Big Renovations That Bring A Big Return

With real estate’s seasonally strong fall selling season well and truly within sight, homeowners planning on listing their homes for sale will have (hopefully) started preparing their properties for the market already.

While doing things like painting, decluttering, and staging are all great tactics to help boost the value of your home, these largely superficial tasks can only increase the final sales price of your home so far.

Although I always recommend my clients do as much as they can in their pre-listing stage, in order to truly maximize the market value of your home, completing a few larger-scale renovations is the most effective way to add the biggest returns on your investment. Here are the most valuable renovations you can do to maximize your home’s market value.

1. Turn Your Basement Into An Income Property

Seeing as most of the original houses in South Etobicoke are World War 2-era bungalows, square footage can come at a bit of a premium. Whether your home is a single-storey structure or you’ve got multiple floors, maximizing the usefulness of every room and floor of your home is one of the best ways to present value to buyers. And, one of the best places to start is in your basement.

No matter how many floors your South Etobicoke home may have, your home most likely has a basement, and it’s good for much more than just storing out-of-season clothes and holiday decorations. When it comes time to sell your home, perhaps the best way to highlight the usefulness of your basement is to showcase its ability to function as a secondary suite or income property.

Potential new buyers might see your fully finished basement suite as an opportunity to earn a second income while living upstairs, or even rent the entire house out to two separate tenants. Or, they might value the opportunity to allow a parent or family member to live in the home with them. Whether their intentions are, a secondary suite in your basement will add a ton of value to your home.

The most important tip I can give you about taking on a project like this, however, is to make sure your basement suite renovation follows all of the protocols and regulations that a rentable basement apartment needs to follow. Depending on where your home is located, those regulations might include different things. In the City of Toronto, some of them include rules like:

Your basement apartment must be smaller than your main upstairs dwelling
The minimum ceiling height for the basement apartment must be a continuous 6’5″ from the floor
The basement bathrooms must feature either a window or fan
The kitchen must be equipped with a refrigerator and stove, both in good repair and working condition
Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms must be installed and maintained
Among other things…

Whenever you tackle a large-scale basement renovation like this, it’s always best to consult a professional contractor that has experience with income property projects like this. The last thing you want is to foot the bill for a huge home improvement renovation like this only to find out your basement apartment doesn’t meet the health and safety standards within your municipality.

2. Turn Your Backyard Into An Oasis

In South Etobicoke, especially in more desirable neighbourhoods like Alderwood, Long Branch, and New Toronto, it’s very typical for houses to be placed on lots 40 or even 50 feet wide. That means a lot of extra outdoor space with a lot of potential for practicing hobbies or getting up to fun activities.

However, many homeowners in the South Etobicoke area are guilty of not maximizing the potential of their generous lots and outdoor spaces, even though it would add a ton of value to their homes’ overall worth.

What does ‘luxury’ real estate really mean when you’re talking about homes in South Etobicoke? Learn more about what South Etobicoke’s luxury buyers are looking for here:

So, if you’re one of those homeowners who hasn’t taken full advantage of your home’s outdoor areas, focusing your efforts on turning your backyard into a relaxing hangout spot should be high on your list of renovation priorities.

What might that include? Well, the addition of a heated below-ground pool has the potential to add massive amounts of value to your home from the moment you install it — and all the more if you accompany it with a sleek hot tub too. If you don’t currently have a deck, or it could use an upgrade or upsize to bring it up to more luxury standards, then that should also be on your backyard renovation agenda.

Across all of your outdoor spaces — front and back — I’d also recommend you hire a professional landscaper to help you upgrade the functionality and design of your gardens and yards. Whether it’s establishing a new outdoor pathway, replanting flowers or plants, laying down fresh sod, mulch, or wood chips, or installing new decorative features like stones or ambient lighting, there’s any number of high-end details that a pro landscaper can easily include in your outdoor renovation.

Getting your home market-ready can take some serious effort and planning. Learn more about what you can do to get ahead of the competition and sell your home for its maximum potential here:

3. Upgrade Your Home’s Exterior

Another valuable renovation you can do to upgrade the outside of your home is on your house itself. While many of the mid-century bungalows in South Etobicoke may have been beautifully upgraded inside, there are also many that still look quite dated from the outside, which can detract quite a lot from the perceived quality of the home.

In the real estate industry, we call this curb appeal — basically, what kind of impression a home gives off from the outside — and it’s something every homeowner should pay a lot of attention to if they want to maximize the value of their homes.

By completing renovations like repairing or upgrading your roof, painting or installing new siding on the exterior walls of your home, and replacing older windows and windowsills with new ones, you’ll have gone a long way in increasing the market value of your property. And, one of the best parts is, most of these renovations and upgrades aren’t extremely costly — apart from installing an entirely new roof, of course. If your home is in need of that, however, you’d eventually need to bite the bullet and do that anyway!