Sunday 25 July 2010

Top 5 Things that Devalue Your House

Whether selling a home or staying put, an important consideration for any homeowner is the impact he or she is making on the value of the house. There are a lot of factors that go into figuring out how much your home is worth. Some of these include the location, the square footage, the school district, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, the age and condition, the number of similar houses on the market and the number of buyers looking for new homes. While several of those aren't easily changed, some are under a homeowner's control.

It's one thing to look at what you can do to improve a home's value, but what about factors that decrease it? Some of those factors you just have to put up with. In other cases, completing renovations and repairs might pay off to varying extents -- or they might not. But letting a house slip into disrepair is a surefire way to decrease its value.­

Most homes have a ceiling price they'll never be worth more than, but on the other end of the spectrum, home values can act like a limbo stick that just keeps dropping and dropping, year after year. It's crucial to be aware of how you're affecting your home's bottom line and to understand what can be done to raise it back up.

One of the main things to keep in mind during that process is that people have a wide variety of tastes, which can vary greatly both geographically and demographically. A house with the flexibility to suit a big slice of the population pie will be more in-demand than one highly customized to any one particular lifestyle. The more people who find a house attractive when it hits the market, the better off you'll be.

On the following pages, we'll examine some of the top causes of home devaluation and see if there is anything to be done about them.

No comments:

Post a Comment