Renovations That Can Hurt the Value of Your Home
Tip It!According to a recent survey of real estate agents in Money Magazine, the following renovations can actually hurt the value of your home:
(1) Swimming pools (except in hot-weather areas such as Arizona and Florida). Potential buyers will worry about safety, upkeep, and insurance.
(2) An addition that doesn’t enhance your home’s exterior. To be honest, I have a hard time seeing how this will hurt the value of your home, but I can imagine that it wouldn’t help as much
(3) Trendy hardware and appliance finishes. Trends change, and what’s popular now my be out-of-date shortly.
(4) Circular bath with massaging jets. Here again, I have a hard time seeing how this would hurt, as opposed to just failing to help your home’s value.
[Source: Money Magazine via Bottom Line/Personal]
Published on April 19th, 2007 - 12 Comments
Filed under: Real Estate
About the author: Nickel is the founder and editor-in-chief of this site. He's a thirty-something family man who has been writing about personal finance since 2005, and guess what? He's on Twitter!
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12 Responses to “Renovations That Can Hurt the Value of Your Home”
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April 19th, 2007 at 11:25 am
An addition that doesn’t enhance your home’s exterior.
Example: Top-floor two-car garage.
Nice logo, by the way.
April 19th, 2007 at 11:45 am
I’ve seen a lot of additions that are not in keeping with the architectural style or are badly done. Those definitely detract from the value! Also, additions can also expand the house beyond the neighborhood (2 story house in an area of 1 story starters), and you can’t expect to get a comparable amount if your house is priced out of the market!
April 19th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
And the tub could present maintenance issues maybe(?) I’m just guessing.
April 19th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
When we were home shopping, we looked (on our own) at a home with a pool that was surrounded by pine trees. It never got sunlight and always had to be vacuumed.
When we met with a realtor to see a house we thought we liked, we also knew there was a cheaper home on the same street. However, we knew it had a pool and we weren’t looking for a pool.
We checked out the home we liked and were ready to put an offer on it, but it turned out it already had an offer (but not yet accepted). We took the realtor’s advice and checked out a few more homes she had in mind for us, and at the end, agreed to look at the house with a pool.
We walked through the door and fell in love. We live in that house now, pool and all. I upkeep the pool myself, and with electricity, chemicals, parts, etc., I estimate it runs us an extra $800-1000 per year. The prices are coming down as I figure it all out though.
However, I would never install my own pool. This same pool that was put in 9 years ago for $20,000 would cost $40,000-45,000 today! No thanks.
April 19th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
We moved into a house that had an existing pool. Other than the pool, the house and location were perfect for us. The pool really is not that much maintenance, and my kids are older, so I don’t worry about safety as much. Here in Ohio though, the worst part is we open it mid-May and close it mid-September. Not a very long season at all.
I do worry about resale. This home was on the market for 6 months before we bought it and I wonder if part of that was the pool issue. ???
April 19th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
(4) Circular bath with massaging jets.
There are some people you just don’t want to imagine lounging in the tub before you buy it.
April 19th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Some people are turned off by the circular tubs because of the size. Some of the larger ones take a long time to fill up and use a lot of hot water. Also if it is not the kind that pushes heated air into the water, they can cool down a lot. Nice for a B&B, but soemtimes not for a home.
If seen a couple shows on HGTV where peopel moved into a house and replaces expensive whirlpool tubs with a basic one. I wouldn’t do it, but some would.
April 20th, 2007 at 3:57 am
I would hate the bath and would be knocking the cost of having it removed from the price.
April 20th, 2007 at 8:20 am
I agree with the pool, and keeping the “styling” of the neighborhood (my art history teacher drove *that* into my head), but the bath tub?
I wouldn’t have imagined a problem until I read Tinyhands’s comment. Now I just don’t know!
April 22nd, 2007 at 6:15 pm
4- my in-laws have one, and I would never have my children over to stay with them. It’s too big for anyone who isn’t at least four feet tall, it’s the only tub they’ve got, it takes a long time to fill and (worst of all) they RE-USE the bathwater because they’re afraid using the tub too frequently will stress their septic tank!
Also they’ve had maintenance issues from debris getting clogged in the jets.
April 22nd, 2007 at 10:04 pm
I love my pool, and specifically looked for a house with one. It’s an older pool that needs some maintenance (concrete deck needs repouring and some plaster/tile work), but I got it for no more than other houses in my neighborhood (without a pool) cost. Safety’s not been a big issue, and my only main expense is the electricity (get a timer), water (not much you can do except hope for rain) and chemicals ($45/month for a service to keep all that in check). Plus, in Texas, it rocks to have one with a rather long swimming season.
July 11th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
My husband pointed out his hatred of the large circular bath after walking through a friends new home this week. I never thought about it being a negative before!
He pointed out that the tubs are many more gallons than the typical water heater. I pointed out that we could install an on demand water heater.
He pointed out that it would be hard to clean. I said It would be cleaned by me each time before I used it.
He pointed out that he would NEVER use it. I indicated that I would use it at least once a month.
I think its a toss up. Definitely any tub that is wider/longer than the standard would be appealing to me.
I have a couple of other things that I am curious what you guys thing… increase value, decrease value or no change?
HOT TUB – Anyone think that attracts or detracts from home value? It requires maintenance like a pool (on a smaller scale) and has the same “how often would I use it” factor.
ORANGE PAINT – In a spare bedroom. No not sunshine or tangerine orange…