But with more than 11,000 sq. feet of living space, including 6 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms, a sauna, theater, and even a wine cellar, this estate was bound to attract a buyer. The Los Angeles Times now reports that the mansion, which was also owned by Tom Jones and Dean Martin, has sold for $10.5 million.
Compliments on your remodeling efforts are always a welcome payoff, but nothing beats seeing your home value rise as a result of your hard work.
It can be tricky to determine which home improvement projects are worth the sweat and which aren't. To gain the most from your improvements, select projects that do more with what you already have.
Projects that add value:
Less-profitable projects share one of three flaws: they cost too much, they involve a space that isn’t used every day or they reflect too much of your personal taste.
Projects that won't raise your home's value include:
Take a look at the sweat scale and see how some of the most popular home improvements rate:
The Sweat Scale
$ - You’ll break a sweat trying to break even at resale.
$$ - Probably not worth the sweat you’ll put into it.
$$$ - Sweat the cost or style details to make money on this project.
$$$$ - A good bet for turning the sweat of your brow into sweat equity.
$$$$$ - You’ll be making money before the sweat dries.
Kitchen Update
$$$
Doing a kitchen update instead of a kitchen remodel is like getting Botox® instead of a face-lift – it’s cheaper, it’s faster and it can hold you over for years. Got a kitchen so outdated that Martha Washington would be comfortable cooking there? Go for the full-blown remodel.
"If you have to overhaul the plumbing and wiring or you have galley kitchen that can be transformed into an open kitchen, go ahead and completely re-do," says Realtor Maggie Sanders, an agent with Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate, Inc., Naples, Florida.
For the biggest returns, focus on simple, inexpensive modern touches: recessed lighting, updated pulls, new plumbing fixtures, a solid surface countertop and tile or resilient flooring.
Bathroom Update
$$$$$
If you want to build real sweat equity, forget the bidet and the hand-blown sink when you remodel your existing bathroom (unless you live next door to Paris Hilton). Keep the plumbing where it is and focus on updating outdated fixtures. Strip the bath to the studs and put in a porcelain-on-steel tub with a tile surround, a tile floor, a durable solid-surface vanity, updated lighting, fresh plumbing fixtures and a new toilet.
"If you have a small bathroom, do a shower only and no tub," says Real Estate Broker Mark Riley of Mark P. Riley Luxury Real Estate Group, Sarasota, Fla. "Slate colored tile will add allure, luster and an expensive look to a bathroom. It looks great with brushed nickel fixtures.
Replacing siding
$$$$$
Give your house a new outfit by replacing the siding and you’ll reap the rewards at resale. According to the National Association of Home Builders’ Cost vs. Value, replacing 1,250 sq. ft. of vinyl siding and trim returns 95.5 percent of cost – and that’s the cost when a contractor does it for you. Upscale siding made from either fiber-cement boards or cellular polyvinyl chloride (PVC) lumber has an even more astounding 103.6 percent return.
Subtract the cost of the contractor from the profit equation and you could actually make money installing your own siding before you sell your home.
Interior Paint
$$$
Painting can be a great investment in your home or a horrible mistake. It all depends on the color you choose. Pick right and you earn a big payoff. Pick wrong and you devalue your home.
Don’t think you can escape the issue by painting the walls white. "Too often, homeowners think it’s best to paint the house all the same color, but there is no pizzazz with white walls," says Realtor Lynn Anderson of ZipRealty, East Bay, California. "Soft, muted colors such as pale green or muted beige with white baseboards can still be neutral while greatly improving the look and feel of each room."
Rejuvenate Landscaping
$$$
Your house never gets a second chance to make a first impression. Shabby shrubbery and a patchy lawn make people assume the inside of your house looks as bad as the outside.
"Keep improvements on par with the other homes in your neighborhood," says Pam O’Connor president of RELO/Leading Real Estate companies of the World. One RELO client in Atlanta transformed his large backyard into a soccer field. "When he sold the house, the owner didn’t recoup his investment because the new owners didn’t care for his choice of landscaping," she says.
Stick to the basics. Trim or replace overgrown shrubs, plant colorful flowers to highlight your home’s best feature and install a new front door, garage door and mailbox, if necessary.
Screened Room
$
Turning a deck, porch or carport into a sunroom or screened patio creates a great space for entertaining, but it won’t add equity to your home. In fact, you can’t even count that additional square footage as part of the house unless it’s insulated, heated and cooled for year-round use, points out Realtor Nancy Jones, an agent with Hunt Real Estate ERA, Williamsville, NY.
"A nice sunroom addition on a great house in a highly saleable
By Stephanie Armour, USA TODAY
With a tax credit for first-time and repeat home buyers expiring next week, a report Thursday suggests the stimulus hasn't been as effective as a similar credit that dramatically increased home sales late last year.Existing-home sales rose 6.8% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.35 million units in March from 5.01 million in February, according to the National Association of Realtors. That was also about 16% higher than in March 2009.Last fall, home sales peaked at a 6.5 million annual rate, according to Moody's Economy.com. This spring, they're expected to peak at a 5.7 million annual rate in May.
MORTGAGE RATES: Unchanged from last week."This credit appears to be a shadow of the November credit," says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com.The national median existing-home price was $170,700 in March, up 0.4% from March 2009.Distressed homes, typically sold at a 15% discount, accounted for 35% of sales last month - unchanged from February, the National Association of Realtors reported."It doesn't look, at least, that there's been the kind of boom we had last time," says Joel Naroff at Naroff Economic Advisors. "But we have to give it one more month. We have to see April."Total housing inventory at the end of March rose 1.5% to 3.58 million existing homes available for sale, which represents an eight-month supply at the current sales pace, down from an 8.5-month supply in February.The tax credit, which requires a binding contract be signed by April 30 and a deal that closes by June 30, wasn't the only factor behind March's gains. Better weather than in February is believed to have helped, too.In addition, the Federal Housing Administration announced that it is increasing its mortgage insurance premium from 1.75% to 2.25% of mortgages it guarantees. This premium increase, which took effect in early April, was behind a recent five-week surge in mortgage applications, says Brian Bethune at IHS Global Insight."I don't think (the tax credit) has had any impact at all," Bethune says. "You do see it boosting sales a little bit. Maybe it's had a quarter of the effect that the other one did."The current tax credit provides up to $8,000 for first-time home buyers and up to $6,500 for move-up buyers. An earlier tax credit of $8,000 for first-time buyers expired Dec. 1."The biggest benefit is to first-time buyers, and a lot have already taken advantage of it, so we have a smaller potential pool in this go-round," Zandi says.
There’s good news and bad news about the state of public education in the United States. While the greatest gains have been made in Math and Science education from 1995 to 2003, most Americans still only give public schools a below-average grade. Take a graphic look at America’s Report Card on Education to see how public education in the U.S. stacks up against the rest of the world.
