Can I have a house professionally renovated to sell and make money?

Can I have a house renovated to sell and make money?

Here is a question I have been asked by quite a few people; “can I have a contractor renovate a house and sell it to make money?”  The answer very simply is YES.

There are a few things that you need to do to make sure that you can make money;

• Purchase the home when it is undervalued because it needs to be renovated.

• Purchase a home in a good location that has enough square footage and lot size that makes it appealing to a clientele that will want to live in the area.

• Hire a general contractor before you buy the home, pay him a small fee to look at the home with you and advise you on a rough budget of what it would cost to renovate and sell the home in a timely manner.

• Make sure that you buy a house with what we call “good bones”. You want to buy a house that needs to b e cosmetically renovated and not structurally fixed.

• If you have to fix things behind walls, like structural supports, insulation, wiring, plumbing ect, then these fixes will eat into your budget faster than the cosmetic ones will. These fixes will not help you get the maximum return on the property because they can’t be seen by the normal house buyer.

A great thing to do is hire a general contractor with a good reputation in the community for doing high quality work. You can then use their name when you are selling the home. A lot of people want to buy a house that has already been finished; they do not want to go through the hassle of renovating. So if you can spend $100,000.00 on renovating the home you could turn around and sell it for $200,000.00 more than you paid for it.

To do this you need to concentrate on certain areas of the house.  Kitchens and bathrooms are the biggest impact. All though redoing kitchens and bathrooms are not cheap they will bring you the greatest return on investment.

You should work with an interior designer as well, for the small fee that it will cost you to have them help you can save a lot of time and money doing your renovation.  Interior designers can give you simple idea’s that can make the home look a lot better for a little money. Things such as paint colours can make a big difference in the resale value of a home.

If you document the entire project then when you are trying to sell the home you can show people everything that has been done to it. You can show pictures of what has been fixed and repaired in the walls and floors that people can’t see. This will help give perspective clients faith that the house they will be purchasing from you has been renovated to the highest standard and done with the proper permits and under the proper building codes.

Just remember that there is money to be made when renovating homes to sell but it all starts before you even buy it, buy the proper home and you can ask the proper price. Ask the proper price and you will get the proper buyer that will pay you enough so that you can make a profit.

Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.