The kitchen is the center of your home. This is the one room that any potential renters will make for once they enter the building. As a result, it is very important that your kitchen looks its very best. This is where our experts at North Pacific Property Management can help you. Through experience, we’ve found that investing in a kitchen remodel can pay off immensely by increasing rent value and your home’s overall attractiveness. In fact, return on investment tends to be 80 to 90 percent! Unfortunately, major kitchen remodeling can be quite expensive, ranging anywhere from two thousand dollars to seventy-five thousand dollars. Thankfully, it’s not always necessary to spend that much money just to improve the appearance of our kitchen. If you are considering a kitchen remodel, here’s what you should do:
Cabinets
A good place to start is with the cabinets. The cabinets stand out and are kind of hard to miss when you walk into a kitchen. You can have them completely replaced, but there are cheaper methods that could work just as easily, especially considering that some cabinets can cost thousands of dollars. A more affordable option is to consider having your cabinets refaced. This entails having the drawers and doors replaced and giving the rest of the cabinets a matching veneer. If done well, it can make your cabinets look as good as new. But no matter what you choose to do, whether that’s to have your cabinets replaced or refaced, hire a professional to do the work. A single mistake like a cabinet out of line or a screw poking through, and your renter will spot it.
Lighting
Lighting is often used to set the mood; think of when you have guests over for dinner. You want a well lit and comfortable atmosphere. But more than just setting the mood, having good lighting is practical for working in the kitchen. Imagine trying to cut vegetables in poor lighting; sharp knives and soft fingers don’t always mix well. Improving the lighting can be an enhancement that does not require a large investment. For a few hundred dollars, you can replace old lights with something more attractive and effective. Potential renters are likely to consider a house with homely lighting, since renters generally settle in for long periods of time.
Countertops
If your countertops are suffering from extensive wear and tear, having it replaced can go a long way to increasing the kitchen’s overall impression. Countertops have a wide variety of options to select from. Few however are cheap. Granite, marble and quartz all run from thirty-five dollars to a hundred dollars per square foot. Tile and laminate both can run as low as ten dollars per square foot, but lack the style and elegance of stone.
Flooring
Depending on how old your flooring is, you may want to have it replaced with something that fits with your new décor and is more popular. The hardwood appearance is very well liked many people. The exotic woods used for hardwood floors can look very pretty, but your pocketbook will suffer for it. Laminate flooring, sometimes known as floating flooring, can provide a realistic and less expensive option. This kind of flooring is becoming more popular, because of its use of snap-and-lock technology that allows those intrepid do-it-yourselfers, a great deal more ease.
These are just a few renovations that you can do in your kitchen to improve your home for renters. Don’t forget that these are just a few things that North Pacific Property Management can help you with. While some options can be quite expensive, they all are good investments in your home and increase the renting value.