The 10 home improvements that add most value

Are you thinking of building an extension or buying a new kitchen to help boost the value of your home? Well, you better think again. Research published this week suggests the vast majority of home improvements are now unlikely to add more value to your home than the cost of the upgrade in the first place. The study by Abbey, which questioned 100 estate agents, indicates that the only financially worthwhile home improvement is a lick of paint.

Here is the cost of 10 common home improvements and the value that they will add.

Type of home improvement	Average value added	Average cost of improvement	Net value added
Extension	£13,568	£33,800	-£23,232
New kitchen	£4,894	£18,700	-£13,806
Conservatory	£6,236	£20,000	-£13,764
Solar panels	£1,028	£12,500	-£11,472
Loft conversion	£13,038	£22,600	-£9,562
Garage	£7,971	£14,000	-£6,029
New bathroom	£2,892	£7,700	-£4,808
New windows	£3,092	£6,700	-£3,608
Landscape garden	£2,060	£2,500	-£440
Painting and decorating	£3,557	£1,330	+£2,227

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Comments

[Huw Sayer]

The cheapest and most cost effective home improvements that can help speed a successful sale are simply cleaning and tidying your house and garden. That means binning all the junk, the broken toys, the unworn clothes, the tatty magazines, - in short the detritus of years of over consumption.

I am amazed at people who spend a fortune on kitchens and bathrooms (normally in very poor taste) but who can't be bothered to steam clean the carpets or mow the lawn. No amount of glitz will hide the evidence of scumbag living.

So forget the fancy makeovers - though by all means pay a professional decorator to paint all the walls magnolia (after you have removed all but a few choice pictures and mirrors) and all the woodwork gloss white (so that it gleams).

But then pay a professional cleaning firm to steam, brush and polish the house from top to bottom - (remember all curtains, inside all cupboards and behind fridges as well as in ovens). And pay professional gardeners to simply mow laws, trim hedges and borders, weed flower beds and tidy away rubbish.

Or do it yourself if you have the time, equipment and genuine ability (but you might be better off sticking to your day job and leaving others to theirs).

[Robert NW6]

"Well, you better think again". What kind of English sentence is that? Oh dear! Writing and sub-editing standards are on the slide yet again.

[DORIS]

Good to see standards of pedantry are still up to scratch!

[David]

Absolute rubbish!
Improvements carefully chosen and well done will always sell the house more easily to the vast majority of purchasers who don't want to fix things themselves or go through a lot of hassle.
Tidiness is obvious. The £1200 lick of paint may fool some people, but not discerning buyers who know that this is the one thing they can do or get done easily.

[Brenda]

If you've looked after your home and not let things deteriorate, you should only really need to clean, de-clutter and freshen the house and tidy the garden. Follow Sarah Beeney's good advice and present a 'blank canvas' for the prospective buyer. People seldom have foresight and imagination when viewing prospective homes, so why make it harder for them? The plainer the decor the better. People feel they are 'intruding' if the home is full of personal mementos, ornaments and photographs. Best to keep it minimalist and the better you are at detaching yourself from the house as YOUR home any longer the easier it will be for someone else to think of it as their home. There's nothing wrong with modernising a kitchen or bathroom if they need updating, as these areas can effectively sell a house. Just keep it simple, after all, your tastes are different to everyone elses.

[Russell]

what is "lanscape" gardening?

[Brian]

If people take advice from Estate Agents and the Abbey they will make the wrong decisions.

[Paul]

So where are "The 10 home improvements that add most value"? I'm not sure that removing value actually counts.

[John Moore]

I did a loft conversion on a 190000, 1 bed room flat which doubled the sqaure footage, and renvoated it with 2 new bathrooms and a kitchen for about 40000. Then sold the flat for 465000. The right property, the right area, the right price, and the right skills = a good profit even if I still had it when the market turned bad.

[sponge bob]

what a load of sh@t

[Patrice]

When I visit England - I am always amazed at the sellers - hoping to make a quick buck on their home sale...Usually, these same, very eager folks haven't even bothered to cut the grass - involved an adviser (but then one would think the estate agent would do this) to help them revamp their property. Last year I looked over a house to buy - it had been on the market for 5 months, and I told them why...Basically, these sellers hadn't bothered to paint the walls, buy new carpets (which we do in the States), move their hideous trash can (dust bin) from the front of their house!!! taken the plates out of the basin - that should have been washed prior to me arriving - duh! Their next door neighbor decided to play loud music from his back bedroom (he obviously doesn't want them to move) their washing line was full of their personal smalls; and the list goes on and on, so I think I have given a clear picture of how an ex-pat views resale's in the UK - TERRIBLE! If you need advice - then get it; otherwise you don't stand a cat in h---'s chance of moving this side of a long awaited house price slide...Complacency has been the worst attitude Britain has held for the last 10 years.

[Paul Hewson]

Garage will repay itself. I simply don't believe the above negative amount for a garage addition - if done properly. Best value though is having a professional interior decorator advise what you should do inside your house, and then to follow their advice to the letter. In particular, getting rid of clutter, overloaded bookshelves, too much furniture. I remember sitting in the house after all this had been done and thinking it was like an entirely different place. I am certain it made a huge difference to the price we got at auction.

[Denise F]

'Staging' a home will always help it sell rather than a non-staged home, as long as it is not overdone...
Choice 1 - 3 bed house £150,000, lived in, clothes horse up in kitchen, smells of dog, beds unmade, grass uncut, etc, Choice 2 - same house but next door, welcoming flowers at entrance, smells of fresh air and coffee, everything away so you can see the space, beds all made looking comfy, etc... on market for £2,000 more - I know which one I would think has been cared for more and that I would buy! If you have staged your house with nice smells, people will remember it as the house that smells of home cooking, if you have the washing drying in the kitchen, people will remember it as the house with no room for a tumble dryer! What would people remember your house for?

[Alex D]

Say the floor is in bad shape. The vast majority of buyers prefer to have it done according to their own preferences rather than paying for one they don't like, plus 20% the cunning seller expects as profit on his investment. As a seller, you'd point out the discount on price coming from run-down elements rather than betting on dumb customers.

[Ian Stuart]

The analysis is illogical. For example, an extension cannot decrease the value of the property. Presumably what you are doing is taking the fall in the value of property, reflecting the overall crisis, and subtracting this but that cannot be a consequence of the extension

[Wally Walters]

The figures quoted for average cost of improvement are absolute rubbish. We had 3 quotes for a a 150 sq ft conservatory ranging from £8000 to £11000. A new kitchen in a 3 bed semi (comparable with the one in your picture)cost £4000 including labour. A new bathroom cost £3500. Landscaping a garden can cost anything from £2000 to £20000. Your figures are a waste of space and time.

[Schumacher Homes]

It is almost impossible to give an "average" estimate for that type of thing because the figures can vary so greatly.

[JC]

I have two observations: 1) This is weapons grade piffle - As other comments illustrate, well considered and implemented upgrades can and do add value, net of HPI effects. Of course, throwing cash at a property can lose money, but let's not generalise, please.

2) That many vendors have absolutely no idea how to present their property to potential buyers is fantastic. Because I do. This means if I sell a property I get a faster sale at a better price. So, please, keep up the good work and make no effort to prepare your property for sale.

[Tony]

Well planned home improvements can increase the value of your home wthout the need to spend vast sums of money. One of the cheapest yet often missed improvements is landscape gardening an a driveway. A good place to check out home improvemnet products, articles and news is www.homeimprovementsassociation.com