When doing home renovations of course you want to get the best bang for your buck. Picking the right projects, along with choosing the appropriate materials, will help ensure you get the best return on your investment when it is time to sell your house. Pay attention to not over or under renovate your home, based on its location and market conditions.

Paint and flooring can be a relatively easy and inexpensive way to start – a coat of paint in a neutral colour and new engineered hardwood can go a long way. Avoid bright accent walls and dark colours, consider choosing colours and wood grains you see trending right now. If doing the paint and flooring doesn’t appeal to you, offering a flooring and paint allowance to the buyer might just work for you. Return on Investment (ROI) is around 60% for paint and between 70-90% on flooring.

The kitchen is often the hub of the house so if it hasn’t been updated in some time then its definitely worth the effort. Current cabinets and countertops, an updated backsplash will not only make your cooking experience more enjoyable but gets you your best ROI with a 75-100% return.

Whether you are doing a complete remodel or a few small updates, bathroom renovations can be top of mind for potential buyers and will surely add value to your home. New innovative tubs/showers are available to compliment your new vanity and faucet and you can really get creative with the wall and floor tiles styles on the market. You can expect an average of a 62% ROI.

Energy efficiency is really important to buyers, so aside from the standard replacement of windows & doors and buying energy efficient appliances what else can you do? The Canadian government has an awesome page called Renovating for Energy Efficiency which has excellent tools to help you determine the benefits of a variety of renovations and information on federal programs. At times, various levels of government offer rebates you can apply for to help reduce your costs – check with your municipality or the Alberta website for details. ROIs are trickier to put an overall value on as your return is directly related to the renovation you completed. Online tools exist to help determine how much you can save on various energy efficient renovations.

These are just a few examples of the best renovations for your return that you can tackle before selling your home. Another is simply adding landscaping – see my blog on increasing curb appeal for more. Visit me on Facebook and Google!