Top 12 Home Improvements to Sell your Home Without Spending a lot of Money

Back in August I wrote a blog about things to do to your house to make it easier to sell without spending much money. If you missed it go to:
http://nationalbuildersupply.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-do-i-sell-my-home.html
Now I thought at the time I was real smart. I had watched a lot of the cable shows about how to best fix up your house to sell and more importantly I had been trying to sell my own home without much luck. I had talked to a lot of the real estate agents who had shown my house or had come by on caravans to see it and carefully cataloged their idea and actually tried many of them. I now feel even more confident and vindicated because over this past weekend I ran across an article on Homegain.com where they discussed the top 12 Home Improvements Survey. Results showed that cleaning and de-cluttering was the easiest and most cost-effective way to make your home more appealing to buyers.
Nearly 1,000 real estate agents cast their votes on which do-it-yourself home improvement projects will help sellers get top dollar. For as little as $100-$200, sellers could see as much as a 10x increase in their sale price. To be clear, these are all projects that you can do on your own or with a little help, so you won't see replacing your roof or adding a deck on this list.
Most of the recommended projects come in under $500, with an return on investment of at least 100 percent.
Even for some of the more expensive projects, like updating your kitchen for $1,500, you can replace the hardware and touch up the cabinets, just so that buyers don't see any glaring issues. New appliances are actually very cheap right now, and often come with free installation, so don't let an old fridge or dishwasher kill your deal.The total return on investment for all 12 of these projects could total more than $20,000. For a median priced home, that's about a 10% increase in your sales price. See the chart up above for a complete list and results.

To see the entire article check out the HomeGain HomeSaleMaximizer for customized recommendations in your ZIP code.
http://blog.homegain.com/home-improvement/homegain-2009-top-12-home-improvements-survey-results/

Know that the biggest temptation is to get carried away and spend too much so try to follow the guidelines from this article and from my blog mentioned above. As much as it is hard to believe, prospective buyers want to imagine their own family pictures on the walls of your house not yours. I raised the value of my house and made it much more saleable just by removing the pictures of my ex-wife plus it made the place look much larger.