Ask the REALTOR: Do cosmetic repairs really improve the value of my home?

Ask the REALTOR® is a regular video series in which I answer your most commonly-asked real estate questions, with a new Q&A posting every week. If YOU have a real estate question for me, drop me a note here.

This week’s question: Do cosmetic repairs really improve the value of my home? Here’s the answer in this brief video, and don’t miss the transcript below.

(RSS subscribers, please click here if you can’t see the video in your feed reader. Thanks!)

Transcript:

Hi. This is Cari McGee with Keller Williams Realty. Welcome to this week’s episode of “Ask The Realtor.” Every week, I answer questions from buyers and sellers — and pretty much everyone in between — regarding real estate.

This week’s question is, “Cari, I’m listing my house for sale and my best friend told me I don’t need to make any cosmetic repairs or changes because they don’t add value. Is that correct?”

Well, the short answer is unless your best friend is a real estate agent, you shouldn’t be taking real estate advice from them.

The longer answer is as follows: If you are just painting a door jamb, maybe touching up paint on a door jamb or getting the gunk out of a window sill, that’s a cosmetic change. And yeah, that’s not gonna add a lot of value. But if you are, for example, painting an entire room or adding new carpeting in an area or throughout the house, that’s absolutely going to impact the value.

And regardless of what you do, whether you make big cosmetic changes, little cosmetic changes, and whether they add actual value or not, any time you improve the entire look of the house through a cosmetic change, then your house spends less time on the market. And that’s absolutely a win for you and results in more money for your pocket. But that will be a question that we address on a future “Ask The Realtor,” I am sure.

So I hope that answers your question. And if you have any questions for me regarding real estate, by all means, give me a shout via any one of the methods that follow on the next screen. Thanks so much. Bye.