Over the winter months, most Ontario locals find themselves spending an increased amount of time indoors at home, and it’s easy to understand why considering our cold northern climate.
With that in mind, more time spent at home usually brings a few predictable outcomes from our real estate perspective:
- Growing families often find their homes are much less spacious than they may have previously thought.
- Necessary home maintenance projects and repairs are harder to avoid taking care of.
- Many homeowners want to start searching for new places to live come the spring.
However, in order to move homes, homeowners have to eventually sell their current properties too, and with more time on their hands during the winter months, it’s the perfect opportunity to prepare for a spring sale.
With that in mind, here are our tips on the best winter renovations you can do to boost your home’s value in preparation for a spring sale.
Finishing Your Basement
No matter where in the world your home is based, having a fully finished basement is an enormous value-adding asset to any home.
Once fully finished, basements provide an endless amount of opportunities to their owners, from spare bedrooms to home offices to home gyms or even just clean and convenient storage space.
Plus, if your basement has a separate entrance (or the potential to install one) then adapting your space to meet the necessary requirements it takes to transform it into a rentable apartment will add an exponential amount of value to your listing.
Read our series on secondary suites below for everything you need to know about building a secondary suite or basement apartment:
- Everything You Need to Know About Carriage Homes and Secondary Suites
- How to Build Equity and Improve Housing Affordability with Secondary Suites
- Your Practical Guide to Building Your Own Secondary Suites
Depending on the current state of your basement, finishing it can be a massive undertaking but is one that is essentially guaranteed to increase your home’s market worth instantly, and is certainly something you can take on during the colder months.
Are planning your winter renovations for your cottage property? Don’t jump the gun — read about the 4 Things You Need to Consider When Completing Cottage Renovations here beforehand.
Upgrade Your Home’s Energy Efficiency
These days, an increasing amount of buyers are showing genuine interest in a home’s energy efficiency when searching for new homes.
On one hand, being environmentally aware and responsible is more important than ever. On the other hand, owning a home that uses energy efficiently means your monthly energy bills take a dive and cost far less than homes with more dated systems.
During the winter months when you’ll most likely be using a lot of energy to heat your home, cutting down on those expenses should be motivation enough to upgrade the efficiency of your heating systems. Upgrading your furnace to a more modern model will help with that, along with insulating your home’s walls, ceilings, and attic spaces where necessary.
While you’re at it, you should also think about replacing your central air conditioning systems with a more energy-efficient model too, which will also increase your home’s desirability among buyers come the spring. And if you really want to go all-out, you can install a smart thermostat to better control your home’s internal temperature while ensuring it doesn’t expend any energy unnecessarily.
Our long Ontario winters can be very harsh on homes that aren’t properly prepared to handle the elements. To ensure your home is ready to take on winter, read through our 5 Tips To Prepare Your Home For Winter here.
Increase Your Storage Space
During the winter months when we need to wear quite a few more layers to keep warm, we find it never takes long for homes with inadequate storage space to run into a few headaches. Whether it’s an issue of where to hang winter coats, keep wet winter boots, or store hats, mitts, and gloves, there never seems to be enough space to store your clothes in the wintertime.
While the easy solution for this is to hang up a few coat hangers and lay down some water-resistant sectional rugs near your front and back doors, that solution tends to look messy fast and doesn’t really provide enough storage for larger families.
The better way to approach this problem that will simultaneously add value to your property is to install smart storage solutions in key areas around your home. Things like floating storage consoles in your front hallway, built-in closets in your basement or spare rooms, and tidy entryway tables and shelving units are all very effective at storing clothes, boots, towels, and everyday items out of sight.
No matter where your home is or how much square footage it has, a lack of valuable storage space will make any home look untidy, which will of course end up looking less desirable to potential buyers.
Whether they’re based in Peterborough, the Kawartha Lakes, or elsewhere in the GTA, we take pride in the results we earn for all of our clients. See what they have to say about working with us on our ‘What Our Clients Say’ page here.
Painting
While painting isn’t necessarily a renovation, per se, it does go a long way in making your home feel fresh and new ahead of listing it for sale on the market.
Painting the interior of your home can visually transform a space if you use the right colours and techniques, and it’s absolutely a project you can tackle during the winter as it doesn’t require you to be outside.
We always recommend you opt for a light, neutral colour (white or some variation of off-white always works well) as it will not only make your home’s interior look larger and airier, but it will also appeal to the largest number of potential buyers versus a more bold colour choice.
The holiday season is among the most festive and fun, especially in cities with as much spirit as Peterborough. Have a look through our list of Fun Holiday Activities In Peterborough This Year for inspiration!
Can’t wait until the springtime to get started on your home sale? Read more about our approach to selling your home and the best way to do just that in the winter market here:
