by Francis Jock

Created on: September 04, 2008   Last Updated: May 03, 2012

The time has come to sell your home and you are facing an important decision: should you renovate your home or not? Whatever your decision, the outcome will certainly affect the marketability of your home and the amount of cash you're going to add to your bank account.

Your home is likely the single largest financial investment you will make in your lifetime. Unless you are a real estate investor, you will likely buy your first home when you are in your twenties, or as soon as you can afford it. You scrimped and saved as much money as you could to make the down payment, taken out a 30-year mortgage and kept up your home over the years. With every mortgage payment, your investment equity has increased and you are expecting a nice return on your investment when you find just the right buyer. Whatever the reason for the sale may be, you're facing with the difficult task of determining whether to invest more money in your home by renovating. However, how do you know that making renovations just prior to a sale is a good idea?

Renovating may sound like a good idea, at first. There are plenty of reasons to do so, such as improving your home's curb appeal, making those minor repairs that you somehow never got around to, fixing the roof, or updating those fixtures from the fifties. All of these problems, and probably many more you can think of, are looming large in your imagination. What will a potential buyer think about your home if they discover the water stain on the ceiling from that annoying leak in the roof? What about all those avocado colored appliances in the kitchen? Sure, they are still in fine working order. But will a young couple searching for their first home appreciate those retro colors? Perhaps not, but remember this. You cannot buy your home for them. Every buyer has their own emotional and rational reasons to buy or not to buy everything, and your home is no exception.

"To the old saying that man built the house but woman made of it a "home" might be added the modern supplement that woman accepted cooking as a chore but man has made of it a recreation." ~Emily Post

Every potential homebuyer comes equipped with a set of ideas about what he or she is looking for in a home. There are always going to be deal killers, such as cracks in the foundation, a leaking fuel oil tank in the basement, a sagging roof, black mold, or something really smelly that you just can't seem to get rid of. For the most part, however, if you haven't fixed any of these problems

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