There are two plans of attack when it comes to long-term house repairs… fixing it up to live in it, and fixing it up to sell it. With the former, you focus on repairs that are important to you and your standard of living. You are planning to live in the house for the long term, so you aren’t as much focused on resale value. Ideally, your fixes will add to the value of the house. The other is making project decisions knowing you are going to be selling the house. Your focus will be on resale value, and on aesthetic appeal.<\/p>\n
I think we are leaning to the latter. Ideally, we’d hope to get as much money out of the house when we sell it, but at this point I think our primary objective is to get it to a point where we *could* sell it without having to set the price too low, or have it sit on the market too long. As we decide where to put our money, I think we should keep that in mind.<\/p>\n
I was googling fixing up older homes – I’m hoping to find a blog or forum where I could get a chance to dialogue with other people about these issues (like Young House Love<\/a>). I wasn’t successful, but I did come across this thread<\/a> on an unrelated forum that I thought had a lot of good information.<\/p>\n After reading several sites, I decided that I don’t think we can get around fixing our foundation. Sigh. That was the money I was trying not to spend, but I don’t know what else to do. However, I do think it’s something that could wait to be fixed right before we sell. It’s important, and I don’t want it to get worse, but to be honest I am used to the back half of my downstairs being at a slant. It doesn’t necessarily affect my daily life.<\/p>\n Other things that would probably be important to fix, other than general cleaning\/touching up paint: (in no particular order) Stuff I have to think about. Really, I just like the idea of getting some aesthetic things taken care of. Maybe then I won’t hate this house so much. :-)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are two plans of attack when it comes to long-term house repairs… fixing it up to live in it, and fixing it up to sell it. With the former, you focus on repairs that are important to you and your standard of living. You are planning to live in the house for the long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[33],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/twentysixcats.com\/fromhoveltohome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/twentysixcats.com\/fromhoveltohome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/twentysixcats.com\/fromhoveltohome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/twentysixcats.com\/fromhoveltohome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/twentysixcats.com\/fromhoveltohome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/twentysixcats.com\/fromhoveltohome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":205,"href":"http:\/\/twentysixcats.com\/fromhoveltohome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions\/205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/twentysixcats.com\/fromhoveltohome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/twentysixcats.com\/fromhoveltohome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/twentysixcats.com\/fromhoveltohome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n– Curb appeal. There isn’t much that needs to be done to the front yard, but the backyard needs an overhaul. We have plans to do this in the spring so we can seed instead of having to get sod.
\n– Kitchen. They say kitchens are very important to selling a house. This affects my daily life, so I have a lot of interest in seeing it fixed up sooner than later. I am fine with doing something very basic – stock cabinets, peel & stick tile on the floor, etc. I will need to price things to figure out a realistic budget. Fortunately, we don’t have to get new appliances, so that will save us some.
\n– Bathroom. The other important selling feature. This might be as simple as lightly sanding the walls and paint, or as complicated as putting up drywall. We’ll have no idea until we can take down the mirrors and faux tile to see what’s underneath. If we can afford it, I really want to replace the tub & tiles, but it might not be worth it in the long run.
\n– What other issues affect the resale value? I should probably take a look at our inspector’s report and focus on the things he flagged. Also, I would need to keep in mind the concerns that were told to us as we were trying to get financing and insurance. Some of them we have fixed already – like the fuse box. Others, I don’t think we’ll fix unless we stay here longer than 3 years – like the roof. (Or maybe the roof would be more important than the kitchen\/bathroom?)<\/p>\n