Improve your garden - improve your house value
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
Did you know, simply spending some time developing and improving your garden can add as much as 15% to the value of your home?
I came across this in a piece of research from a National Savings and Investments press release. It was looking at the spending trends of people on their gardens and the effect on the property value.
Nicolas Leeming, director of the leading property website PropertyFinder.com says:
“Gardens play a hugely important role in selling homes and can add significant value to a property. Our research shows that well tended front gardens are the most important factor that attract buyers to a street. Back gardens are even more important.
“Simply having a garden can enhance an average property’s value by perhaps up to 15%. As always, the closer matched the style of garden is to your target market, the quicker you can expect to sell and the more money you can bank on raising.”
Tactical gardening
With a typical house costing £300,000 in many areas of the UK, this means that a little tactical gardening could see your house go up by £45,000. Not a bad investment for no disruption to the inside of your house.
It’s interesting, too when you look at spending habits of the UK’s households. On average, we spend around £220 per head on our gardens. Even if the house is rented, the figure is still nearly £160.
Looking at this another way, if this is the average spend, this is what you’d need to spend to just keep up with what’s being spent along your street. No pressure then!
We know that improving your garden adds value, but that’s not the only reason why people are spending on the outside as well as the inside of their homes.
59% want a place to relax and entertain in
32% want to encourage wildlife (birds, butterflies, etc)
17% want to simply improve the value of their home
16% because they think they should
And if you thought this was an old people’s pastime, you’d be wrong. Over 24% of home owners under 25 years old spend on their gardens to improve property value opposed to the national average of 17%.
Well, there you have it. for a couple of hundred pounds, you could be adding over £45 grand to your house. Sounds like a deal to me. So what are you waiting for?
