4 Renovation Blunders That Can Hamper Value

Renovations are mostly done not only for a home owner’s comfort but to add value to their home. However, in some cases, home owners may end up making their home worth less depending on what they choose to do.

MarketWatch recently featured some of the most common renovations for home owners that potentially could decrease the value of their home, including:

1. Eliminating a bedroom: Even if the home owner plans to remove a bedroom in order to expand another one or make a living space larger, this renovation project likely could burn them at resale. The more bedrooms a home has, the higher the price it usually can get. “When you start eliminating bedroom space, you’ve completely changed the comparable value of your home in the neighborhood,” says David Pekel, president of Pekel Construction and Remodeling in Wauwatosa, Wis.

2. Renovating the garage into living space: Getting rid of the garage space in favor of an extra office, family room, or bedroom can be a turnoff to many potential buyers at resale, real estate professionals say. Seventy-four percent of recent buyers said that having a garage is extremely or very important, according to a survey of 7,500 people by Crescent Communities. For home owners who do choose to renovate the garage into living space, they may find leaving the garage doors on the outside a good move so that buyers could more easily convert the space back into a garage if preferable.

3. Removing closets: Michele Silverman Bedell, chief executive of Silversons in Westchester, N.Y., recalls a client who removed a closet out of the master bedroom in order to make a bigger master bath. But the renovation made the home much more difficult to sell, Silverman says. “People need closets,” she told MarketWatch. “They’ll walk in and count the number of closets per room.”

4. Too much wallpaper. While wallpaper can be removed, it has the reputation of being a lot of work to get it off.

See what remodeling projects offer the biggest paybacks at resale with Remodeling Magazine’s Cost vs. Value Report.

Source: “4 Renovations That Could Decrease Your Home’s Value,” MarketWatch (Nov. 16, 2015)

“Copyright NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®. Reprinted with permission”

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