Improvements That Could Lower Your Home Value
Is it true that some improvements could lower your home’s value? How can that be possible?
Unfortunately, many people do not realize there are home renovations that decrease property value.
Over my thirty-seven years selling real estate, I’ve run into this frequently.
Many sellers incorrectly assume that every home renovation they make will increase their property value.
Far from it!
When you want to add value to your home, making improvements seems the most obvious answer.
After all, you can make improvements right now—you don’t have to sit around and wait for the market to turn in your favor.
But often, homeowners get excited about making improvements and moving forward without verifying that those renovations will add value to their properties.
Unfortunately, some renovations may hurt your home value.
How can an “improvement” hurt your home value? Well, there are a few ways.
First, the work you do on the home could lower your home’s value—making it less desirable than before the renovation.
Example of a Home Renovation That Will Decrease Your Property Value
For instance, if you were to eliminate a bedroom to enlarge the master bedroom, it could lower the value. Buyers like extra bedrooms and would generally prefer more rather than a huge master bedroom. Going from a four-bedroom home down to a three-bedroom is not wise.
Second, your work could cost more than you get back in your sale. If you spend $20,000 on a home improvement, but your home sells for only $10,000 more, you lost $10,000 by improving.
So, before you call the contractor or break out your toolbox, learn about the renovations that are more likely to hurt than improve the value of your property.
You can expect that these so-called improvements will probably bring you back less than you spend on them.
Look at the twenty home renovations that could reduce your house value. All of these things have a low return or no return on investment.
20 Home Improvements that May Hurt Home Value
Let’s examine the home renovations that will decrease your property value.
1. Wallpapering Rooms in Your Home
You might have heard that wallpaper is coming back. Yippee, you think to yourself. NOT when it comes to selling a home.
Wallpaper has been and always will be a very personal choice. Whenever you make a home ultra-personalized, it will be harder to sell.
Don’t bet on the fact that there will be buyers that love your wallpaper. The odds of that happening are slim. Now if you only have a room or two with wallpaper, that might not be the end of the world.
If you have more wallpaper than that, expect selling your home to be more challenging.
There is a reason why most real estate agents will recommend removing wallpaper in a home to make it more salable.
It doesn’t matter that you spent thousands on an interior decorator, either. The buyer isn’t going to care if the wallpaper is ultra expensive or is leftovers from a clearance sale at Walmart.
2. Non-Neutral Paint Colors
When you sell a home, you don’t want the buyer to think, “I need to paint all the rooms in this house.”
You can bet your bottom dollar that the buyer will calculate the cost to repaint into something neutral. They will then offer you less money to cover the cost.
So while painting is one of the best improvements to increase a home’s value, that’s not the case when the colors are outrageous.
This is covered in things that can bring down property values.
Painting is one of the improvements with the best return on investment in selling a house.
You can almost always expect to get your money back and oftentimes more.
3. Painting The Trim Something Other Than White
In the land of crazy ideas, painting the trim in your home a color other than white is a BIG mistake.
Very few people will enjoy the candle apple red trim you decided to paint the living and dining rooms.
While painting the walls, a crazy color is a mistake; painting trim a different color is even worse. Painting walls are easy.
Painting trim is a much more laborious and expensive task. When you paint trim with color, it encourages a buyer to want to write a lowball offer.
Local buyer’s agents will likely see your home as stigmatized due to going away from the norm.
4. Texturing Your Ceilings and Walls
Texturing is not as popular as it once was for various reasons. If you decide that you love texturing—like popcorn ceilings—and make improvements that add texture, you could be causing your home to be less appealing to buyers.
A textured ceiling can be quite tricky to remove.
If buyers look at your home and decide they will need to remove texturing that you just added, they may lower their price to account for all that hard work ahead of them.
There is a reason you see smooth ceilings in luxury homes. They look much better!
Note: How to remove a popcorn ceiling.
5. Carpeting Throughout The Home
Buyers love hardwood flooring and other hard flooring options like engineered wood. These hard flooring options can increase the value of your home.
In contrast, buyers are not as interested in carpeting as they once were.
Carpeting is nice in some parts of the home, but spending the money to carpet your house fully might be a waste since buyers will probably be searching for properties with at least some hardwood flooring.
The rooms where you should avoid putting carpet include entryways and formal rooms such as dining or living rooms.
Buyers would much prefer hardwood in these areas. The carpet screams, “I ran out of money,” when it is everywhere in a home.
6. Pergo Flooring is Terrible
Pergo is a type of laminate flooring. You would not believe how many sellers I have come across while selling in Metrowest, Massachusetts, who proudly tell me they just added Pergo to their kitchen.
Of course, in their mind, they think it is a big plus.
Unfortunately, so many people do not realize that most people hate Pergo. While there can be many grades, it screams CHEAP. It is a home improvement that does not add value!
If you are going to change the floors in your home, do not put in Pergo, especially if you own a moderately priced home or higher.
Pergo is a home improvement that could bring down your house value. The problem is magnified even further if your home is a luxury property.
7. Unusual Tiling
When selling, a neutral home sells, quirky does not. So while you may love the checkered kitchen floor that reminds you of the diner you visited as a kid, the end buyer may not appreciate it.
If replacing floors, go with something tasteful that the mainstream population will love.
8. Luxury Kitchen Renovations
Kitchen renovations are usually a shoo-in for increasing the value of a home—but there is such thing as going too far with such improvements.
Buyers like nice kitchens, including new countertops and new appliances.
However, they are not likely willing to pay for high-end improvements in the average home.
Avoid spending too much on new appliances, cabinetry, and countertops that could lose you money.
If you are selling a moderately priced home, renovating with a luxury kitchen isn’t smart. You will end up losing money.
Here are some ways to save money on your kitchen shared via HGTV.
9. Luxury Bathroom Renovations
Bathroom renovations are also a great way to add value to your home. But again, the average buyer will not be interested in paying for truly luxurious renovations.
Buyers want a bathroom to be clean and functional, often re-tiling, adding new grout, painting the walls, and getting new lighting and fixtures.
Buyers do not want to pay for the finest in bathroom flooring and whirlpool tubs. If you have a choice between adding a Jacuzzi tub or a large custom tile shower, opt for the latter.
Quality tiled showers are in when it comes to selling homes!
Better Homes and Gardens offers an excellent page for potential bathroom remodeling ideas. Enjoy the variety of bathroom projects.
If you can add an ensuite bath to your home, this will be a renovation worth making. Buyers love having a master bedroom suite.
10. Turning Two Bedrooms Into One
Lowering your bedroom count is a home renovation that could easily decrease property value.
If your kids have grown up and moved out, or you do not have kids, then having multiple small bedrooms might not be too practical.
It can be tempting to knock down a wall and make two small bedrooms into one so you have a bigger space.
But buyers may not feel the same. Many of them will be looking for a place to raise children; ideally, they will want a home with enough bedrooms so each child can have their own room.
For example, usually, it does not make sense to go from a four-bedroom down to a three-bedroom. The one time it might make sense is if you only have one full bath upstairs and are looking to add a master bath.
Sometimes eliminating a bedroom is the only way to acquire the space to do it.
Make sure you speak to a local real estate agent for input.
One special note about bedrooms: Make sure you only market your home for the legal amount of bedrooms you have.
You can see the legal requirements for a bedroom here.
Many people have no idea you cannot market a home for more bedrooms than the septic system capacity. Those with public sewers do have this worry.
11. Themed Children’s Bedrooms
11. Themed Children’s BedroomsA themed children’s bedroom always looks good the day it’s finished. It is like driving a new car off the lot.
Months later, after the newness has worn off, it can look like another highly personalized space that only a small percentage of people will like.
Your kid’s fascination with Sponge Bob was cute, but will the next buyer share their enthusiasm?
Will the buyer have kids of the same age group or gender? Will they even be able to stand to look at some odd cartoon?
This kind of home improvement mistake can impact your value and not in a good way.
It is even worse when the theme was done in harder-to-remove wallpaper.
When it comes time to sell the house, you might want to think about a good can of neutral paint.
12. Eliminating Closets to Make Another Improvement
Closet space sells homes. It’s that simple. Don’t make the mistake of removing an essential closet because you wanted to make some other improvement.
It could come back to bite you.
13. Adding a Sunroom
A nice sunroom can be wonderful when you want to enjoy the outdoors without sacrificing comfort. But adding a sunroom is a reasonably expensive home improvement—and many buyers will not be interested in paying enough for your home to pay for that improvement.
They might not imagine using the sunroom very much or prefer to put renovation money elsewhere.
14. Home Theaters
The technology available now for home theaters is quite amazing. If you are the type of homeowner who appreciates such technology, you may be interested in building your theater at home.
It is one of the more common finished basement ideas. But be careful.
If you plan to sell the home in the next few years, you might not get your money’s worth. Many buyers will not be interested in paying for the theater.
You can drop over $100,000 in a luxury home theater in a heartbeat. Don’t do it expecting to get all your money back. You probably won’t.
Other types of built-in electronics can also date themselves pretty quickly as new technology arrives on the scene.
15. A Hot Tub
Relaxing in a new hot tub certainly sounds nice, but it may not be a good investment if you plan on selling shortly.
While you may get a lot of use out of a hot tub, many home buyers will not be interested in having a hot tub in the home they buy.
Hot tubs are expensive and time-consuming to maintain. They are also considered a safety hazard by many parents who have small children.
If you want a hot tub, get one that can be moved relatively easily to your new home when you sell your current home.
If your hot tub is in tough shape, remove it before listing your home for sale.
16. Swimming Pool
It has been shown repeatedly that pools do not have a good return on investment. This is magnified tenfold when you live in a part of the country where the pool season is minimal.
For example, where I am in the Northeast, you would be lucky to get half the money back you spend on a pool.
Pools are expensive to install; not every buyer will want to keep up with maintenance or even be interested in using a pool.
There is also the issue of safety.
Parents of smaller children, or people thinking about having children in their new home, may not want a house with a swimming pool specifically because of the hazard it presents.
Realistically, only buyers with children in a specific age range are searching for homes with pools.
Just about every other group of buyers is going to be less excited about your new pool than you are.
Swimming pools have a low return on investment. Some people don’t care and install a pool strictly for enjoyment and entertainment value.
17. Garage Conversions
The garage offers so many possibilities. You could turn it into a gym. You could turn it into a living space. There are numerous things you could do with it—but remember that most buyers are looking for homes with garages because they want to use the garage to store their car or other items.
They may prefer going to the gym rather than working out at home, or they may not even like working out. They may have no use for more living space.
Keep your garage as it is if you are going to sell your home.
A garage conversion will be an even greater mistake in cold weather climates. Many buyers will not even buy a home that does not have a garage.
Think about having to go out and shovel the snow off a windshield, and you will understand why. Anyone with a garage won’t be willing to sacrifice this amenity.
18. Special Landscaping
Everyone likes homes with excellent curb appeal. However, it is easy to go overboard with your landscaping to pursue an aesthetic you are fond of.
Everyone has different tastes, meaning the more elaborate your landscaping becomes, the less likely buyers find it appealing.
Charming landscaping is also difficult and expensive to maintain, which may not be attractive to buyers who want an easy-to-care-for lawn and home exterior.
19. Built-in Fish Tanks
Okay, I’ll admit it – I love the look of a built-in fish tank. The buyer in me thinks it’s cool. The real estate agent thinks otherwise.
Why? Many buyers might not care about making tending to fish a part of their daily routine. The odds are that most people won’t want maintenance headaches.
20. Do-It-Yourself Projects and It Shows
For many homeowners doing things themselves is a great way to save money. For others, it is a huge mistake because it is apparent that a professional should have been hired to do the work.
Don’t be the homeowner that thinks a lack of quality is acceptable. The more expensive the home, the more shoddy workmanship will become evident to a buyer.
Doing work when a pro should have been hired can hurt the value of your home.
Why? The buyer will think they will need a professional to either rip it out or make a significant upgrade.
Final Wrap On Renovations That Lower Property Values
It should be painfully obvious that not every home improvement is worthwhile. Some improvements are real losers regarding money and making your home harder to sell.
If you are selling your house, be careful about what improvements you make. If you want advice on whether it is wise to make a specific renovation, feel free to reach out.
Also, make sure you pull the necessary building permits. Unpermitted work causes headaches for buyers and sellers.
Additional Helpful Home Selling Resources
- Don’t make one of these HOA mistakes – Michelle Gibson provides expertise on avoiding mistakes with homeowners’ associations.
- Leave these things out at an open house at your own risk – Sharon Paxson guides what not to leave out when having an open house.
- Tips for dealing with an appraisal – Joe Boylan shares knowledge on how to deal with an appraisal when selling your house.
Use these additional references to make the best decisions possible when buying or selling a home.
About the Author: The above Real Estate information on home renovations that will decrease your property value was provided by Bill Gassett, a Nationally recognized leader in his field. Bill can be reached via email at billgassett@remaxexec.com or by phone at 508-625-0191. Bill has helped people move in and out of many Metrowest towns for the last 37+ years.
Are you thinking of selling your home? I am passionate about real estate and love sharing my marketing expertise!
I service Real Estate sales in the following Metrowest MA towns: Ashland, Bellingham, Douglas, Framingham, Franklin, Grafton, Holliston, Hopkinton, Hopedale, Medway, Mendon, Milford, Millbury, Millville, Natick, Northborough, Northbridge, Shrewsbury, Southborough, Sutton, Wayland, Westborough, Whitinsville, Worcester, Upton, and Uxbridge MA.
