If your long term plan as a home owner is to eventually sell your property then, it’s a high time you started thinking of home improvement ideas that will help increase the value of your home. These ideas will often go beyond construction and may even involve just some subtle changes in your home’s exterior environment.
In this article we are going to share with you 3 simple tips on how to increase the value of your home.
1 Make the house more efficient
Today, home owners are looking for homes that will cut their cost of maintenance therefore part of the improvement you can do is the construction of amenities that help make the home more efficient and less costly to maintain. Some of these amenities can be solar heaters, underground water storage tanks, water filtration systems, and biogas systems amongst others. This will help in the reduction of utility bills thus increase the value of your home.
2 Adopt low maintenance landscaping
Any home owner who has a lawn will fully understand how expensive it is to maintain one. The time, money and energy required to keep it looking beautiful can be a lot. It’s therefore a good idea to adopt a low maintenance landscaping and this can include replacing your lawn with a flower garden that has plants that are originally from the region. These will require very low maintenance thereby bringing down costs and essentially raising the value of your home.
3 Do some tree planting on your compound
Trees not only increase curb appeal but will also have added benefits such as ensuring you have a good environment in your home and also some much needed shade. This essentially will bring some tranquility to your home and this is something home owners will be willing to pay extra for because it’s very rare to find.
These are very doable things and the beauty is the long term payout will be way higher than the investment cost.
Before you engage in any major improvement project that will require construction work to be done whether it involves your home or office space, it’s very important that you consider getting a professional contractor to be in charge of the project.
If you are wondering why, in this article we are going to share with you the 4 main benefits of working with a professional contractor.
1 Professional contractors will always have the necessary licenses
It’s important to know that most of the home improvement activities that you engage in especially those that involve a little bit of construction work require a license. Whereas this will mostly be dependent on the jurisdiction you’re in, licenses are usually necessary because such work has to be done by licensed professionals because of the potential hazards that come with the job. This means that working with a professional contractor ensures that you don’t find yourself on the wrong side of the law.
2 Professional contractors will always have insurance
As a rule in most jurisdictions, any laborer working on a construction site must have an insurance cover and is also entitled to workman’s benefits. Because your home or office space essentially is a construction site during the time improvement work is being done on it means it’s a legal requirement for the workers on your site to have insurance. The benefit of working with a professional contractor is that they will have this covered and every employee under them will be their responsibility therefore taking any liability from you.
3 Professional contractors are specialists
When you intend on doing any major improvement work on your home or office space, the main reason it’s in your best interest to hire a professional contractor is because they are specialists in the field and this means they have all the necessary knowledge and expertise to get the job done and ensure it’s a very high quality job.
4 Professional contractors will get the job done quicker
When working with a professional contractor, depending on the agreement you have with them on the timelines for the project, in most cases they will get the job done much quicker because they have a team they are working with in addition to their familiarity with such kinds of jobs. As long as the scope of the work and the timelines have been agreed, your project will be completed much faster.
As a caution, not every contractor is the same therefore it’s always important for you to do the necessary due diligence in order for you to settle on a seasoned contractor with a proven track record of producing quality work.
There is no dispute that opting for DIY when it comes to your home improvement projects has tremendous benefits. It’s however worth noting that if you do it wrong, it can end up being disastrous for you.
In this article, we are going to highlight the 3 main cons of DIY when it comes to home improvement projects especially if they involve a lot of construction work.
1 It’s likely to be more expensive in the long run
The belief or rather assumption that engaging in DIY for your home improvement projects is a very good cost cutting measure will only hold true if things go well, and in most occasions, they seldom do. The main reason professional contractors don’t come cheap is because they invested time, money and sweat in building their skills therefore they will charge you a premium for it. Assuming that you can simply go online, look at a tutorial and become a master in construction is a fallacy especially if you have no background in construction. What this means in summary is that you may opt for DIY but end up making a mess of the work and this will force you to bring in a professional to repair your errors and do the job how it was meant to be done in the first place, and this will ultimately cost you more.
2 It’s a very time consuming venture
Considering the fact that you have very little or no experience in the task you are about to engage in, you will need to set aside time to learn the skill itself as well as about the tools and material you will need for the job. This, plus the time it will take you to do the job itself factoring in all the errors before you finally get it right will take you triple or even quadruple the time it would have taken a professional to get it done. Therefore DIY is only practical if your project is not time sensitive.
3 The work will be of low standards
The reality is that as long as you haven’t had sufficient experience which has to be gained over time, the quality of work you are likely to produce will be nowhere close to the quality of work a professional will produce. In fact, you should be content with work that is of low standards during the period you are still a DIY novice.
Before you make the decision on whether to engage in a DIY project, it’s a good idea to weigh the pros and cons first. A word of advice would be for you to first start with smaller construction projects around your home as you slowly hone your skills before you take up larger home improvement projects.
Today, home owners are looking for homes that will cut their cost of maintenance therefore part of the improvement you can do is the construction of amenities that help make the home more efficient and less costly to maintain. Some of these amenities can be solar heaters, underground water storage tanks, water filtration systems, and biogas systems amongst others. This will help in the reduction of utility bills thus increase the value of your home.
Any home owner who has a lawn will fully understand how expensive it is to maintain one. The time, money and energy required to keep it looking beautiful can be a lot. It’s therefore a good idea to adopt a low maintenance landscaping and this can include replacing your lawn with a flower garden that has plants that are originally from the region. These will require very low maintenance thereby bringing down costs and essentially raising the value of your home.
Trees not only increase curb appeal but will also have added benefits such as ensuring you have a good environment in your home and also some much needed shade. This essentially will bring some tranquility to your home and this is something home owners will be willing to pay extra for because it’s very rare to find.
These are very doable things and the beauty is the long term payout will be way higher than the investment cost. 
