When you start thinking about selling your longtime home, you may look around and wonder how much work needs to be done before you sell.

Do I need to repaint the whole house? What about the wallpaper? Should I replace the old carpet? Does the kitchen need updating? What about the repairs I’ve been putting off?

The answer isn’t automatically to fix everything. It’s figuring out which improvements are likely to be a good return on your investment, and which ones may not be worth the time, money or disruption.

What Does Selling As-Is Mean?

Selling as-is generally means putting your home on the market in its current condition and pricing it with the needed repairs and updates in mind.

For some homeowners, that’s the right choice. You may prefer to avoid the expense and disruption of having work completed, or you may simply want to make the selling process as easy as possible.

The tradeoff is that the condition of the home can affect both what a buyer is willing to pay and how long it may take to sell. Some buyers may also rule out a home because they don’t want to take on the work themselves.

When Do Improvements Make Sense?

Sometimes relatively simple changes can make a noticeable difference in how a home shows.

Fresh paint, minor repairs, updated lighting or removing dated wallpaper may help a home feel better cared for and more appealing to buyers. Other times, spending money to replace carpeting or make more extensive changes won’t be money well spent.

It’s really about looking at which improvements are likely to give you a good return on your investment, help the home sell in a shorter amount of time, or both, versus what you could expect if you sold it as-is.

And a higher sales price doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll come out ahead. If you spend $30,000 preparing the home but it only increases what you ultimately walk away with by $15,000, that work didn’t provide a good return.

Don’t Replace Something Just Because It’s Old

Worn carpeting is a good example.

You might think, “The carpet is old, so I should replace it before I sell.” But a buyer may prefer hardwood or luxury vinyl plank and plan to remove that brand-new carpet anyway.

The same can happen with other improvements. What seems like an obvious update may not be something buyers will value enough to justify what you spent.

That’s why I recommend we talk through what should be done before you start hiring contractors or buying materials.

Your Home Needs Its Own Plan

What makes sense depends on the condition of your home, what similar homes are selling for, what buyers are looking for in your area and what it will cost to make the improvements.

It also depends on how soon you want to sell, whether you’d rather pay for any work now or have it settled out of your proceeds at closing, and whether that work would happen while you’re still living there or after you’ve moved out.

Talking with me before you start making changes gives us a chance to walk through your home together and look at what may be worth doing, what probably isn’t, and what selling it as-is could look like.

You don’t need to start fixing things before we talk. In fact, it’s better if you don’t, so you’re not spending money on things that won’t be a good return on your investment.

So if you’re thinking about selling in the next 1 to 5 years, let’s start with a conversation before you start spending money on improvements.