In today’s Stephen Cooley Real Estate Show, Stephen and Julie Storm discuss the main trends that can affect the value of your home once you’ve decided to sell it.
We’ve certainly seen a lot of things come and go in the real estate industry.
To increase the long-term value of your home, consider these 5 fads:
- The electronics inside your home – make sure they’re relatively up to date.
- Strong colors on permanent items like granite, tile, etc.
- Landscaping that dies very quickly without water. At some point, there will be a drought so consider planting drought resistent species.
- Trendy styles or fixtures that might look outdated next year.
- Window treatments that will eventually go out of style.
If you really want to create a ‘trendy’ design, use things that are easy to change like the wall color, pillows, etc.
Remember, design styles and trends change so make sure you take that into considertion if there’s a chance you’ll sell your home at some point in the future.
If you’re not sure what to do, give us a call and we’d be more than happy to give you some suggestions and advice as to where to invest your money to create a design that won’t hurt you when it’s time to sell.
STEPHEN: Hello, I’m Stephen Cooley and welcome to the Stephen Cooley Real Estate Show. As always, it’s great to have the lovely Julie Storm on the show today.
JULIE: Always pleasure.
STEPHEN: Julie 16 years of doing the show, providing information out there. We’ve seen a lot of things come and go in the real estate industry.
JULIE: Yes, we have – a lot of trends, a lot of fads and, yes, it’s been interesting.
STEPHEN: Yeah and so 1 thing I wanted to talk about today was fad versus value. Because just like in all our lives we do things that are popular and trending right now and that’s our clothing we wear, the cars we buy but also the things that we do inside our home. They’re very popular today, but 3 to 5 to 10 years from now when you get ready to sell your home you will go back and say “Well, you know, that was a 2017 trend” and so kind of fads versus value.
JULIE: With that being said, do you have like a top 5 fads.
STEPHEN: Yeah. Certainly. The first one would be electronics. No one wants last year’s cell phone, much less a cell phone from 5 years ago. So the same thing’s happening with electronics inside your home. A lot of us 10 and 15 years ago did a very extensive wiring, Cat-5 wiring and all these things inside the home and no one cares about that today. Cameras inside a home 10 years ago cost $1,500 each [] is a wonderful provider of wireless security systems and cameras, now I think the cameras in my house are like 50 bucks – 75 bucks each, I watch it all on my phone so electronics are the fastest changing industry and sometimes we’re spending a fortune on speakers and things like that that no longer matter. I went in a home and the music was beautiful and he was playing it from his smartphone and I said how much did you spend on all this, he said less than $500. he had music playing in every room from a little box just hidden in every room. Then you go in another home they may have spent $10,000 on that kind of stuff so that’s changing very quickly.
JULIE: You can’t, even if you move sometimes you can’t even get the receiver piece that connects the whole thing together.
STEPHEN: Sometimes the hardware gets so outdated that it doesn’t even work at home. I know this from personal experience. Colors on permanent items. There are popular colors every year and clothing and everything else. So people can put those things in their home. They shouldn’t put it into permanent things and permanent things are cabinets, permanent flooring, granite, tile work that you want to last 30 and 40 years. Don’t do those in hot pink. Don’t those in real strong colors because those colors do come and go but if you’re selling your home when they’ve gone out of style you may be ripping out some permanent granite, some tiles and things like that. So that’s a bad decision also. Third one would be landscape that dies very quickly if you can’t water it. And the reason is in our area we have a drought every 5 to 7 years and the first thing the city does and the county does who provide water to the home as you can’t water your plants. So then I had a guy during the last drought lose $50,000 worth of planting, so plant things that can.. there are plants that can survive a summer drought. And then there’s plants that cannot survive that so just real cautious there on fads too.
JULIE: A lot of people also don’t want to put a lot of time into landscaping, you know, on a regular basis. People are busy these days, so a nice maintenance or maintenance-free things sometimes is nice.
STEPHEN: Absolutely. Another thing that I think that people do that comes and goes very quickly – some light fixtures. I’ve gone in homes with $4,000 or $5,000 chandeliers and 4 years in dining room and walk in it and it’s such a big presence in the home, it dates the house so quickly. So there are like pictures..Look at a home that’s 100 years old and the chandeliers never been changed out That’s a good light fixture, but a trending light fixture that’s very popular today that goes out very quickly and again sometimes these come back that you may be selling the house when that’s going out of stall and there’s such big focal points. The kind of the diamonds and the jewelry of a home or light fixtures. Another thing that trends is pull out to a home and they had a $100,000 kitchen they put in 2006 all the feedback in 2016 was outdated kitchen. They had $100,000 outdated kitchen. It was very dark, very gothic and that was a very big trending thing in mid-2000 and it’s not the kitchen of today. And so just be very careful when you’re doing something that may not last forever.
JULIE: Gotcha. What about window treatments?
STEPHEN: Absolutely. Good blinds, good quality blinds, good quality shutters that give you privacy never go out of style. So heavy window treatments, you’ve been in homes $30,000-$40,000 worth of heavy window treatments. They go out of style. Right now the style is no window treatment on a home that will come back but it won’t be the old one so be very careful with that. Things of value – permanent outdoor hardscape, patios, screened porches. I’ve never had a buyer say “I don’t want a patio. I don’t want the screened porch.” They all want them. Those are great additions to the home. You can certainly enjoy them and get full resale value when you’re selling your home. When you’re picking..If you want to do color – paint the walls you can change the paint color in a weekend. Pillows – trending colors, put pillows on your sofas and things like that. Go into a bathroom and put the trending color in towels and soaps and bath mats and things like that but keep those rooms neutral so when you’re picking you know the old wood floors you could refinish the new wood floors that come pre-finished you can’t change the color so keep those things keep your granite and your towels and your permanent floor coverings just very neutral then buy a rug and put over them that’s a trending color.
JULIE: So Stephen, if if you’re sitting here thinking about hey I want to make some changes in the houses what something maybe they can do.
STEPHEN: Well first of all to all our clients we offer.. We’re their realtor for life and they can give us a call and say Stephen I’m about to do this to my home kind of run the plans by you to take a look at them or if I do this to the home and I spend this amount of money. What’s the resale 5 years from now, we can give them bad advice – I’d rather give it to them upfront.
They still may do it Julie but they’re doing it because they want it versus the resale. Because when i go out and say I know you spent 30 or 40,000 but there’s no resale. It kind of breaks their heart and so we would really like to catch that before they do it.
JULIE: And typically people are not staying at home for 20 and 30 years.
STEPHEN: And my parents are in the home that they brought me home from the hospital in and people stay 3 to 5 years now. My parents had nowhere to move so they added on or whatever but people now buy for the period of life, the size of their family, close to work, close to school and typically people stay 3 to 5 years, so when you’re staying 3 to 5 years, you don’t want to make a permanent mark on that home that’s so personal but no one else is going remember. You’re not before ever owner, you’re just adopting the home for three or 5 years. So don’t put an impression on it that hurts that lovely home for the rest of his life that’s great advice.
Thank you for being on today’s show. We’ve got beautiful homes for sale in your area. If you’ve got any questions about these things we talked about today, give us a call here at 803 95 1240 – we’ll be right back.
I hope you’ve enjoyed watching the Stephen Cooley Real Estate Show. If you’re interested in advertising your business on the program, please give us a call at 803-326-2777. Join us next week for more discussions on real estate topics and help in finding your perfect home. Thanks for watching.