Your home is a huge purchase. Not only is it huge financially, it’s also an investment in your present and your future. It’s the place where you create your family’s memories, and it’s a place where you enjoy life and get through the challenges that happen every day. When your home fits your lifestyle, saves you money, and increases in value over time, you know that you have a winner. How can you build the value of your home? 

What Home Renovations Save Money in the Long Term? 

One of the ways to build value in your home is to use renovations to save money in the long term. However, not all renovations are money-makers. Some of them are labors of love that you do to make your life better, rather than to recoup costs. What renovations should you look to if you’d like to make your home pay for itself? 

Invest in renovations that make your life easier, saving you labor that you’ll either need to do yourself or hire out. 

• Build a shed in your yard so that you don’t need to move in and out of the house to get garden equipment. 
• Add evergreen perennials rather than gardening with annuals and plants that shed a lot of blossoms and leaves.
• Add hardscaping elements so that you don’t need to mow the lawn or prune your plants as much as you have in the past. 
• Indoors and out, use larger design elements rather than tiny tiles or stones that you’ll need to maintain over time. 
• Indoors, add satin or semi-gloss paint so that your walls are easier to clean.
• If your laundry is in the basement, install a laundry chute so that you don’t need to walk up and down stairs with the laundry.

Invest in renovations that protect your home. These renovations prevent damage from occurring. They may not appear to save you money, but if your basement doesn’t flood, that’s an investment not only in the cost of replacing your possessions – it’s an investment in your future peace of mind. Examples of renovations that protect your home include:

• Landscaping that reduces flooding and erosion, such as swales, soil that moves water away from the home, french drains, and wetlands.
• Seamless gutters and gutter covers that protect your gutters and prevent them from breaking and clogging, so that you won’t have water running down your siding and toward your home foundation. 
• Landscape lighting that prevents trips and falls and provides security for your home. 
• Railings and fences indoors and out, to prevent falls. 
• Adding proper locks. According to SafeWise, you should “make sure the locks are tamper-proof and use double locks (deadbolts) rather than just door handle locks.” 

Invest in renovations that add new possibilities to your home. These could produce income, or they could reduce expenses.

• Add an in-law suite that allows you to share the cost of your home with friends or family members. 
• Renovate the basement or spruce up a spare room for a college student or a family to live in, giving you additional income every month.
• Create an office space so you can work at home so that you’ll be able to focus more easily and save on gas, office lunches, and corporate clothing.

What Renovations Add Lasting Value to Your Home? 

If you are thinking of selling your home in the future, you want to add lasting value to your home. This means that every renovation not only needs to go through the question of whether it’s valuable to your family, it also needs to be filtered through the lens of a prospective home buyer. While many renovations occur right before a home sale and add value by allowing you to easily stage your home, you can do other renovations long before you sell your home. These renovations include: 

• Cutting the cost of your utility bills. This not only saves you money but according to Rennie, “Home buyers are now requesting past utility costs for listings.” Having a highly-efficient home will add value to your home sale. These renovations include increasing attic insulation, improving furnace efficiency, and installing new double-paned windows.
• Installing key living spaces. For example, older homes may have a sufficient number of bedrooms for buyers, but they may not have a lot of bathrooms. Adding an extra bathroom to a home will allow your buyers to visualize the home with additional people in it. 
• Keeping your home well-maintained. From dealing with roofing problems to painting your house before it starts to look old, doing these renovations will increase the curb appeal of your home, and they’ll decrease the prospective buyers’ concerns about future repair bills. 
• Updating the interior and exterior finishings of your home. Buyers like a home that looks like it’s well put-together. From seamless gutters and gutter covers that keep your gutters looking tidy to hardwood flooring, investing in the long-term functionality and beauty of your home will make it look good to you and to homebuyers.

How Do You Value Your Home? 

Your home isn’t just about the investment you make in a future sale. It’s about how you create a home that you want to live in right now: one that brings you joy, closeness, and comfort, without a lot of extra hassle. When you’re adding value to your home and you plan to live there for a while, consider the value you’ll get from doing that renovation or making that landscaping change: 

• Add a patio awning to create an entertaining space outdoors so that you can host the parties you’ve dreamed of hosting.
• Develop a dedicated playroom so that your children have somewhere to make a mess, and you can just shut the door. 
• Turn a room into a media room where children, teens, and adults can take refuge after a hard day.
• If you enjoy gardening and have time to care for it, create the garden you’ve always wanted. If you have less time, create that garden in a smaller space where you can look out onto it from a patio or a window. 
• Add larger cooking spaces if you adore making food, and add bigger cleanup spaces such as a large sink for all of the tidying up.
• Add storage to your home, so that you can tuck everything away easily after a long day at work.

Are you ready to build the value of your home? At Harry Helmet, we’re invested in making your home work for you. Our gutter products come with a unique triple-lifetime warranty so that you and future home buyers can enjoy your garden and home with fewer worries about overflowing gutters. Contact us today to schedule a free estimate.

Written by Del Thebaud