First impression helps to sell your house

Painting the exterior of your home always increases the value, whether your planning to keep or sell your home. In addition to the fresh, new look you create with new paint, an exterior paint job also forces you to make necessary repairs to your home that can actually decrease its value if left unattended.

An exterior paint job when keeping your home will still raise your property value, as well as the property value and satisfaction of your neighbors. Especially if you ever plan to take out a second mortgage or home equity line of credit, you will be putting increased equity into your home by raising its value with a paint job.

When you have your home appraised, peeling paint and rotting wood will lower its value; therefore, eliminating these problems will raise its value in the eyes of an appraiser. Refinishing the outside of your home can increase its value by thousands depending on the size of your house. Since the cost of painting your home is significantly lower than the increase in value it creates, this is a very effective way to make an investment that provides an immediate return.

Whether or not to paint your home before you sell it is a question that many sellers are asking in the current buyer’s market. Since fresh interior paint is often the first thing a buyer will do to personalize their new space, it may seem like a waste of time and money to make such an improvement. Although a fresh coat of paint and the clean look it produces will certainly help sell your home, if a buyer plans to repaint in his own choice of colors regardless, he may not consider your efforts a selling point or a factor that warrants an increase in your asking price.

A new exterior paint job on a home for sale is another story, however. The condition of the outside of your home is the first thing that any potential buyer will see, and first impressions are extremely important. If a potential buyer sees that the outside of your home is rundown with peeling paint, rotting wood, or missing trim boards, his first impression of the house will be that you haven’t taken very good care of the inside either. You can use a fresh exterior paint job to draw people inside to see more, rather than causing them to turn down a showing.

Exterior paint means making necessary repairs too. Before you can paint the outside of your home, there’s usually a lot of prep work to be done. Exterior prep work can include any or all of the following:

Scraping off old, peeling paint
Sanding and primering any bare wood
Caulking any cracks in the woodwork or spaces between the siding and trim
Replacing rotten wood or missing trim
Fixing any damaged or loose siding or trim
While this sounds like a lot of work in order to get ready to paint a house, it should be considered a good thing because it forces you to make repairs that will not only make your home look nicer, but also keep it in solid condition. One of the worst things you can do to the exterior of your home is fail to treat any raw, bare, or exposed wood, since the elements will quickly cause that part of the house to rot. It’s much easier to treat bare wood now than to replace it later.

The constant changing weather conditions cause wear and tear on your house. A hot, sunny climate will cause paint to fade and peel on the south and west facing sides. A wet climate causes wood to rot at a much faster rate than a dry one. And a climate with lots of freezing and thawing weather will do the most damage to a wooden house (and paint job) as the materials expand and contract with the changing temperature.
Visit www.homeimprovementsdirect.co.uk for more information and free quotations.