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Top 3 Landscaping Additions That Will Boost Your Home Value

Buying a stick-built house is almost always a good idea if you have the opportunity – unlike mobile homes, a site built one will appreciate in value. However, the amount that it appreciates over the years will be in direct correlation to the amount of improvements that you do on it. Here are a few of the top landscaping additions that you can make that will ensure your house sells for a higher price tag.

Build a pond. You don’t even have to keep fish in it – a simple garden pond with some water lilies will do perfectly. Adding a pond is one of the top ways to add more value to your home. However, before you set out to have one built make sure you keep in mind that a pond will require some hands-on maintenance.
Grow a garden. With the trend of going organic on the rise lately you can add some serious value to your house if you add a garden to it. Most people love the idea of growing their own food, but very few have the perseverance to actually grow the vegetables from seeds – a mature vegetable garden can attract more buyers to your listing.
Add a few mature trees to your yard. Everyone loves a large tree – especially since one that has mature leaves and branches can add a lot of privacy to a house in a highly-trafficked neighborhood. Mature trees take a lot of time to grow, and this only makes them worth more in the end.

The above ideas are only a few ways that you can add value to your home – there are all kinds of ways that a well-thought out landscape can take you. Just be creative and do what looks best with your house.

Filed Under: Apartments, Home Decor, Landscaping Tagged With: Garden, Pond, Water

Don’t Look at a Foreclosure as a Used Home

While most real estate agents will advertise a foreclosed home as a ‘used home,’ there is no reason to think of one as such! Sure, there may be some bad apples out of the bunch, but for the most part a foreclosure is simply a different type of opportunity – especially if you cannot afford the high price tag of a new home.

They are often more affordable than a brand new home. There are many foreclosures that are well under $100,000. For this reason, they can be the perfect investment opportunity for a newlywed couple or a college student. However, it is very important to remember that there will almost always be some sort of repair that needs done – in other words, always make sure there is some money left over!
You can get a larger home for a smaller dollar amount. Because a foreclosure is just another burden for a bank to carry most will try to get rid of them as soon as they can. This means that many expensive homes are being let go of for an insanely small price in comparison to all they have to offer. For this reason a foreclosure can be the ideal home for a larger family that needs a larger amount of space but can’t afford to buy a new home that has enough of it.
There are thousands to pick from. Many people cannot afford to keep their homes from going into foreclosure. While this is a very sad reality, it also opens up the door to a great opportunity for people who do not have a lot of cash to spend on a new home.

Buying a foreclosed home does not reflect negatively on you – in fact, as long as you are wise in your purchase it shows that you are an informed, real estate savvy buyer.

Filed Under: Home, Home Decor Tagged With: Foreclosure, Real estate, Real estate broker/agent

Adventures in Decorating

Whether you live in a huge mansion in Austin, Texas or one of the small, studio Chicago apartments one of the most exciting things you will do with your living space will be decorating it. While many people just put up a picture on the wall and a rug on the floor and call it decorating, others wish to be creative and have fun with the decorating process. If you are in that second group, there are numerous creative ideas that you can use to decorate your living space. Here is a look at some of the fun, wacky and unique ideas that people have used to decorate their living space.

The Color Pallet. It used to be that the common colors for homes and apartments include light colors and white or beige. The trend now is to paint your living space the colors that you want. There are lots of people who are going with orange and yellows in the kitchen, and purples and blues in the bedrooms. Painting can be a lot of work but it can really set the personality and tone to a room. Remember if you try a color and don’t like it you can always paint over it!

Lighting Options. Why stick to the traditional lamp and corner light? Many people are starting to incorporate lighting options into their room. These can include lamps all over the room to provide more light or even having low hanging lights that come from the ceiling.

No Need to Pay a Fortune. Designing a house or apartment used to cost a fortune. However, many people have decided to create an exchange program for household items and paint that allows people to save money and redecorate their homes. Instead of tossing old items out, they are being exchanged for other new items. This is a great way to save money but also help the environment at the same time!

Filed Under: Home Decor

Green Building: Building and Remodeling Resource Books

Green building is a hot topic. The best way to start a new green building home project is by doing the research. Building and remodeling resource books can help the home owner be prepared for the big project. Uneducated and uninformed consumers are the ones who usually end up spending too much money on something they may ultimately regret.

Green Building

In today’s environmentally conscious world, many home owners want to go green. Be warned that green building can be more expensive at the onset, but it should save the home owner plenty of money in the long run. As energy and building materials continue to rise in cost, getting in on the green trend now will probably make a lot of sense to the savvy homesteader.

Solar Energy is a very hot topic these days. As an alternative electric choice, there is a huge amount of interest in this burgeoning technology. The fastest way to get educated is to hit the search engine of choice and plug in the keywords that fit your needs. Try “solar electric,” “solar power,” or “solar homes.” See what you get. If you prefer to curl up with a good book, plenty of those are available, too.

Consider HardiePlank on Your New Home

: Image by Getty Images via @daylife

More and more homes are being built with HardiePlank. This is a wood and vinyl siding alternative that has proven to be very hearty. However, it’s name doesn’t come from the construction pun, it comes from the inventor, James Hardie.

HardiePlank looks like wood siding except for its color. It’s base color is a grayish white. Some home owners like the color and don’t paint it, but others choose to paint. One of its benefits is that paint does not chip and peel on HardiePlank. It’s also easy to clean with a garden hose. This siding material is a fiber cement composite.

Other benefits of this Hardie siding are that it is impervious to termites and wood rot. Therefore, the long term maintenance is greatly reduced. HardiePlank is fire resistance, so its insurance rating will be the same as brick. An individual who likes the look of a wood home can save money on his homeowner’s policy by choosing the cement fiber siding. Another advantage is that, unlike vinyl siding, HardiePlank can be repainted. Once vinyl is put on a house, the home owner, or potential home buyer is stuck with that color. Hardie can be painted any color the buyer or owner wants.

If you’re a DIY home builder, it’s important to know that HardiePlank requires a special saw blade. A regular circular blade will dull and not give as clean a cut. Ultimately, the construction expenses go up as you keep replacing that traditional blade. Be sure to purchase a blade specifically designed to cut through cement fiber board. It would be a good idea to wear a N-95 OSHA-rated dust mask or respirator while cutting. The dust can be a real irritant. Finally, when setting up the saw horses, you’ll need to put them a little closer together because HardiePlank is heavier and flimsier than wood.

Although it’s more expensive, HardiePlank really could be considered the gold standard in siding.

Filed Under: Architecture, Home, Home Decor Tagged With: Fiber cement siding, James Hardie, Vinyl siding, Wood

How to Paint Exterior Brick

: Image via Wikipedia

If you’ve found the perfect home to buy, it might be you love the interior but hate the color of the exterior brick. It can be painted, but it is important to know how to paint exterior brick. If it’s done correctly, it will reduce the amount of exterior maintenance your new home will need.

Pros of Painting Exterior Brick

One of the best reasons to paint brick is it turns an eyesore into something you love. Another great reason is that you can change the color of your house whenever you want to!

Cons of Painting Exterior Brick

The biggest reason you wouldn’t paint brick? You’re stuck with it! There’s no going back once the brick has been painted. Another drawback is that paint requires maintenance, no matter how carefully you apply it.

Getting Started

Before you start painting, rent a power washer and remove all dust, spider webs, and loose masonry from the brick. The pressure doesn’t need to be super strong. About 1500 -2000 psi will do it. Take extra care with salt deposits which are known as efflorescence. These are the white spots on the brick. If there is any broken mortar, repair it with acrylic mortar patch.

Time to Paint

The brick must be primed first, so use a high quality primer paint. Once it’s dry, fill large cracks and gaps with a good polyurethane caulking. Larger gaps require and elastomeric caulk. Now it’s time to paint! You can use a high quality acrylic exterior paint or an elastomeric paint. Elastomeric paint will expand as much as 300% to fill in those final cracks. Most house painters recommend spending the extra money and using an elastomeric paint. Apply two coats to insure maximum durability.

Remember that spending a little extra time in the beginning will save you money and time in the long run, and give you years of enjoyment in your new home.

Filed Under: Home, Home Decor Tagged With: Brick, Caulking, Paint, Primer (paint)

How to Draw Your Own Floor Plan

Before you spend an enormous amount of money on an architect and allow him to conceptualize your dream home, try to draw your own floor plan. It’s actually very easy to do. Although you may ultimately need an architect to get it just right, the rough concept should be all yours. It will help you solidify ideas with whoever you’re building your house with. Best of all, it doesn’t cost a dime to change your mind!

Two Simple Tools

To draw your floor plan you need two simple tools. You need a pencil with an eraser and a pad of graph paper. For less than five dollars, you can start creating that dream house concept. You can even conceptualize 50 dream homes! You might call this the five dollar architect.

Communication

Before you start your drawings, make sure you communicate with your building partner. Do a little blue sky dreaming. What do you want? Do you need a game room? Do you want a multi-level home? How many bedrooms and bathrooms? How many square feet would you like your new home to be? Once you’ve got some general ideas and agreements together, start drawing.

One Graph Square Equals One Square Foot

See the beauty in this? For every square foot you need, you’ve got a perfect little blue square on the paper. It might be that you draw the general house, then turn the page and draw out each room. You could use it to draw porches, garages, pools, general landscaping ideas, even plumbing diagrams. If you draw out a living room, and you know how many square feet a couch, entertainment center, chairs, etc. take up, you can draw them in and see if you’ve conceptualized the right size room. Draw in doors and windows to get a feel for wall space. Things will really start to come together for you.

When you’re ready, take your ideas to an architect and start your project.

Filed Under: Architecture, Home, Home Decor Tagged With: Drawing, Floor plan, Square foot

Low Maintenance Landscaping Ideas

Today’s busy lifestyles can make it really hard to keep up with a yard. However, your yard is the first impression people have of you and your home, so it pays to keep it looking nice. If time is in short supply, here are a few things you can do to enjoy low maintenance landscaping.

Low Maintenance Grass

Plant the grass that is most low maintenance for your area. If watering is a problem, then the drought resistance Zoysia grass might be your best bet. Cooler areas of the country might pick something else. Ask your local nursery what requires the least amount of maintenance in your yard.

Try Container Plants

Flower beds require work. If you aren’t into weeding, seasonal planting, and upkeep, then put your flowers and decorative plants in containers. Get creative! Try old wash tubs, wheel barrows, decorative pots, or painted cinder blocks. Have a little fun with it. Just make sure that whatever you pick has good drainage. When you water, the excess needs a place to go, so if the container is water tight, poke some holes in the bottom.

Mulching

Even if you’ve created container beds, it will look much neater if your create mulched beds underneath them. Make sure to lay down weed resistant barrier before distributing the mulch. Commercial products can be found at any home improvement store. For the budget or environmentally conscious home owner, cardboard and newspaper work just as well!

Just Forget About It

OK. You’re not going to mess with flowers, but you want something in front of your house. Try some low maintenance shrubs. Boxwoods are fairly popular, but you will need to find out which variety works in your area. Junipers are another popular choice. They’ll help keep the weeds near the house at bay. Shrubs may require an occasional trim, but they are easy to maintain and easy on the eyes.

Filed Under: Home Decor, Landscaping Tagged With: Concrete masonry unit, Drought tolerance, Mulch

Home Improvements That Don’t Pay

People often make home improvements because they believe they will increase the value of their home. However, some home improvements don’t have good return on the investment. They simply don’t pay. The first thing to consider, when contemplating a home improvement project, is whether it’s genuinely for something needed or whether it’s an attempt to increase equity in the home. Here are a few add-ons that are probably not going to pay for themselves in home equity.

Swimming Pool

They sure do sound like a good idea on a hot summer day, and they can be really pretty. They’re great for parties and personal pleasure, but they are likely to make a home harder to sell rather than easier. Prospective buyers simply see higher utility costs, considerable maintenance and a serious liability. Don’t add a pool to the property for any other reason besides a real desire to have one.

Master Bedroom Suite

These things are like adding on a small house to an existing house. It seems like they’d be a big selling point for a home owner, but the fact is, they won’t increase the value of a home enough to pay for the cost of building one.

Home Office Remodel

Hold one before building that bookcase into the wall! What if a prospective home buyer wants to use that office as a bedroom? Those built in features translate to “no thank you.” Keep office improvements portable.

Garage Addition

Once again, this is like building an extra little house. It has a concrete foundation, a frame out, usually interior finishes, and a big fat average cost of $55,000. That will not translate to a $55,000 increase in home value. Do it only because there’s car that’s worth it, and really. How many cars are worth that much money?

Nice features are just that. Nice. If home improvements are needed to sell a home, go for practical things like energy efficiency upgrades.

Filed Under: Architecture, Home, Home Decor Tagged With: Home equity, Home improvement, Swimming pool

Can a Gazebo Add Value to your Home?

: Image via Wikipedia

When the housing market is in a slump like it is now, it can be difficult to find ways to make your house work for you when it comes to putting it on the market and selling it. Whether the home owner chooses to use a fresh coat of paint, some new flowers or shrubs outside, a new mailbox, or even some new outdoor lights, there are several ways to raise the value of a house while doing very little damage to the house owner’s wallet.

The television show called, “Curb Appeal” from HGTV has it right when they spend all their time on the outside of the house. It is that first glance, when someone pulls into the driveway and sees the house for a first time, that tells them whether they should just just pull back out and keep driving or take down the phone number of the realtor so that they can ask to look at the house on the inside as well. Besides just an array of flowers and shrubs to make the beds look neat, adding a gazebo to the side yard or to the end of a deck in a small pond is a great way to add value to the house without spending much money.

One family had a gazebo that they loved in the side yard near a flower garden. They decided to move it and added it to end of the deck in their back yard. By cleaning up both areas of the yard this way, they were able to add a couple thousand dollars onto their asking price. A gazebo can stand alone as a quiet place to sit and enjoy a garden, or the home owner can place a hot tub or jacuzzi inside the gazebo to add even more value to the property.

Filed Under: Home Decor, Model Homes Tagged With: Curb Appeal, Garden, Gazebo, HGTV