Năm nâng cấp có lời khi bán, và bốn việc không bao giờ có

Every seller wants to know what to fix. Last year we took nine common jobs and tracked what each one did to the asking price and to the days on market across forty of our own listings, six areas, condos and houses together.

Two of the nine came back with more than they cost. The rest range from a fair trade down to money you will never see again, and the bottom of the list is where people spend the most.

What came back

Paint wins for the same reason every year. It costs $3,400 in a three-bedroom, it takes four days, and it removes the one thing a buyer can price instantly and hold against you. Floors come second and only if the boards under the carpet are sound, which your agent can tell in about a minute with a corner lifted.

What did not

None of these are bad work, and the trouble is when you do them. A $60,000 kitchen buys you about $38,000 at sale, and the buyer who wanted a new kitchen would have chosen their own handles anyway. Do it in the year you move in, live in it for a decade, and the arithmetic comes out the other way.

The one that pays and is not on the list

Cleaning. A deep clean plus the windows runs about $700 on a three-bedroom and it is the only spend where we have never seen a seller lose money. It does not show up as a line in the analysis because we cannot price it against a version of the same house that was left dirty.