Tim Akinnusi of Nedbank talks about which home improvements increase your home's value the most.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Reporter: So most of us will stay in our current homes for a number of years before thinking of selling and looking for something new. In the time we spend in our home, we're looking for ways to increase the value, so that when the time comes to sell, we get the most out of the transaction. We're joined again by Tim Akinnusi, head of sales and client management at Nedbank Home Loans. Welcome back to the loft, Tim.
Tim: Thank you, Bonnie.
So, what changes or upgrades can homeowners make to their homes to benefit the resale value?
There are quite a few changes that one can make. I'll start off by saying that, when they think about home improvements and enhancement, think about it from an investment standpoint, rather than it being a cost. Because when you upgrade your place, you should be looking at what sort of a return you can get in the future. So let's start with things as basic as when something is about to break or isn't working well. Rather repair it, because the cost of replacing the entire item is actually a lot higher. Then, secondly, start looking at the functional areas of your house. Look at how you are maintaining it, and look at how effective it is, in terms of its operation. When you start to engage with anything to do with your house, always look at future trends, so you can rely on things like upgrading your geyser to solar. You can rely on things like improving your energy-efficient lights. And just those basic things will help improve the value of the house in the long term.
Is there a systemic way of working through it? Because perhaps the temptation is to just do it all at once.
Absolutely. But the reality is that things do take time, and things are costly. So you really do want to do it in phases, and as and when you see it going wrong, or as and when you feel like something needs to be upgraded, rather do it and not let things pile up. Because like anything in life, if you let it pile up, it gets a lot more complex and certainly a lot more expensive.
Yeah. And some other particular changes or upgrades people can make that eventually actually compromise the value of the home?
It's a good question, Bonnie. Because sometimes, it's not what you do it's what you don't do. So when you don't invest in functional areas such as your bathroom upgrades or your kitchen, then you will be compromising on the value of your house. But to your question specifically, if you take something like a spare bedroom and you turn it into a single-purpose area that cannot be converted in the future, then you limit its multipurpose nature. So you need to make sure that you keep things as classic and as standard as possible. And in that way, you end up with a house that can transform, and can continue to enhance its value in the future.
