Landscaping to Increase Your Home’s Value.

Watch enough HGTV and there’s one phrase you’re bound to hear over and over again: curb appeal.

It’s a term the real estate world uses to describe how attractive a home is when seen from the street. The stronger the curb appeal, the stronger your bargaining position with potential buyers. And one way to increase curb appeal is through landscaping.

Does landscaping add value to homes? A lot of experts say yes.

When you think of the word “Landscape” what comes to your mind? Flowers, trees, palms, shrubs, lots of grass, a mower or weed eater?

Landscaping can add tens of thousands of dollars to the value of your property. In fact, it is one of the few home improvements you can make that not only adds value immediately but also increases in value as the years go by. While interior decor and design concepts regularly go out of style and mechanical systems wear down, plants grow fuller and more robust as the years go by.

A well-landscaped home has a significant price advantage over a home with no landscaping. This advantage ranges from 5.5 percent to 12.7 percent depending on the type of landscaping and the home’s original value. That translates into an extra $16,500 to $38,100 in value on a $300,000 home. There’s more to landscaping than sticking some flowers and a couple of shrubs in the ground, however. The number-one thing that buyers are looking for in landscaping is a manicured design. Close behind is plant size and maturity. A lesser factor, but one still worth considering, is the diversity of plant life within the landscaping design.