Looking to sell your house in the near future? If so, you’ll likely be looking around for advice on how to price your residence appropriately. Believe it or not, it’s not entirely what’s inside the home itself that counts, but rather, is also dependent on what is around where you live; your neighborhood features.
Or perhaps you’re at the other extreme and are looking to move somewhere that is rich with features for yourself, your family, or whoever else may have an interest in what’s local. You may even be thinking slightly ahead of when you sell your new house in years to come and want to make sure you have enough around you to sell it for a good price.
Whatever the case may be, we’ve got you covered with this list of neighborhood features that identify the most valuable assets of local areas.
1 – Distance to shops
First and foremost, the one thing that homebuyers look for above all else when considering which area to move to is the distance to retail and quick stops to pick up on food.
Say you’ve just gotten home from work after a long and exhausting day, only to find that the fridge is completely barren – The last thing you want to do is drive half an hour to the nearest Target or Walmart. Instead, you’d be far more inclined to take a quick five-minute walk around the block and pop into a small convenience store to grab a quick bite for dinner.
Also, the bigger the shopping area, the more value you can add to your home. Easy access to a retail outlet or large shopping center could potentially even add another figure to the end of your house’s worth.
2 – Amenities & Public Services
Aside from food, other amenities such as department stores, sports centers, swimming pools, and so forth can also add value to your home. You may also want to consider amenities if you have – or are planning on having – children.
However, if your residence does not have very many amenities local to it, don’t immediately discredit its’ worth in this section. Future amenities can also add value to your house, so it’s worth consulting your city hall about plans for future buildings in your area, as future preparations can be worth just as much as amenities that already exist.
3 – Social life
Nobody truly likes being alone and moving to a place that has very little in the way of community and socializing is something that is highly undesirable, so will have a huge impact on a house’s worth. Sadly, you’ll have to find other perks if you have no community groups or social amenities in your area in order to keep value up.
Though if your area is rich with community groups, sports teams, or any other social arrangement, then you’ll likely find your house spiking in value and will be able to sell it for a higher amount than those in more desolate areas.
4 – Sidewalks
This may be quite a surprising one to some of you, but it turns out that simply having a sidewalk running across your house makes it more valuable than those that don’t as well.
When you think about it, however, it makes quite a lot of sense – Consider living in a house where, when you step out the front door, you find yourself having to tread carefully along the side of a busy road. It’s quite a risk to take and having the security of a sidewalk greatly increases the value of a home due to its’ health and safety extras.
5 – Job market
Here we have another big pull factor. Jobs are, obviously, a vital part of daily life, and if you’re a first-time house buyer, you’re absolutely going to need one in order to cover the frequent mortgage repayments. So naturally, if your area is suffering from long-term unemployment or the job market is just very limited in scope, you’re likely going to have a harder time shifting your residence as this factor instantly limits your options.
However, one potential comeback for areas with bad employment is accessibility to metro and other commuting services – If you live in a place where it is relatively easy to travel to and from a city or another area with good employability, you may find your house’s value is not affected quite as much.
6 – Playgrounds
In contrast to our previous feature, playgrounds are an extra that will make your house more endearing for first-time buyers if anything, as many will be young couples looking to start a family. If there is a local play area for children to play in, you’ll likely be able to bump up the price a little bit for the family market, though you will also likely lose the category of older buyers as they will be looking for somewhere ‘quieter’ to reside.
Or perhaps you yourself are one of these homebuyers with a partner looking to move somewhere and start your family, in which case, bear in mind that you’re unlikely to find cheap areas with playgrounds for this exact reason; sellers know the market.
7 – Planning permissions
This feature is an interesting one in that, although it appeals to a smaller market, it can impact the value of your housing the greatest. One category in the house buying market is builders, developers, contractors etc. – Effectively anybody in the construction and planning industry.
As such, if you live in an area which is both large and has a good track record of planning permissions being accepted, you’ll likely find builders taking an interest in your house due to the land, and you’d be surprised at just how much some of them will be willing to pay for the ground around your residence.
Though with this one, it should also be noted that any neighbors you are moving away from will likely end up hating you due to the noise pollution created by endless construction work.
Overall…
Before you even think about calling an estate agent or putting your house on the market, it’s worth giving your neighborhood one last walk around in order to see what features there are which add value.
