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Renovating in 2023?  Hint: Do Your Homework and Be Realistic

If you’re thinking about investing in improvements to your home in 2023, we advise you to start planning and researching now. While you’re thinking about the project, keep a few points in mind:

Return on Investment: Staying or Leaving?

Almost any home improvement will give you a return on investment, and some more than others. But the question is – are you planning to sell your house in the short term or are you staying another 5 or more years? If you’re planning to stay put, then the quality of life in your home should be an equal consideration to percentage of the investment you will get back at sale.

Modernize or Upgrade?

You’ve had your heart set on a bathroom remodel – tearing out everything and replacing it all with a floor-to ceiling walk-in shower, heated floors, copious storage space, up-to-date fixtures. It will be an investment in luxury with a ROI of about 85% at sale – a pretty good investment!

But if that bathroom is the only one in the house, shiny surfaces won’t change the fact that your family really needs a second bathroom.  So for your quality of life, you might want to skip the remodel and instead upgrade the home with another bathroom. The convenience and efficiency of having two options for the family may far outweigh the joy of the walk-in shower.

Where to put it? We can help you with that. Maybe it can go in the basement – maybe you can carve out a space near the kitchen or convert a too-small bedroom.

And, long-term, when you put your house on the market, you’ll compete better with other properties for sale because the vast majority of homes today have more than one bathroom.

Are You Overimproving?

Are you dreaming of a complete kitchen renovation – gutting the room to the studs, rethinking the functionality of the space, and rebuilding from the ground up with professional-grade, energy efficient, top-of-the-line app

liances and surfaces. We agree, that would be so amazing. And it might be $40,000 or more, too.

But is that right for you? Think about your immediate neighborhood and research the housing market. Does putting a $40,000 kitchen in a modest house make sense? Would you be just as happy leaving the walls, sink and appliances where they are, upgrading the floors, cabinets and counter, and updating the appliances? You could probably do that for half the cost of a complete tear-out. Clean, updated kitchens sell houses, but they don’t have to be full-on chef’s kitchens with a $10,000 stove to be an incentive.

So if you’re thinking about improving your home in 2023, choose improvements that work best for you and your family both short- and long-term. Any improvements will enhance the value of the home and make your life there more enjoyable, too.  But don’t worry about the resale value unless a sale is in the near future. Make the changes that will make you happy without breaking the bank or over-improving your home.