Can Landscaping Improve My Home Value?
Can Landscaping Improve My Home Value?
Your landscaping and your home value are always tied together. You may think this is purely about curb appeal and the beauty shots for your home selling listing on your realtor's site. However, there's a lot more to it than this. Landscaping reveals how your property is organized. Plumbing, electrical wiring, and your home's foundation are part of the original blueprints of your property. A good landscaper will follow the natural lines on your property, instead of working against them. This makes it easy for you to make repairs to your home and yard without extensive digging and disturbance of your shrubbery. A good landscaper will "reveal" the lines of your property in an appealing, but still functional, manner. Keep this in mind when hiring a good landscaper. They must demonstrate sufficient knowledge of landforms, root masses, and underground systems to be useful to you. If they run a line of trees right over an underground electrical or plumbing grid, this will cost you a lot of money in the future. Ask your landscaper to explain all of his or her ideas and decisions. This is the time to really test their knowledge and experience. What if you have competing lines of interaction between your house utility grids, your pond shape, and your screen of privacy trees? A well-qualified landscaper will explain what each of these systems will look and behave like in ten years' time. They will have a realistic "sense of time" as part of their consulting. Make sure that you are planning for the next twenty years, not just the next five years. Tree roots grow and form underground systems. Will these systems disrupt utilities, become a tangled mess at the bottom of your pond, or be a nuisance to future building projects that you have planned? Will you protect or endanger your tree root systems by paving over a nearby stretch of land? Do you have valuable trees that will die off if you or your landscaper is careless? Let's say that you decide to hire out your landscaping in Fresno CA. You will be looking for the following qualifications: - A long track record - A full online gallery of photographs - Many long-term clients who trust them - Licensed and bonded qualifications - A systematic approach to your property throughout the year Your landscaper will add value to your home price all year round. Make sure you have established a year-round plan with them. Mark your calendar so that you know when to expect certain work done in all four seasons. We will be discussing work done in Autumn and Winter in our last two FAQs. In the meantime, remember that you will have to live with their decisions for many years to come, so make sure that they justify their plans to you. Check out online reviews and look at poorly reviewed work that your potential landscaper has done. Was the client merely being fussy, or did they have a legitimate excuse for their negative review? Let's say that you would like to sell your home soon. Have you been using a landscaper over the years? If not, your property may have taken on a certain "wild-grown" appearance that will be difficult to conceal. Even for something as simple as realtor listing photographs, you will want to hire a professional to rake your leaves, trim your trees and hedges, and make your property feel polished and presentable. If you have been regularly using a landscaper, your home and land probably already look pretty pristine. |