Your home is by far one of the largest investments you will make in a lifetime. You want to be able to protect your investment and ensure its value remains intact.
When you reside in a neighborhood where other homeowners don’t have a house as beautiful and well-maintained as yours, this can have an impact on the resale value of your home.
Though your home may be aesthetically appealing to a buyer, if your neighbor’s property is cluttered, unkempt, or has any of those characteristics, your home’s resale value decreases. As we all know, when the value of your property decreases, selling your home and property becomes a far greater challenge.
In some cases, if your property does sell, it won’t be for what you originally wanted to sell it for.
Sometimes it becomes necessary to take some type of legal action in order to force your neighbors to follow the basic neighborhood regulations or say bye bye to selling your house.
Neighbors Can Reduce the Value of Your Home
The exterior appearance and overall condition of your neighbor’s home and property can have an impact on the value of your home. To have a better understanding of the impact your neighbor’s home and property can have on your home’s value, check out Appraisal Institute, a very reliable resource.
What Brings Down Property Value?
There are several factors to look out for that can affect the real estate value in your area. Here are the five most common reasons.
1. An Unclean Yard
It could be an unkempt lawn or an unclean yard. These can have a negative impact on the value of homes in the neighborhood. Mowing your lawn is a simple task, but there are those neighbors who simply don’t take the time or aren’t concerned at all.
The bottom line is that a poorly-maintained yard can be easily spotted by potential buyers. Unknown to many people unfamiliar with real estate, buyers look at the neighbors when they’re house-hunting.
Plus, they also want to know if they’ll be moving into a great neighborhood.
Are there good schools here? Are the people friendly? Is it a place I’d like to spend the rest of my life in? These are questions buyers ask themselves.
2. Poor-Quality Exterior Paint and Colors
The exterior of any home is the first thing noticed by people when looking at your home and property. Cracked, faded, or peeling paint can quickly turn potential buyers off.
What if the paint job is still serviceable? Will that be enough? No.
Using colors that don’t suit your house and the rest of the houses in the neighborhood can also make your house hard to sell. Sure, it’s understandable that you’d want to express your personality through your paint colors. But, if you plan to sell your house, you better get with the program and choose paint colors that “most” people like.
The average buyer tends to favor neutral colors for the home’s exterior such as white, beige, gray, tan, and cream to name a few. Why? Because they’re pleasing to the eye and easy to paint over. Plus, neutral colors have a sense of elegance to them. So, be sure to choose your exterior colors wisely or you may find yourself in a situation of having an “unsellable” house.
3. Excessive Clutter and Garbage
Some homeowners who use their property as a small “landfill” can put off potential buyers. Who wants to buy a house that smells because it’s right next to a pile of garbage?
The best course of action is to ask your local Homeowners Association to make your neighbor clean their property up.
If all attempts fail, you may find it necessary to take legal action. Nowhere in the US is it allowed to throw garbage just about anywhere. That’s why all places have garbage pickup services.
4. Dangerous Trees or Extending Branches
If there is a tree in your neighbor’s property whose branches, limbs, flowers, or leaves extend into your property, that would require you to clean your yard all the time.
Maybe potential buyers wouldn’t want to clean up those leaves or branches all the time especially if you have a pool in your backyard. You need a pool maintenance services to clean the dried leaves everyday. Not everyone likes chores, you know?
Plus, there’s also a chance that those branches can damage your roof during a hurricane.
5. Noisy Neighbors
If you have a neighbor who is always having parties and is being really noisy in your neighborhood, this can also put off potential buyers. If you think they won’t know, think again! Many buyers do a lot of investigating before buying a house.
It only takes a few minutes to look and ask around about how noisy the neighborhood is. Plus, they can also visit your streets at night to find out if your neighbors are as quiet as you say.
Protect Your Investment
There you have it. Five reasons why your house is difficult to sell.
If you plan to sell your house in the near future, you need to make sure your house is as attractive and as appealing to buyers as can be.
Give it a new paint job. Make sure your house appears well-maintained (better to be REALLY well-maintained). Ask your neighbors to clean up their yards. It’s the decent thing to do, after all.
As for the noise, the best that you can do is ask (or beg) your neighbor to be quiet when buyers are around. Better yet, be friendly with your neighbors, so it’s easy to ask them to turn down the noise. If you’re not on good terms with them, just tell them that the more they cooperate with you, the faster you’ll be out of their hair.