Lawn Care and Your Home Value
Why Lawn Care Matters
When you’re selling your home, you and your realtor are matchmakers. You want your home to make a great first impression on potential buyers.
Lawn Care and Curb Appeal
That’s because the first impression — what realtors and countless home buying shows refer to as “curb appeal” — makes a big difference in how your home is perceived. Home buyers can’t always articulate what made them choose one property over another. They’ll tell you they just knew, but often as not it’s the details. A well-kept lawn and garden signals that you’ve likely kept up on other important details, like home maintenance and cleanliness.
Return of Investment on Lawn Care and Landscaping
So where should you invest your lawn care dollars? How much should you invest? And after all that, can you put a dollar amount on what you’ll get out of it?
Let’s start with how much to budget. The article cited above suggests ten percent of your home’s value. Theoretically, if you’re listing a home in Hinton, that’d mean ten percent of about 195,000 dollars, or $19,500. Most of us don’t have that much to invest in lawn care and landscaping, so figure out what you can afford. Just bear in mind that you might be splitting that into multiple categories, including hardscaping, purchasing plants, seeding, weed eradication, and more.
How you spend is just as important as what you spend. When Kaminsky spoke to one local nursery owner about what to do when you’re on a budget, he suggested “adding color with annuals, perennials, or seasonal flowering shrubs; mulching; edging; removing weeds; and getting the grass as green and full as possible,” going on to say that “Those are the quick and inexpensive fixes.”
And what will you get out of your money? Most home improvement projects, after all, don’t necessarily add to your home value. Landscaping may be the exception here. Kaminsky spoke to John Gidding, a host of multiple HGTV shows, about what homeowners might expect as an ROI for their lawncare and landscaping investment. He cited 150 percent as a common estimate, but went on to say he’d place the value much higher. Even if you can’t put a definitive dollar figure on it, if it helps your home sell faster, it’s money well spent.
It’s axiomatic that real estate is all about location, location, and location. But curb appeal is also a very important part of the equation. Besides making sure your home is in a good state of repair and looks sharp, you also want to make sure you’ve given that jewel a nice setting. That, in turn, means making sure your landscaping is on point, which starts with a lawn care program from Jay-Lan Lawn Care. If your lawn is gorgeous, we’ll make sure it stays that way. If it needs help to restore it to health, including fertilizer application and weed control, we’ll help you make it the envy of the neighborhood. Call us today!