Homeowners are constantly looking for new ways to increase their property’s worth physically and monetarily. One of the most important factors in selling a home and making a significant profit is curb appeal, involving how visually appealing your home is when viewed by passersby.
Landscaping significantly contributes to a home’s curb appeal, opening unexplored opportunities to enhance your home’s value and make your property a more exciting place to call your own. With landscaping, you can transform your home’s appearance and make your property the talk of the neighborhood.
Landscaping typically refers to your home’s living elements, such as trees, lawns, and other plant life. There are several design possibilities available when it comes to landscaping, making it all the more important to create a landscape that stands out in the competitive real estate market. Your landscape needs to outshine a tough market while providing practical and long-lasting features that homebuyers desire now and in the future.
But does landscaping add value to your home, what landscaping features should you consider, and how can you enhance your landscaping to boost curb appeal and make a promising first impression? This article will explore the importance of stunning landscaping on your home’s value to help you decide what to focus on when attempting to boost curb appeal. Let’s get started!
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Understanding Landscaping’s Impact on Home Value
Homeowners considering selling their homes in the future want to increase the value of their property as much as possible before that time comes. Luckily, practices like focusing on landscaping are easy ways to boost curb appeal and enhance a home’s value before the time comes to sell.
So how does landscaping increase home value? Though it isn’t the only element contributing to curb appeal, landscaping has a measurable impact on increasing a home’s property, with the American Society of Landscape Architects estimating that professional landscaping increases a home’s price by 15 to 20 percent at the point of resale.
There’s no denying that landscaping has at least some influence on your home’s value. Additionally, studies have found the following to be true regarding landscaping on a home’s resale value:
- Poor landscaping can lower a property’s value by as much as 30 percent.
- 78 percent of real estate agents believe poor landscaping and hardscaping negatively impact property values
Landscaping can increase your home’s value more than many other methods you might consider while also making your home life more enjoyable in the present. By investing in landscaping, you can improve your quality of life while securing a higher return on investment in the future if you decide to sell your home.
Curb Appeal and First Impressions
Curb appeal plays a significant role in catching the attention of potential buyers. Curb appeal describes your home’s external appearance, including paint, structure, hardscaping, and landscaping. Curb appeal accounts for up to seven percent of a home’s total value and is considered by real estate professionals as one of, if not the most, important contributor to a home’s value.
Essentially, curb appeal is everything when it comes down to whether or not someone purchases your property. When your home doesn’t have much curb appeal, people are unlikely to want to purchase or will request to purchase at a lower price than what you got your house for. Poor landscaping is one of the biggest contributors to a lack of curb appeal and can leave a negative first impression of your home on buyers viewing it for the first time.
First impressions can make or break a home purchase. If your home’s exterior doesn’t convince buyers from the get-go, you’ll struggle to get people interested in purchasing your property based solely on its interior. Landscaping enhances your property’s visual appeal and sets the tone for the rest of your home, meaning that buyers will approach the rest from a positive angle and be more willing to overlook any minor issues with your home’s interior. Landscaping elements like a well-maintained garden can increase a home’s property value by as much as 77 percent and influence potential buyers to put an offer on your home.
Does Landscaping Add Value to Your Home? Landscaping Features That Will Increase Home Value
There are endless possibilities when it comes to freshening up your home’s landscaping. Understanding how landscaping adds value to your home is easier when you have a few ideas for how you can take your home’s exterior to the next level and enhance curb appeal with different features.
Consider the following landscaping features that can increase your home’s value:
1. Trees
59 percent of real estate agents believe that trees are the most critical component of landscaping to increase a home’s value, and some believe that a single tree can significantly increase a home’s value. Trees go beyond aesthetic appeal and provide several other benefits to boost your home’s practical value. For instance, trees offer shade and privacy that many homeowners require to live comfortably. They’re also a perfect eco-friendly option for environmentally conscious homebuyers.
2. Manicured Lawns
A prim, well-manicured lawn is one of the most crucial landscaping elements to consider when boosting curb appeal and home value. Ensuring your lawn is healthy and well-maintained sends a message of care to potential buyers, meaning they’ll enter your home with a positive mindset about what to anticipate next.
A manicured lawn symbolizes maintenance, guaranteeing a positive first impression and reducing buyer concerns about your home’s condition. Your lawn can also provide a clean, well-manicured aesthetic because it promotes an orderly, organized appearance.
3. Diverse Plantings
A diverse plant garden can breathe life into your home’s exterior, giving it a fresh appearance full of color and vibrancy. Consider using flower groupings to draw buyers’ attention, grouping flowers of specific colors or types to add a unique flow to your landscape and enhance your home’s value.
Additionally, consider bringing together a variety of plantings beyond flowers, such as shrubs and other garden plants that add character to your property. No matter what you choose to plant, you can ensure that this decision gives your home the extra push it needs to sell.
4. Unique Hardscaping
While it’s not the same as landscaping, hardscaping is crucial to complement your home’s landscaping and perfect the exterior appearance. Hardscaping encompasses any solid elements to your home’s exterior, such as paths, chairs, and benches. When deciding how to decorate your home’s exterior through unique and appealing hardscaping patterns, there are many possibilities. For example, you can add a fireplace to attract buyers looking for a home with plenty of available outdoor activities or include sitting or retaining walls for added elegance.
Return on Investment (ROI) of Landscaping
Elegant landscaping undoubtedly adds a unique flair to your home, boosting curb appeal by creating a cohesive and inviting appearance. But beyond asking whether landscaping increases home value, you might wonder: what is the return on investment (ROI) of landscaping for your property? Let’s explore the cost-benefit ratio of investing in landscaping projects and the potential benefits of this decision.
Short-Term Costs of Landscaping
When investing in your home’s curb appeal, understanding the short-term costs versus the long-term benefits of landscaping is crucial. Landscaping projects require an initial investment that can be expensive depending on the full extent of the landscaping services you’re entailing. Materials, design elements, plants, and manual labor can total a considerable expense initially, but the long-term benefits of this far outweigh the immediate costs of landscaping.
By enhancing curb appeal, strategic landscaping can have a significant return on investment. A well-manicured and attractive lawn has a massive ROI of 256 percent, while adding trees can boost your home’s value up to $10,000. Additionally, a high-quality landscaping design typically has an ROI ranging from 20 to 30 percent of the home’s total value, meaning your investment will more than pay off in the long run.
Long-Term Benefits of Landscaping
Now that you know the short-term costs of landscaping, let’s get into the long-term benefits of choosing a landscaping solution to enhance your home’s curb appeal, such as the following:
1. Energy Efficiency
While it might not be the first benefit that comes to mind when considering why landscaping is so important, homeowners can optimize their home’s energy efficiency by choosing smart, attractive landscaping. Smartly placing trees, shrubs, vines, and other plants can create an effective shield to provide shade, act as a windbreak, and lower overall energy bills.
Additionally, carefully positioning your trees can save a whopping 25 percent of the energy used in a typical household, lowering your monthly bills significantly and making the short-term investment more than worth your while.
2. Reduced Maintenance Costs
Thoughtful landscaping can reduce your home’s external maintenance costs. For instance, choosing specific plants that require less care is an easy way to choose a low-cost landscaping solution that homebuyers are drawn to.
3. Enhanced Property Value
Does landscaping add value to your home? Yes! As mentioned before, landscaping has been proven numerous times to increase your home’s value and ensure a higher ROI. Because professional landscaping can increase your home’s value by up to 20 percent, there’s no denying how important it is to invest in attractive landscaping. Homes with visually appealing outdoor spaces are typically seen as more valuable to potential homebuyers, meaning you’ll see higher market demand when it comes time to sell your home.
4. Usable Outdoor Living Space
Gone are the days of wasting your home’s outdoor space on unattractive landscaping. Investing in landscaping goes beyond boosting aesthetic appeal to enhance your home’s exterior and extend your living area. At the same time, hardscaping like decks and patios ensures that you can have fun no matter where you are in your home. Having extra outdoor living space also makes your property far more appealing to potential buyers, meaning you can sell your home faster when you decide to move forward with the selling process.
5. Increased Marketability
A unique, elegant, and well-maintained landscape makes your home marketable, something that’s increasingly crucial in the highly competitive world of real estate. Setting your property apart is only possible if you invest in your exterior as much as your interior, so if you want to gain attention from potential buyers, investing in landscaping is one of your best options.
Tips for Enhancing Landscaping to Increase Home Value–Does Landscaping Add Value to Your Home?
Now that you know how landscaping adds value to your home, you’re likely wondering how you can enhance your current landscaping to boost curb appeal and make an increase in your home’s value possible. While it might not be as simple as buying a couple of plants and calling it a day, there are still straightforward and accessible ways to enhance your landscaping design and boost your home’s curb appeal. Let’s discover some of the best ways to make this dream possible through the following landscaping tips.
Use Harmonious Colors
A colorful garden and vibrant yard can breathe life into your home’s exterior and add curb appeal to potential buyers. However, not all colors mesh well together, and depending on the colors you choose, your home’s landscaping may gain or lose value. Ensure that flowers and plants follow a cohesive color scheme and consider colors before investing in more landscaping features that could throw off your home’s balance.
Have Focal Points
Though you want every inch of your landscape to look its best, you’ll still need to consider focal points when designing your home’s new exterior. Whether you want to have a flower garden as a focal point or invest in hardscaping focal points like pathways, benches, and firepits, a focal point will bring everything together to ensure that your yard isn’t too overwhelming for people passing by.
Not sure what to use for your landscape’s focal point? Some common focal points that can enhance your home’s appearance and value are the following:
- Water fountains
- Statues
- Ponds
- Patios
- Gazebos
- Arched gates
- Colorful flower beds
- Shaped bushes
- Unique and mature trees
- Outdoor seating areas
- Firepits
- Rock and boulder arrangements
- Walls with a climbing vine
- Mosaic and tile art
Enhance With Outdoor Lighting
Investing in gorgeous landscaping is essential to improving your home’s value and boosting curb appeal. However, it would be best if you didn’t stop at landscaping–you want to add features that will compliment your new structures and features, such as elegant and sophisticated lighting to suit your design choices.
Having lighting along your pathways, surrounding your gorgeous plants, or shining on your home is a perfect way to attract people passing by who might be interested in purchasing your property.
Have Defined Edges
An attractive lawn is well-kept, organized, and cohesive. Clean, well-defined edges in your yard ensure that your layout flows seamlessly without getting too chaotic or confusing for people looking at your home’s exterior. You want your landscape to perfectly balance style and unique details without being too much and having several distracting elements that take away from your home’s overall beauty.
Defining lines between areas like your pathways, driveway, and lawn exudes elegance and shows that you care about your home’s appearance, enticing buyers to feel the same. By creating an elegant and sophisticated appearance, you ensure that your home’s resale value will be more than it was upon your initial purchase.
Keep a Healthy Lawn
People will notice your lawn when considering whether to purchase your home, and a healthy lawn can make or break someone’s first impression of your property. If your lawn has bare spots, weeds, overgrowth, and pests, it detracts from your otherwise stunning landscape, limiting your other efforts’ effectiveness in increasing resale potential.
Ultimately, you should invest in solutions to maintain your lawn and mitigate weeds. For homebuyers who value a home’s exterior, there’s nothing better than a lawn that looks green, vibrant, and fresh. A healthy lawn shows how much you care about your home’s condition and instill trust in potential homebuyers that notice your home when they’re passing by.
Conduct Regular Maintenance
Like anything else, a landscape requires routine maintenance to remain in its best shape. Always stay on top of your lawn and conduct regular maintenance work, such as mowing your lawn, watering plants, eliminating weeds, mulching, and anything else that directly impacts your lawn’s health and the overall appearance of your landscape.
Some actions you can take to stay on top of your landscaping maintenance include the following:
- Keep a landscape maintenance schedule so you don’t get behind on your routine
- Apply fertilizer as necessary depending on the specific needs of your soil and plants
- Prune trees, shrubs, and plants regularly to ensure healthy growth and maintain the proper shape for your landscaping fixtures
- Choose plants based on how well-suited they are to your climate and soil type
- Clean your yard and landscaping fixtures at the end of each season to remove debris, prevent pest problems, and avoid issues that arise with a poorly-maintained landscape
- Conduct regular inspections to notice any signs of plant decay, pests, and other issues, saving you stress and money in the long run
- Keep your supplies and tools well-organized to ensure that you can promptly address maintenance issues and needs as they arise
- Choose professional landscapers and landscaping services to help you with maintenance and stay up-to-date on routine maintenance requirements
Work With Professional Landscapers and Landscape Architects
While you can do many things independently to improve your home’s exterior appearance and boost curb appeal through landscaping methods, turning to a professional is often preferred by homeowners. Working with professional landscapers and landscape architects can guarantee that your home is elegant, sophisticated, and the highlight of your neighborhood. When you aren’t sure how to enhance your home’s value through landscaping, turn to the people that know best.
Wondering why else you should work with professional landscapers and landscape architects? Consider the following:
- Professionals have the expertise and experience to make your landscape perfect
- Landscapers can customize your landscaping design for a sophisticated and unique appearance
- Landscapers have the perfect eye for optimal plant selection to ensure a cohesive and memorable appearance.
- Professional landscapers will effectively utilize your yard space to avoid overcrowding or making your landscape overwhelming to people passing by
- A professional landscaper will take into account environmental considerations to ensure that your solution is eco-friendly
- Professional landscapers have unique ideas that you might struggle to come up with independently
- Professional landscapers can streamline the design process to ensure that you have the landscape of your dreams fast without the stress of devising a new landscape solo
How Landscaping Adds Value to Your Home: Find Out the Value of Your Home Today!
Back to the original question: does landscaping increase home value? Yes–if you choose the right landscaping solutions and understand the ins and outs of the landscaping investment process. Landscaping can increase a home’s value by 15 to 20 percent upon resale, making it an incredible solution for homeowners that want to increase their home’s value for a higher return on investment.
Various landscaping features such as trees, manicured lawns, diverse plantings, and hardscaping can increase your home’s value. By enhancing your home’s curb appeal, high-quality landscaping makes it likelier that you’ll earn more on your home when it comes time to sell.
The short-term cost of landscaping is worth it for its several long-term benefits. Landscaping fosters energy efficiency, reduces maintenance costs, increases property value, creates a usable outdoor living space, and enhances marketability to ensure your property is enjoyable and profitable. By following the right tips to enhance your home’s value through landscaping, you can earn far more when you sell your home than you might otherwise.
Determining your home’s value is only possible when you turn to experts who can accurately price a home. iBuyer.com helps homeowners navigate the selling process by offering a home value and cash offer to sell their homes at a better rate than other providers. Learn more about increasing your home’s value and discover how much your home is worth with iBuyer.com today.
