Home’s Value


By focusing on your landscape’s design, varying the plants and shrub sizes and colors, and diversifying the plant life itself, you can increase your home’s overall value.

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If you’re a homeowner, you’ve probably wondered if the money you put into your landscaping is worth it. The answer to that question might surprise you.

Sometimes homeowners assume that an interior project is going to provide much more bang for their buck, but a recent study from Virginia Tech found that your landscaping is worth as much as 15% of your home’s value. For your landscaping to be worth that much, though, there are a few key elements you have to focus on:
  1. The landscape’s design. 
  2. Varying the plant and shrub sizes and colors.
  3. Diversifying the plant life itself. 
In the aforementioned study, they found that if you key in on those three things on a $50,000 house and do them well, that home’s value could increase from between $8,500 to as much as $19,000. 

What do I mean by landscape design? I mean that you don’t want to plant a bunch of trees, bushes, and shrubs together without any kind of layout in mind. What you want to do is minimize the long-term maintenance and avoid that cluttered, overgrown look that often happens without any design plan.


Landscaping the right way can increase your home’s value by as much as 15%.

If you want your house to feature accentuated curb appeal, think about the space between your plants. Vary that space with both smaller and larger plants, shrubs, and trees. Vary the color of them as well. Not only will this accomplish an uncluttered look, but it will also give these plants room to grow. Additionally, mixing in some wildflowers here and there is always a great idea. Wildflower variety packs will give you a burst of color at different times throughout the spring and summer.

You can diversify your plants by making sure they’re not all the same style. For example, mix and match shrubs based on the kinds of leaves it has. Here in Tucson, you can’t go wrong with adding a cactus or some other kind of desert flora. 

The point of these strategies is to match the landscaping to your home size and your yard size. If you do this, you will get the most bang for your buck and never have to wonder again if you’ll be getting your investment back.  

For more tips on how to get the best bang for your buck on home improvements and other major household costs, follow us on Facebook or visit our website. If you have any other questions, please feel free to email me or give me a call. I look forward to hearing from you!

What Makes 2016 a Home Seller’s Dream?



There are three types of markets in residential and commercial real estate: a buyer’s market (when there are more homes for sale than buyers to buy them), a balanced market (when there are an equal number of buyers and homes for sale), and a seller’s market (when there are more buyers than homes to purchase).

2016 qualifies as a seller’s market. Compared to the last year, the amount of existing inventory has fluctuated downward between 15% and 25%. What's happening is that there are more buyers competing for one property than there have been in the past. When multiple buyers compete for the same house, that house often sells for at least asking price or more.


People have more buying power.


If you’ve tried to sell a home in the past but couldn’t, now is the time to revisit the market.

A question I’m getting a lot is, “Why is this year different than any of the past years?” It’s not too different, but what it comes down to is affordability. Interest rates were expected to go up this year, and they’ve actually gone down. As a result, people have more buying power. Even if you’re not selling a property this year and staying in the home you have, you might want to consider refinancing. If, for example, you’re currently paying 4.5% or more on your mortgage, you will save tens of thousands of dollars refinancing to today’s interest rate.

If you have questions about market conditions or you're thinking about buying or selling a home, give me a call or send me an email.