When you want to make changes to your house or the surrounding landscaping, you have to keep the real estate value in mind. Installing certain features and making specific changes to your landscaping can increase your home’s curb appeal by a good amount. These changes also benefit you while you still live in the house, so even if you aren’t planning to sell soon, you may want to make some or all of these changes now.
Low-Maintenance Landscaping
If you’re hoping to increase your home’s real estate value prior to trying to sell your house, install low-maintenance landscaping. These can be drought-tolerant plants, plants that don’t need deadheading during blooming season, disease-resistant plants, and more. If you can find low-maintenance trees, those would be some of the best plants to add. Low-maintenance plants show potential buyers that they can have a mature garden without having to spend hours upon hours every week trying to keep things alive, which may make them more eager to bid for your home.
Native Plants and Pollinator Gardens
Some, if not many, of those low-maintenance plants are going to be native plants. Native trees, flowers, and shrubs get along better with local growing conditions, they’re more resistant to local pests and pathogens, and they’re more in tune with local water conditions. A nifty planting strategy would be to find native plants that also feed native pollinators, from bees to birds to butterflies. These two qualities can give your home’s value a major upgrade because of how sustainable they are. Not to mention, who doesn’t love seeing butterflies floating through their yard?
Smart Technology Landscaping
Among the landscaping projects that can help increase your home’s value are upgrading the irrigation system and adding landscape lighting. You can really make your home more attractive by putting the irrigation on an automatic timer and making those lights solar-powered LEDs. The minimal use of electricity and minimal need for attention from both of those will be a nice perk for you and for potential buyers.
Edible Gardens
If your yard is large enough, set aside portions of it for edible plants. Add a few fruit trees, have some berry bushes, and maybe a grapevine or two — despite Houston’s muggy nature, southeast Texas is an amazing place to grow edible plants in a home garden. Try muscadine grapes and passion fruit vines, along with citrus and a host of vegetables. And don’t forget pecan trees. You’ll get a wonderful food source in addition to making that garden look very inviting for future home buyers.
Garden Art and Sculptures
Your landscaping should include something called hardscaping. That’s the walkways, stepping stones, and other hard surfaces that round out a yard or garden. Neatly manicured pathways and clean stone are the minimum; to increase your home’s real estate value, add garden art, sculptures, bird baths, and other features. These add a lot of visual interest.
If you want to get more ideas for transforming your landscaping or actually putting ideas into motion, contact your local landscaping company. Turn that yard into an amazing garden and help increase your home’s real estate value at the same time.
Aaron Watson