Landscaping tips to improve home value

I wanted to go back to a blog I saw a few weeks ago. It’s an RIS Media blog about landscaping and how you can make the most out of your yards when trying to sell. Read below:

Landscaping is one of the most important ways to increase your property’s value quickly. In fact, a gorgeous landscape design can increase the value of your home by at least 5 to 11 percent—and maybe more. The best part about landscaping is that even though it’s one of the most valuable home improvements you can make, it’s also one of the easiest. If you’re wondering how to turn your landscape into one of your home’s most valuable assets, here are some tips to get you started.

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1. Match Landscape to Your Home’s Style

The best way to get an excellent return on investment with landscaping is to make sure it fits with your home’s style. For instance, if you own a Victorian home, a Japanese garden will be sorely out of place and may even lower your home’s value rather than add to it. In this instance, you’re much better off with a country or cottage-style landscape that blends in with the old-fashioned formality of your home.

The same holds true for more modern home styles, such as the prairie or industrial style. If your home falls into one of these categories, you’ll want to stay away from square, formal gardens or a profusion of airy blooms. Instead, create a more modern landscape by relying on plenty of greenery and natural-looking beds that fit the contours of your property.

2. Design With a Strategy in Mind

You’ll need to have a good strategy. That means you shouldn’t clutter the entire yard with various high-maintenance plantings, but you also shouldn’t have plain grass with no landscaping. A study by the Virginia Tech Department of Horticulture found that a good foundation planting along with a couple of well-designed points of interest can increase your home’s value by up to 42 percent.

By that same token, you should encourage diversity among your plantings without taking it too far. The ideal landscape has a good mixture of shrubs and perennials, but it doesn’t have one of every kind of plant that you can find at the garden center. Instead, it has a uniform look with just enough diversity to make it interesting, but not so little that it becomes boring.

3. Achieve Seasonal Balance

A profusion of spring blooms won’t interest potential buyers who look at your home during other parts of the year. Think about ways to make your landscape attractive all year — blooming bulbs for spring, annual beds around the house during the summer, shrubs with brightly colored leaves in the fall, and evergreens for the winter. Even though most buyers will be looking at your home during one season, they’ll notice the balance you’ve created and they’ll think about how beautiful the home will be as the seasons change.

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4. Plant Trees

A few simple trees can make an enormous difference to the sale price of your home. In one study, simply living on a tree-lined street added between 10 to 15 percent to the sale price compared to neighborhoods with fewer trees. So why are trees worth so much? Trees remove carbon dioxide and pollution from the air, so people view them as an eco-friendly option. The shade helps keep neighborhoods and homes cooler and more pleasant, which in turn cuts air conditioning costs. Trees are also a stress reliever — people enjoy relaxing in their shade or gazing at the leafy view.

5. Edge Your Lawn

Few things look nicer than a healthy, vibrant, carefully maintained lawn — except for a lawn that is all of those things and neatly edged. The confined look of an edged lawn gives it an easy-to-maintain look. In other words, no weed whipping or weeding required.

Edging along driveways, sidewalks and garden beds also shows prospective buyers how meticulous you have been concerning the property’s upkeep. They’ll know that if you’re willing to keep the edges of your yard looking nice, the rest of the property is likely in pristine condition, too.

Of all improvements to boost home value, landscape is one that will get you the largest return on your investment.  Just make sure that you design your landscape with a plan, and don’t let that design become so complex that the mere thought of all the maintenance chases away your buyers.

A quick comment: I heard Jay Vorhees at JVM Lending telling me this after I made a comment on one of his blogs. The neighbor down the street had a bunch of Juniper bushes, which did not give great curb appeal and the house sat on the market. Had they removed those bushes and done some generic landscaping, that house would have probably sold for $100k more as a similar one did come on the market with a nicely landscaped front yard and sold in less time and for about $100k more!

Open House at 407 Midway Pl. (Martinez) this weekend!

Come check out 407 Midway Place in Martinez this weekend for a home with great curb appeal! It’s situated on a cozy court and has a large, flat backyard with redwoods scattered throughout with enough space for a pool if so desired! An entertainer’s delight with plenty of privacy, good shade and stone retaining walls with landscaping, and a basement area with water that can be built for an outdoor bathroom.
In total, it is a 4-bed, 2.5-bath with vaulted ceilings, multiple decks, a formal dining room and a kitchen-family room open-concept combination. The master bathroom is delightfully decadent, and the half-bath upstairs also draws high praise.
 The home contains triple-pane windows, and welcomes in lots of light. An Owens Corning roof, new rain gutters, a high-efficiency water heater, and exterior paint creates the charming curb appeal. The landscaping in the front and side yards were re-done in 2014, and solar panels with a 20-year lease were added that year, too.
The aforementioned master bathroom was remodeled as recently as 2015, and an entertainment system with surround sound was added to the family room in 2016. The pictures, beautiful as they are, do not do this place justice. You have to swing by and check it out for yourself. You will be amazed!
The Open House will be held from 1-4 p.m. this weekend, on both Saturday, Mar. 10th and Sunday, Mar. 11th.

WC Proposed Land Use Survey

In a recent survey given by the Walnut Creek City Council about proposed land use and circulation concepts, we saw some interesting results about what citizens want to see in the future. Take a look at the survey results here.

Residents may want more bike lanes like these ones in Portland, OR, as long as they don’t interfere with parking!

For example, people really seem to like the idea of bike lanes, but want landscaping and extra parking even more, and most don’t want additional living spaces.

One theme throughout the results was that people want more creative, walkable spaces. One question asks if facilitating a “Makers’ Row” along Pine St. for hand-crafted manufacturing spaces like brewing, ceramics and jewelry-making was a priority. An overwhelming 75.1 percent of respondents supported that idea.

Most questions regarding more office or living developments were either split evenly or heavily disfavored. It seems like residents of Walnut Creek are more interested in retail and restaurant spaces, publicly usable areas and space that encourages outdoor activity than just another apartment building.

Beautiful parklets like Coffee Shop’s might start gracing the Walnut Creek streets if poll respondents have their way! (From Coffee Shop’s Instagram feed)

In fact, 74.2 percent of respondents support an arts-entertainment-hospitality district that might include an outdoor plaza for events and with a focus on public art. A general question about enhancing the public realm with small public plazas, parklets and seating areas received a whopping 79 percent approval on the survey.

When the survey then asked what that proposed arts-entertainment-hospitality district would look like, hotels, conference facilities and mixed-use living/work spaces were all not supported by the majority of respondents. Anywhere from 65 to 81 percent of people who responded did support restaurants, retail, art galleries and theaters in that section of the survey, though.

This is an interesting glimpse into the potential future of our great little city. What do you have to say about the poll? Do you agree or disagree with the results?

Open House: 4391 Pembroke Dr. (Concord)

The Kristin Lanham Team has another beautiful home going on the market – this one is in Concord, on Pembroke Dr. Take a look at some of the pictures below, and swing by for a peek at our Open House this weekend!
 
The home is a cozy, mid-century charmer with a serene, quiet backyard. There is room for an RV or a boat, which includes a spa and storage shed, all surrounded by professional landscaping and lots of plants and flowers.
An open concept makes it warm and welcoming. The updated kitchen with its expansive island is the centerpiece for family gatherings and additional storage. The open-beamed ceilings add to the interior charm. There are stylish updated bathrooms, dual-pane windows, lots of natural light and great flow from outdoor to indoor for entertaining.
 
This house has been meticulously loved – an updated, warm interior and a vibrant backyard planted specifically to attract hummingbirds, butterfiles, and bees.  A perfect place to call home!
Come take a look at the Open House this weekend from 1-4 p.m. on both Saturday (9/9) and Sunday (9/10)!
3 bedrooms | 2 baths | 1250 sq. ft. |.17 acre lot
Offered at $580,000
To take a virtual tour of 4391 Pembroke Dr., click HERE!

Why It’s Important to Hire a Landscape Architect

Yard 1Last year, my sewer kept backing up and I found that I needed a new sewer lateral. My front lawn had a bunch of crabgrass, and the lawn never seemed to get green enough. Then, with the drought, I just let it go.

My whole front yard was torn up, so I decided to do some landscaping – new grass, plants and an automatic sprinkler and drip system.

The project turned out to cost much more than I expected. The sewer lateral was $6,000, and then I ended up paying an additional $8,000 for the landscaping and sprinklers.

I thought I was getting a deal, as the person I hired was a personal friend – though he admittedly knew nothing about plants – who could plant the yard and put the new system in.

Turns out, it was much more difficult than either of us expected. This is on me for thinking it would be an acceptable, cheap way to get the yard done. I still wonder if I hired a landscape architect, would I have saved money and would I be happier with the end result?

Of course, no home improvement project is as simple as it seems. My sprinkler heads had faulty gaskets and some of the plants were not getting water and I lost plants. Luckily, Admirals Choice, who installed the sprinklers, is Yard 2replacing them at no cost to me.

A year and a half later, we are still working on the grass, there’s still a line in the grass where the sewer lateral was dug out, and I need to get rid of the weeds.

We put weed killer on it, but I had to wait until the weather cooled, then it didn’t kill my stubborn crabgrass, and the rain began. So…I waited some more.

The gaskets should be replaced next week, then hopefully it will be time to seed before it gets too hot, and then I can fill in the plants that died.

So, with the hope that you don’t end up like me, with a two-year-old front yard project that cost me a fortune, I am sharing a great Houzz article on Landscaping Trends:

[houzz=http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/64002187/list/inside-houzz-new-data-offer-insights-on-landscaping-trends w=300]