Your Kitchen and Your Home's Value

Your home, to paraphrase the saying, is where your heart is. But as we all know, it’s also where a good chunk of your net worth is! Unless you’re planning on staying in your home for life (and even if you are - after all, you’ll have an estate and heirs someday), you’ll want to manage your home’s value over time. That means making sure that routine maintenance keeps your home in great shape, investing in quality repairs and improvements, and making an effort to ensure that your space stays up to date. You may not think of your home in quite the same way that you think about the cash in your bank or credit union account, but it’s very much a part of your overall value.

An up-to-date home is a valuable home

After basic maintenance, few things can destroy a home’s appeal like an outdated interior. While architecture and (to a lesser extent) exteriors can’t be changed much, the interior is a place that is expected to change with the times. So when prospective buyers visit a property, they expect to see a space done up in a style that they can live with for years. If the space looks outdated, they’ll start imagining how they’ll redo this room or that. And once those imaginary dollars start mounting, that potential home buyer is going to start lowering his or her idea of what the house is worth. After all, why pay top dollar when you’re just going to be making a bunch of changes? And if the kitchen needs to be redone, shouldn’t that come out of the asking price?

The kitchen: a vital part of your home’s style

We chose the kitchen as an example for a reason. The kitchen is one of your home’s most important rooms. It’s a center for function and, in fact, for style. Kitchen styles are often more distinctive than what you’d see in other rooms. Fads change over time, and an outdated kitchen sticks out like a sore thumb, causing your entire space to feel worse.

Every room deserves some attention, of course, but you can make high-impact changes in your home’s style by focusing on the kitchen. It’s a room that’s bound to be a center of attention during any home tour, as well as one that has particularly recognizable fads and styles over time.

So keep up with your kitchen, and invest in products that will stand the test of time. While styles of countertops come and go, you may be able to get decades out of the same set of cabinets. The same goes for appliances. While by no means static, kitchen appliance styles can hold for longer than some other elements of your culinary space, so invest in a great set from a refined modern brand like Dacor. Look for what’s coming into style and what’s going out, and try to maximize your kitchen’s time at the cutting edge!

If you can maintain a great kitchen, you’ll be helping to preserve your home’s worth. A modern home is far more valuable than an outdated one, so don’t let yours become a style fixer-upper. Be sure that you’ll always potential buyers with a great kitchen by maintaining one throughout all your years in your home. You’ll love it, too!