You Might Want that Spare Room to be Transformed, but Future Buyers May Not
You might desperately want that spare room to be transformed into a home gymnasium, indoor spa or entertainment center, but future potential buyers might not be looking for the same traits. Below are a few room conversions you might want to avoid to preserve the value and attractiveness of your home to future buyers.
General Room Conversions
Any conversion project that takes away a bedroom is a poorly planned idea and can turn off buyers. When it comes time to sell your home, a bedroom is going to be worth a lot more to a potential buyer than a home office, gym or poker room. You will never want to be forced to list your home with two bedrooms when it could have been listed with three. If you must convert a bedroom for another function, be sure that you can easily dismiss the conversion before you list it.
Media Rooms
While the idea of having a home theater complete with a big screen and a high-tech sound system may sound attractive, keep in mind that potential home buyers may not have the same appreciation that you have for audiovisual excellence. Professional media rooms are ideally located in a dedicated space where enthusiasts can also install theater seating and other amenities that buyers may not find attractive. Keep in mind that most families still prefer to gather around the television in the living room where they can foster a sense of togetherness rather than being together and quiet in a dark basement room. The other problem with media rooms is their infrastructure; more than likely your home theater will require complex wiring, cabling and electrical needs that could be hard to undo when it’s time to sell your home.
Garage-to-Room Conversions
One popular idea in recent years is to convert a garage into a functional room. On the surface, it seems to make sense. One of the reasons that people buy homes is to gain more space, so converting the garage into functional space adds about 400 more square feet of living space. The problem is that almost no one takes the time to do this conversion right. Unless you remodel the garage inside and out, it will always look like a conversion. The floor will always be lower than the rest of the house and because it isn’t insulated, it will always be hotter or colder than the rest of the home. Even if the space is functional, only living space is counted when the home is listed for sale, so the garage, porch and patio will never add to the value of the home, even if they are made into a room. Most buyers want the security, storage and utility of a garage and some buyers will even deduct the cost of reconversion or building a new garage into their offer.
To learn more about room conversions and what buyers find to be must valuable, visit the 2-10 Home Buyers Warranty® (2-10 HBW®) blog here.
