Never upgrade your home beyond the level of your neighborhood. I found this one out the hard way earlier in the year. We used to live in a small condo/townhouse that was in college-dorm shape when we bought it. It was in a great neighborhood and perfect location. However, It had never been upgraded since it was built in the early 1980s. White walls, cheapest fixtures, cheapest floors– basically everything was cheap and plain. So, of course we wanted to renovate and upgrade our home to meet our very discerning standards.
We put down beautifully engineered mahogany wood floors over the cheapest ceramic tile Home Depot offers. We painted every room to a more elegant, white-truffle hue. We replaced the plywood staircase-o-death with a fine new cypress staircase. We put down tall, regal baseboards and crown molding. We changed every light fixture we could get our hands on. And of course the horror of a project my husband will never let me forget– the kitchen. I thought new cabinets and granite countertops would be simple, boy was I wrong. Around the time we discovered the electrical ran through the fur-down of the cabinets, I thought my head would be spiked on a curtain rod outside our condo as a warning to other over-ambitious renovators.
Granted, we did everything DIY and spent a fraction of what you would expect all of this to cost, largely due to my helpful and handy in-laws. We thought we were doing great. In the end, it looked beautiful, we were proud, and it certainly made it easier on the eyes while we lived there. But eventually we outgrew the 795 sqft. and wanted a back yard for the doggie.
The day after I put it up for sale on the internet I had someone come look at it and immediately put in an offer very close to my asking price. Woo-hoo, we are awesome, I thought. I had several other people come look at the condo during escrow or comment from the online ad and all said how beautiful and home-y it looked.
Then, the mean-ole appraiser came into the story. God, how I hated him. He appraised the house at over twenty thousand LESS than the offer price. I cried, I begged, and I pleaded with him. It was not pretty, trust me. The problem was that we were the only people in our complex who upgraded, so our home was well beyond the rest of the “neighborhood” and therefore just couldn’t appraise for what my beautiful baby truly deserved. In the end, we had to bite the bullet and take the cut (it was very complicated and I will spare you the details, for now). It did teach me a valuable lesson, and so far I have only put the $20 it cost me to buy new cabinet knobs into this house. This time I will wait for the neighbors to start their improvements before I start mine.
