Money-saving Upgrades That Will Get Your Home Sold

If you're thinking of selling your home, you may be pondering some fast fix-ups to help your home compete in this tough marketplace. But which improvements will give you the most bang for your buck and which will likely have you investing more than you could ever possibly recoup?

Well, some of this depends, of course, on the price-range of your home. One of the things you'll want to keep in mind is that when it comes to improving your home to get it sold, the name of the game is "keeping up with the Jones" but not outdoing the Jones. So if everyone in your price range has laminate countertops, installing granite may be overdoing it unless you can figure out a very affordable way to get the job done. And that's the focus of this post -- how to make some impressive improvements on the cheap.

As many of you may know, I am both a REALTOR and home stager in the Lexington KY real estate market. And as such, I've had the opportunity to help many families "stage" their homes and also guided them in making other, more substantial improvements in the name of achieving a fast, top-dollar sale.

Through these experiences, I've learned some inexpensive fixes and improvements that are almost certain to help your home stand out in the crowded marketplace and turn your home from "for sale" to "sold", and below are a few of my favorite fixes.

Install pre-fabricated granite countertops. As you may know, granite has become the countertop material of choice among the well-to-do and the dream countertop material for those who can afford only a modestly-priced home. In the Lexington KY real estate market, homes under the 300k mark routinely have laminate countertops and if you have beautiful, newer laminate countertops, you may be just as well off leaving them as is.

But if you want to really wow buyers, you may want to consider pre-fabricated granite. For a small kitchen, it costs about $1,000 and for a medium-sized kitchen, it can run you close to $2,000, but that's a pretty solid investment, especially when you compare that to the $5,000+ most people pay for granite counters in a medium-sized kitchen. In my opinion, you will recoup at least the cost of your investment in the countertops, if not twice that, and your house will likely sell 2-3 times as quickly.

Pre-fabricated granite comes pre-cut in standard widths and is therefore much cheaper than regular, custom-cut granite. There'a a great supplier in Lexington, KY called Tyson Stone (located at 505 West New Circle Road). You can visit their website and see their standard types of granite and get an idea of how much it would cost to install granite in your home.

Paint or stain your cabinets/bathroom vanities. Without seeing your home, I can't tell you whether I'd recommend you paint or stain, but I can tell you, in general, if you have a light counter, you'll want a dark cabinet and visa versa.

But how do you achieve the dark cabinet color without sanding off all the old finish? It's actually not that hard. I've done it several times with both paint and stain. Just make sure you clean your cabinets very well before you start (preferably with something like TSP, which you can find at your local Lowe's or Home Depot).

Next, if you're painting, you'll want to put a coat of primer on the cabinets and I would recommend oil-based primer. If you're painting any color other than white (believe it or not, black cabinets are becoming very popular these days!) have the primer tinted close to the color of the paint you're using to reduce the number of coats of paint you'll need. Finally, finish up with 1 or 2 coats of oil-based paint and let dry a couple of days if possible before you put them back together.

If you want to stain your cabinets, I have a handy mixture I use to achieve a dark brown stain color that works like a charm. I buy walnut gel stain at Walmart and mix in a couple of table spoons of dark walnut regular stain to create a stain mixture that I then apply like regular paint. I don't wipe it on and wipe it off and apply numerous coats. I "paint" on 1 to 2 coats (usually 2 coats on vertical surfaces) and let dry for a couple of days before I reassemble them (let dry at least 24 hours in between coats).

I've applied this mixtures to old furniture, oak bathroom vanities and picture frames and it looks wonderful! It imparts the look of dark stain while giving you the convenience and coverage of paint.

Cover your sheet vinyl floor with high quality vinyl tiles. I like the Eurostone line from Lowe's. They actually look so much like real tile that people will bend down to feel them to try to figure it out (despite the absence of grout lines). Most sheet vinyl looks pretty outdated these days and the look of tile is so "in", that giving your bathroom or kitchen floors the "look" of tile will be a big selling feature for your home. It looks more contemporary too.

I hope you've found these tips helpful. Please feel free to contact me if you have questions about staging your home for sale whether it's in the Lexington KY real estate market or anywhere else in Kentucky.

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