Discover The Secrets To Having Great Curb Appeal For Your Home
Even if you have just moved into your home and presently have no intention of selling it, maintaining the curb appeal of your home is very important. Read this to find out why it’s so important and ways to ensure that your home scores high. Let’s start at the beginning.
What is curb appeal? When people drive by your home what is their impression? You can tell when a homeowner focuses on curb appeal – the home looks well maintained, both the home itself and the grounds surrounding the home. When a home looks uncared for there are tell-tale signs. For example, signs of neglect may include chipping paint, a gutter along the front of the house that has become detached and is hanging, overgrown bushes, or overflowing garbage cans in the front near the garage. You may have moved into a home that suffers from these problems, but the sooner you fix them the better. Let me explain why.
Why is curb appeal important? The average time that a homeowner owns a home is 5 to 7 years, so it’s likely at some point in the future that you will be selling your home. If your home always looks unloved with the lawn not cut, the front door looking shabby, or screens missing people will take note. Their impression will probably be ‘if this is how the homeowner cares for the outside of the home, then what is the condition inside the home? ‘ They’ll never know for sure, but they will wonder.
When and if you do decide to sell your home and put the ‘for sale’ sign out front, wouldn’t it be great if people who have driven by your home all those years were excited. It may be that your home has been their dream home, the one they always felt they’d love to move into if it comes up for sale. Maybe they know someone who’d like to move in.
On the other hand, a home that has been uncared for over many years and all of a sudden has been “fixed up” to sell just doesn’t create the same excitement to a passerby. If you keep your home well maintained all along you’ll be spending less money to get it ready for sale. This is true because it is much more cost effective to take care of things that need fixing when they are small problems, rather than letting them become big problems.
What can be done to have great curb appeal? Here’s the principal behind great curb appeal for your home. At least twice a year, perhaps in the spring and fall, take a walk around the exterior of your home and complete a checklist of anything that needs attention. Items to assess include the condition of paint, doors, windows, roof, walkways, and landscaping.
Then prioritize your list, with any structural items going to the top of the list. These structural items are the things that will cost more to fix as they get worse, so take care of them sooner rather than later. As you conduct this twice a year inspection, take a critical view of your home as someone driving by might do. You’ll find that some of the things will cost little or nothing to address, you may just not have thought about them. For example, finding a place for your garbage cans so that they are not visible in the front of the house may be as simple as moving them to the back, or may require installing a small fence to shield them from view.
