We covered a little bit of what we do a few weeks ago, and you may remember that we’ve expanded to real estate, too! Today we are continuing our new series on viewing and buying a home where we’ll be sharing a few snippets to help! We want to share our experience and knowledge from handling home renovations as designers, and as a licensed Real Estate agent with Benchmark realty here in Nashville. If you’re moving to Nashville, or in and around Nashville/Franklin reach out to Jamin (jamin @ thehandmadehome.net), we’re happy to help you find that perfect home!
The home-buying process is a wonderful experience if you have the right knowledge and game plan. So whether you’re buying something now or in the future {or just want to look extra smart at that next friend gathering} follow along as we cover some things you’ll want to know! And of course, if you have a burning question you’d like answered, shoot it our way and we’ll do our best to help. We’d love to hear from you. Let’s dive in!
Here are a few topics we’ve dealt with and are coming up:
- The Sight Test (click here)
- The Feel Test (click here)
- Is it the right time to buy?
- Adding Value (this week!)
- The Electrical Panel
- The Crawlspace
- Drainage
If you remember back to when we started this series I shared a little about our experience, and our reaction to the home we’re currently living in.
It was…shall we say, in need of some love. The previous owner had let things slip a little. To give you an idea, the pool was a nice shade of green {black?} with dead birds floating in it. It truly was a paneled-wall, gross carpet goodness we decided to buy.
We had family members literally bewildered, asking why in the world we would buy this house. One even thought, maybe we should tear it down. It’s easy to understand why they thought that, the house had been on the market for 6 months in a market and town where houses didn’t last through the weekend. We’ve met numerous people who say they looked at the very same house as an option to buy it but walked away from it. No one was really sure what to do with such a tiny beast.
So what made us different, why didn’t we walk away?
Vision. Plain, and simple, we immediately had a vision for this little 1600 sqft home, and what it could be.
And that vision is how we added value to our home.
6 years in and that little home has transformed from under 1600 to a 3700+ sqft home whose value is up 400%. With a playhouse and a cabana for kids, and a fenced one acre yard for everyone to enjoy. We often joke that we purchased this house for the lot + location. At the time, it was true.
Now we readily admit, that price jump is not the norm and there is a lot of sweat equity in this home.
But the principles always apply, and those are what we want to share today. They’re not rocket science, and we {clearly} didn’t win a Nobel Peace Prize for any of this information. But my experience is that most people simply aren’t thinking about this when buying a home.
The funny thing about homes is that there is a limited supply of them. And finding one that meets your needs can be downright difficult sometimes. Even if it’s not, having a vision for how you can add value to a home is something you should approach every home-buying experience with.
There are two main ways to add value:
- The first being monetarily.
- The second through the enjoyment factor
And often those two overlap.
Both of these speak to the two primary goals of homeownership, investment, and livability.
No one wants to be upside down in their mortgage, or have their home value flatline. The sad truth is this happens to a lot of people, and normally the factors and forces are outside their control.
So the name of the game is to recession-proof your investment.
We have done this in our home and helped numerous clients do it in theirs by thinking smart and claiming new space, often in forgotten places.
If done right, you can generally add square feet to the house at a cost that is lower than what you might have purchased it.
So as you look at a house, ask these questions:
• Is there unused attic space or a basement that can be finished out?
• Is there a way to add a bathroom, or a bedroom, in an easy place to expand the footprint?
• Is there a large room that could be turned into two, or a communal room or one that could become a bedroom?
All these things can change the value of your home for the better, and some are pretty easy to do. Say the home has a pointless bonus room. How would changing it to a bedroom affect the value of the home for a minimal cost?
For us, we turned a basement into an office and a family room, and we gained 835 sq ft.
Fours years later, that addition alone is worth 6 times the cost we put into it.
We also removed a metal awning by the pool, and built a sitting room over the concrete slab. We gained 480 sqft there, and 3 years later that investment is worth 7.8 times our initial investment.
Both were spaces the home already had that we were able to take advantage of through a little vision. So don’t look at what the house is, but what the house can become.
As I mentioned above, the second is allowing the enjoyment factor and the investment factor to overlap.
This is where you begin looking outside the walls of the home and to the yard. Will it allow for any improvements that can add monetary value as well as enjoyment value?
When we first moved in, we located a place to build the kids a treehouse. We didn’t spend a fortune to build it, but it gave them an outside place to play and added an appealing factor to the home.
As they grew, we wanted to create a place for the teens to hang out, so we built a cabana near the pool. It’s now the entertainment center for all their friends. They have a space here at our home where they can host without feeling like family is on top of them. It is also an investment, we only put about $4,000 into it, but when we had our home appraised, the appraiser gave us $25k value for it.
The previous owner built a fence that was way too small and didn’t take advantage of the acre yard, so we took it down and pushed it out to the edge of the property gaining a more usable yard for the dogs. {Covid was a super productive time for us since we don’t sit still for long.} This didn’t help our value on paper, but to potential future buyers, it, along with all the privacy bushes we planted… will be huge.
There are so many things you can do to add value to the home, but you have to start by asking the questions and finding the vision.
We were standing in that kitchen crying the first time we saw this 1600 sq ft home. Despite all the terrible things about this house that showed on the surface, and how overwhelming it could feel in the moment, we saw a vision of what this house could be. 1600 sq ft for a family of 5 is tight living. It took some sacrifice and elbow grease and it honestly isn’t for everyone. All three kids shared a bedroom for a couple of years, and we lived with two bathrooms hoping the stomach bug didn’t ever visit all 5 of us at the same time.
We knew we could add value to the house, not only as an investment but also to help our family love it.
Today, everyone has another bedroom + bathroom + laundry room and butler’s pantry, along with a sitting room + finished basement + office… {we’re almost done!} and we fear that stomach bug a whole lot less.
Others walked away from the house, and we found a vision and watched the value of our investment grow, by leaps and bounds. It’s always something to consider when it comes to looking for a home! So look past what you see, into what it can become. This is one of my favorite parts of being a Real Estate agent, helping clients see the unseen. Vision is a wonderful thing.
Next up: we’ll talk about the electrical panel and the crawl space. These are two of the most important things to look at before offering on a house, well before you’re allowed to have inspections. If your agent doesn’t know what to look for, it’s important to be educated in this arena.
____________
Don’t forget if you have any questions, drop us a comment below. Or if you want to keep it private, shoot us an email! If you want to search homes in Nashville with a fun tool click here. And if we can help you renovate a home, we’d be honored to work with you.
Have an inspired day!
Leave a Reply