There are lots of large-scale home improvements you can perform on your home. Some of those improvements will make your home a much nicer place to spend your time or even make it a safer place to live, but not all large home improvements are necessarily worth the amount of money you put into them.
A home improvement that requires a loan to complete will definitely make your house a more comfortable place to live but a truly worthwhile home improvement will also increase the value of your home in one of two ways. It will either make your home more desirable on the resale market or it will in some way save you enough money to make up for the loan itself.
Some of the home improvements that will increase resale value are fairly obvious. Updating bathrooms and kitchens always help a home look more attractive and helps it sell for more money. Even minor things such as a fresh coat of paint, crown molding, and new window treatments can give a house the perception of being worth more money when it is being sold.
Some Home Improvements Pay for Themselves
Not so obvious are the improvements that will save you money over time and actually pay for themselves. Most of these sorts of house upgrades are improvements designed to help your home use energy more efficiently so that you have much lower utility bills. One of the most expensive home improvements, but also one that has the most potential to save you money in the long run is installing solar panels on your roof and generating your own electricity. The initial cost for solar panels can run into the thousands, so a home improvement loan is almost always in order, but over the life of the solar panels you may generate so much electricity that you’ll not only not have any electric bills, but the electrical company may actually send you a check if you sell your electricity back to them.
Of course, solar panels won’t work for every home or in every climate. On a much smaller scale, you can move from generating your own electricity to at least trying to save some money on your heating and cooling bills. New insulation in the ceilings and walls of an older home can go a long way toward reducing utility bills. Depending upon your home’s current energy efficiency a few thousand dollars worth of new insulation can reduce your bills dramatically and save you hundreds every year on electricity and heating fuel.
The same goes for replacing old drafty windows and doors.
Yes, the cost upfront for new insulation or replacing windows and doors is not cheap, but you could take out a small home improvement loan to pay for the projects and probably begin seeing utility bill savings almost immediately!
