This house for sale in East Ridge at 612 Stimpson Drive is a good example of how sprucing up the front of a home can add tremendously to its first impression. Tidy porches, well-maintained grass and sim- ple landscaping upgrades go a long way.Read more
U.S. home sales roared back to life in March Take your kids' finger paintings off the fridge. That's one of the first pieces of advice to home sellers from Keller Williams Realtor Nathan Torgerson. "A buyer needs as clean a slate as possible so they can imagine living there with their own things," he says. Here are the Top 5 home improvements suggested by the National Association of Realtors: 1. Steel front door: About $1,230; return on investment: 101.8 percent. 2. Add a wood deck: Costs about $30 per square foot with a national average of about $10,000 to complete; ROI is 80.5 percent. 3. Kitchen remodel: Adding new cabinet doors and drawer fronts, appliances, countertops and flooring has an average national cost of $19,226 with a ROI of 79.3 percent. 4. Increase curb appeal: Replace a dented, outdated garage door with an energy-efficient, insulated door with attractive glass windows and panels that look like painted wood. National average cost for that is $1,595 with a ROI of 88.4 percent. 5. Increase your home's square footage: Finish an attic or basement into a proper room or build an additional room. Every 1,000 square feet added to a home increases the sale price by about 30 percent. Source: National Association of RealtorsAlso, keep the front yard green, mowed and devoid of battered plaster deer, concrete cherubs and urns filled with dead plants."Homebuyers will actually look at a place with no curb appeal and refuse to get out of the car and go inside," he says. "No matter how beautiful the interior of a house is, the curb appeal has to be there and the house has to look cared for and welcoming."The National Association of Realtors agrees with him completely. Each year, the group lists the home improvements that give owners the biggest return on investment and largest increases in resale value. The association's emphasis is often on upgrading the kitchen with opulent details like granite countertops and pricey appliances or transforming a bathroom into a spa-like sanctuary by installing a steam shower or Jacuzzi. But this year, its No. 1 biggest bang for your buck recommendation was astonishingly simple:"Install a new steel entry door."That new door normally costs about $1,230 and offers a whopping 101.8 percent return on investment."A nice new front door is part of the curb appeal," observes Torgerson, who is husband to Mary Beth Torgerson, a managing editor at the Times Free Press. "And it increases energy efficiency and security."Realtor Nathan Walldorf, president-elect of the Chattanooga Association of Realtors, has noticed some local homeowners trying to attract buyers by adding Tudor-style beams and wood decorative elements to their homes' exteriors. But a seller doesn't need to go to such elaborate lengths to make a home appealing, he says."Adding shutters to windows, planting shrubs near the foundation make a home look like people enjoy living there," Walldorf says. "Maybe it's painful memories of seeing so many news photos of foreclosures abandoned and falling down but people have become very sensitive to those little touches that make a house look like a home."This month I posted a photo of a listing that was taken on a gray rainy day. I got a new photo of the same house on a sunny spring day -- and several people called that day to ask me to show the house to them."Other recommendations in the curb appeal category included lining a walkway with solar-powered lanterns and planting a tree. Here's a ultra-cool, easy way to figure out which tree will put the most money in your pocket after you plant it near your home. Go online to the National Tree Benefit Calculator, type in your ZIP code, the type of tree and its size. A pie chart will break down the dollar benefits of each tree.For instance, planting either a medium-sized tulip tree or black cherry tree near a Southside home reaps $166 in benefits annually: $86.51 increase in property value, $51.50 worth of protection from stormwater, $10.60 saved in electricity due to extra shade and so on. Planting a medium-sized dogwood reaps a Southside homeowner $60 annually in benefits, the calculator says, while a small Blue China fir tree will give you $9.78 worth of cleaner air."There are several small things that a seller can do to make their home show well and justify full asking price," says Travis Close, current president of the Greater Chattanooga Association of Realtors. "Plants and new mulch are always a good return, especially when paired with a new mailbox, and can really set the tone for a showing."Close notes that there also are upgrades indoors that are not as costly as new granite countertops and kitchen cabinets but still have a big impact, particularly efforts to make the home green by replacing normal light bulbs with LEDs."Fresh paint and flooring can go a long way," Close continues. "Recently, I had a client update all their brass fixtures with oil rubbed bronze paint -- it looked great for a fraction of the price of replacing all those fixtures."For the biggest return on investment, however, add new square footage to your home, the National Association of Realtors says. Bathroom additions get the biggest ROI with a national average of 86.4 percent. Attic bedrooms, basement rec rooms and sunrooms where the family can hang out rack up ROIs ranging between 70 to 80 percent.And, of course, updating your kitchen is always a good move, Realtors say."A nice kitchen is a key tipping point for a lot of buyers even if they never cook and just have a bottle of wine in the fridge, because the kitchen is still considered the heart of the home," Torgerson says. "The homeowner will want to open that bottle in the kitchen with his friends or his spouse while they talk and laugh."But Realtors agree it's crazy to install a $10,000 posh restaurant-quality stove in a $100,000 home because any buyer truly interested in such a stove is unlikely to shop in a modestly-priced neighborhood.This year, the National Association of Realtors also reminds home sellers to focus on maintenance fundamentals like making sure the roof doesn't leak and that the plumbing and wiring are in great shape. The good news is, the association study shows that homeowners get back 80 percent of what they spend to replace a roof and windows when they sell their homes.But some of the association's recommendations don't apply to Chattanooga. For example, under the curb appeal category, it lists installing a stone veneer on a home exterior as a solid ROI."I've never really had a client say they wanted a stone house; most want brick because it's beautiful and easy to maintain," Torgerson says.Both Torgerson and Walldorf recommend that owners of one-bathroom homes consider adding a second bathroom rather than spending money on upgrading an existing single bathroom. Florida State University professors G. Stacy Sirmans and David Macpherson recently conducted a national study that found adding a bathroom increased the sale price of a home by 8.7 percent, more than double the return an owner would get for adding another bedroom.The National Association of Home Builders did its own study which found that even a half bath increased a home's value by 10.5 percent.Both Torgerson and Walldorf also agree that outdoor space is important to Chattanoogans and North Georgians. But the space doesn't have to be an outdoor deck."A screened-in porch, a nearby park, a sunroom are more important to most people in this area than just having a deck," Torgerson says.Walldorf has seen people respond well when an outdoor space is attached to the kitchen, whether in the form of a balcony or a sunroom.And don't forget those spaces that you normally don't go into much -- closets and such."Storage space is really important to clients here," Torgerson says. "I always advise home sellers to clear their closets, never have a closet crammed full of stuff. A buyer needs to feel confident that the owner can live happily with the existing storage space."A final bit of National Association of Realtors advice reminds home owners that some indoor space can actually decrease the value of a home. If the laundry room is in the basement, group research finds that the value of your home decreases by 2 percent. Move that washer and dryer upstairs.Contact Lynda Edwards at ledwards@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6391.