When Taking Care of Your Home, Don’t Forget the Outside

Most people concentrate on how the inside of their home looks, but they forget about the outside. Curb appeal is as important for your home as personal grooming is for you. The condition of the outside of your home, including landscaping, is the first thing people see, and it helps them form an impression of you. Spending some time to take care of your home’s exterior and the surrounding property is a good investment.

Some people spend a lot of money on their landscaping, with over half of people hiring professional landscapers spending at least $10,000. Those efforts can pay off. Spending at least 5% of your home’s value can bring you a return on investment of 150%, meaning $10,000 spent on landscaping raises your home value by $15,000. And the more you spend, the more ROI you can get, with some projects getting you more than 200% in increased value for what you spend. But you don’t have to break the bank to make valuable changes to the outside of your home. Any little project can make a difference, with the average landscaping project boosting your home value by an average of 14%.

There are a variety of projects you can do to spruce up your curb appeal that don’t cost that much. Filling in bald spots in your lawn, trimming trees and shrubs, doing touch-up painting and repairing cracks in your concrete are all simple and inexpensive things you can do to increase your curb appeal.

If you want to get more involved and spend some more more money, you can add a retaining wall and have some landscape design done. A retaining wall will cost you anywhere from a few thousand to several thousand dollars depending on how big it is. Retaining walls are not just for looks; they tend to have other vital uses, such as preventing erosion or helping with drainage. Landscape design could mean having your yard tiered or adding some railroad ties.

Whether you live in Plano, Texas, and use Plano landscaping professionals or you live in Portland, Maine, and do your landscaping yourself, it is worth the time and money. Taking care of your home’s exterior and your landscaping helps to improve it’s look and it’s value.