Can Landscaping Help You Sell Your Home Faster and for More Money

Selling a home isn’t just about making the interior of your home appealing and attractive to prospective buyers. Ultimately, before they get to admire the remodeled kitchen or the freshly repainted walls, they walk through your yard and driveways. This is the first impression of your property.

In fact, the first impression is so important that the majority of realtors recommend improving curb appeal before putting a property on the market. Indeed, a neglected outdoor space can immediately suggest that there is a lot of work to be done at the home, no matter how well maintained the rest of the property is. The problem is that the first impression determines how interested buyers are going to be and how much they are willing to offer. 

So, if you’re preparing to sell, it’s worth wondering whether investing in landscaping could help secure a better price offer on your property.

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Landscaping Adds to Your Property Value

Good landscaping isn’t purely cosmetic. In fact, improving a property from having no landscaping to a well-landscaped yard can increase its perceived value by approximately 5.5% to 12.7%, depending on location. Some even estimate that this can put the figure much higher, as exceptional landscaping could even increase the property value by up to 20%. 

Naturally, not every landscaping project drives a higher value. Design matters a lot. The more sophisticated the landscape design is, the higher the perceived value becomes. This matters even more than the plant size and diversity. 

But homeowners want to be careful too. You can’t expect that spending as much as possible on your outdoor design will automatically translate into a higher selling price. Landscaping can add to your property value, but not every landscaping project does.

Know When to Do It Yourself & When Not

Doing the work yourself can make sense for straightforward jobs like mowing the lawn or pulling weeds. These simple tasks can also transform a yard without a large budget. 

However, larger projects require more consideration and can also deliver a higher payoff. Understanding the pros and cons of DIY vs professional landscaping is the priority when you’re trying to decide whether to spend extra to deliver a noticeably better result. 

Professional help can be particularly valuable when a yard needs a coherent design and hardscaping. However, the key is keeping the project proportionate to the property’s value and likely sale price. You don't want to spend $20,000 creating your dream yard immediately before handing it to someone else. 

Choose Outdoor Projects with Strong Returns

If selling is the objective, you want to prioritize improvements buyers will notice without necessarily picking the biggest and most expensive project.

Lawn care is a good place to start. Mowing and maintaining the lawn is relatively low-cost and has a high cost recovery. In fact, you are likely to recover more at resale than you invested in the lawn. 

Refreshing existing landscaping through pruning shrubs and adding plants also has a high cost recovery at resale. However, this only work sis the initial landscape doesn’t need extensive work or repair. For broader projects, it is often easier and more cost-effective to add functional features like a walkway or planters than to consider the addition of expensive features like a pool or an entertaining area.

In conclusion, landscaping may not be the best-selling feature of your home, but it is what makes a first positive impression.

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