WE YOUR MONEY RESET 2015
ALWAYS HEAR that the two best return-on-investment renovations are kitchen and bathroom. Well, not so fast. The biggest bang-for-the-buck home improvement you can make with an eye to selling is in front of, not inside, your house.
“Curb appeal starts where your front walk meets the sidewalk. Investing there is definitely worthwhile because it will facilitate a quicker sale,” says landscape architect Victoria Lister Carley. “The first thing the buyer sees when arriving is the front garden and the entrance. If that appeals, you have overcome many of the hurdles between their getting out of the car and buying the house. If it looks well maintained and pretty, the buyer is already in an upbeat mood.”
She often works with her architect husband, John Robert Carley. Recalling a halfsplit in Scarborough, Ont., he says, “For under $10,000, we were able to take the eye away from the house’s problems and focus it on the assets. I liken it to a good suit that directs the visual attention to the wearer’s better features and thus a good first impression is made.”
Specifically, he addressed conspicuous rainwater issues such as rot and dilapidated downspouts and reframed the front door and highlighted it with a catchy paint colour “to direct attention away from the big garage door and the acre of driveway in front of it.”
Meanwhile, Victoria oversaw the replacement of cracked pavers and the planting of a new specimen tree. Once on the market, the house sold in a day or two, and the owner recouped the cost of the facelift.
Indeed, you can scarcely go wrong with a landscape refresh unless you thumb your nose at the neighbours by growing, say, a wildflower garden on a street where all the other front yards sport a lawn. That’s because “people are buying neighbourhood as well as house, especially at the high end,” Victoria says.
As for her one must-do, she advises, “Make sure your front stairs are lovely, with every step sharing the same rise [the height of the riser] and run [the tread’s depth]. If the top or bottom step is three inches higher than the other, it’s ridiculously dangerous.”
At an entry, architect Drew Mandel likes to incorporate a bench for visitors to take their