Every February we get the same call. Someone is planning to sell in the spring and wants to know what to spend money on first. The honest answer is usually "less than you think", which is not what anybody wants to hear from an agent.
Here is what we see actually move the price, based on the properties we have sold in this neighborhood over the last three years.
Four things that reliably pay
1. Fixing the thing the survey will find anyway
Damp, a failed condo roof, a cracked soil pipe. Buyers discover these at survey stage and renegotiate — and the renegotiation is almost always larger than the repair. A $1,400 damp course becomes a $5,000 price reduction because the buyer is now imagining the worst.
2. Decluttering, properly
Not tidying. Removing about a third of what is in the house, including furniture. Rooms photograph and feel larger, and buyers stop reading your bookshelves and start imagining their own things in the space. Costs a weekend and a storage unit.
3. The front of the house
A repainted door, a cleaned path, a bin that is not the first thing you see. Buyers form a view in the first ten seconds and then spend the showing confirming it. This is the cheapest intervention available and the most reliable.
4. Getting the energy report done early
Not because a C sells for more than a D, but because commissioning it early gives you time to act on cheap recommendations — loft insulation, a hot water cylinder jacket — before the certificate is published.
The question is never "will this improve the house?" It is "will a buyer pay more than this costs?" Those are different questions.
Three that almost never do
- A new kitchen. A $14,000 kitchen adds perhaps $6,000, and a third of buyers will replace it anyway because it is not their taste. Fix the kitchen you have; do not buy a new one.
- A sunroom. On most of the stock around here it is value-neutral at best, and on period properties it can actively deter buyers who wanted the original yard.
- Extensive landscaping. Tidy the yard. Do not re-design it. Buyers rarely pay for someone else's planting scheme.
The attic conversion question
This is the one we get asked about most and the answer is genuinely "it depends". A properly converted loft with building regulations sign-off and a compliant staircase adds real value on a three-bed row house, where it creates a fourth bedroom the street does not otherwise offer.
The same conversion on a house that already has four bedrooms mostly adds a room nobody costed. And a conversion without regulations approval is worse than no conversion, because it becomes a legal problem in closing.
What to do first
Get a valuation before you spend anything. A decent agent will walk the property and tell you which of these apply to your house specifically — and will tell you when the answer is "do nothing, it is fine as it is".
That conversation is free, and it is a considerably better use of a Saturday than ordering a kitchen.
Thinking of selling this year?
Request a valuation and we will tell you what is worth doing to your property specifically — including when the answer is nothing.
Request a valuation
