Baltimore Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
s/o re the bathroom question
do you think buyers are more picky/less picky than they were a few years ago?
now, housing almost seems like its a race to the bottom, who can sell the cheapest, so I don't know that as a seller, I'd invest that much in improvements if buyers weren't willing to pay for them.
Re: s/o re the bathroom question
I think definitely more picky.....there are so many more houses on the market, some sitting forever, the buyers have so much more power now than when we bought.
I mean when we bought our TH, there were multiple offers being put down before we could even get out to look at some of them. It was insane. We couldn't afford to be too picky, we were just happy to find something in our price range. We walked through and noted some things that had to be done but we were so rapidly getting priced out of our desired neighborhoods we kind of overlooked them and resolved we would just need to do some work on the place.
I think buyers are more picky than they were - but their budgets are also smaller so the overall effect is hard to pinpoint.
As for whether improvements are worth the investment - that I have no idea on. I've never owned a "starter" home, so in a lot of ways my views on whether a home improvement are worth it are different from most people. I care about resale in that I'm not going to do something totally insane to my house, but for the most part the money we are putting into our house is to make it nicer for us. Resale is a distant #2 to our needs and wants.
My Goodness...another food blog. Featuring: Macarons from a old post with a photo taken by my mom for a break from my crappy food photos!
I think it depends on what type of buyer you are. Is this your forever home? Are you good with DIY projects or know someone that is willing to help? How much time and money are you willing to invest in the house you are looking to purchase?
When we purchased our townhouse in 2004, we knew it was not our forever home. We were willing to DIY things in the house we didn't like, but made smart choices about what would good for resale. For example, we laid Pergo flooring on our main level instead of real hard wood floors. We also gutted the kitchen but didn't get too fancy in terms of cabinets and flooring.
However, when we began looking for our next house, we had an idea of what we were willing to do in terms of upgrades in the house. Something simple like changing out light fixtures, bathroom mirrors, new carpet and painting were okay. Major projects such as finishing a basement or installing new floors wasn't something we wanted to get into. This of course led us to build our next house because we couldn't find what we wanted in our price range.
If you know you're going to be in your house forever, do what makes sense for your family. (I'm totally thinking of Melissa from RHofNJ with her recording studio in her basement). If you plan on purchasing a house only to live there a few years, major upgrades are probably not necessary. Like Kathryn said, it's not worth putting the money into the house if buyers aren't willing to pay for them.
Did anything I write make sense? It's been a long day at work.
Ditto Wawa & Jadey on many/most of their points.
I think that the major thing w/ improvements now is that a lot of homeowners were using their houses as credit cards and pulled the equity out of their homes in order to make improvements or go on vacations, etc. with the mentality that the value of their home was going to just sky-rocket over the course of 5 years and having this debt attached to their home would not be an issue.
I don't think that certain items automatically garner a X $ price increase like they did even 3 or 4 years ago. There are so many bank-owned homes out there and the banks don't give a rats-arse if the house they are selling has granite counters but the house listed across the street for laminate is going for 5k more, they just want to sell the house, so that has changed the market, as many buyers are willing to wait for these types of properties to come on the market and change the game.
Because the market has changed so much in terms of timing- buyers are more likely to wait/search for the distressed property to come on the market and change the game.