I Get This Question a Lot From Homeowners Around Sarasota:

“Do I need to update my house before I sell it?”

The answer depends on factors the homeowner needs to give consideration to.

Three of these considerations are:

• How outdated is the house?
• What is it going to cost to update the house?
• What are recently updated houses selling for in your neighborhood?

Look, if it is going to cost $75,000 to update your current house, and the expected market value after updating doesn’t exceed $75,000 more than the current market value why even bother, right?

Well, not so fast. There are other factors to also consider. Specifically, how fast are houses currently selling in your neighborhood?

In a slow moving market with an abundance of inventory, an updated house is much more likely to sell before an outdated house. That is because the buyer pool for updated houses is typically much larger than the buyer pool for outdated houses.

By contrast, in a fast moving market with limited inventory, outdated houses may sell for as much as updated houses in certain neighborhoods.

We are currently experiencing a fast moving market and limited inventory in Sarasota. So, in a lot of cases I would recommend the seller do nothing if the home is outdated but otherwise “clean”. You would now be able to hold onto the capital you currently have and put it into your next house if needed.

In any event, a thorough evaluation of the current neighborhood market would determine my recommendation.

According to ZondaHome (a data driven company), the majority of updates in Sarasota Florida only returned between $0.50-$0.96 per $1.00 spent in 2021. (Click Here to see the entire report for top 22 home updates.)

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