Does your property have curb appeal?
If you’re thinking of selling your home, curb appeal is something you should be considering.
When you list your home, potential buyers will often decide whether to view it or not based on what your photos look like, and the most popular anchor photo (the first photo that pops up on the listing) is the exterior of your home.
You really want to make a good first impression which is why curb appeal, proper listing preparation, presentation, and professional photography are so important.
Once the potential buyers get to your home, they’re going to see the exterior first, and over the years I have had several sets of buyers decide to not view a home at all, once they see the exterior of the home in person.
Curb appeal involves more than adding pots of pretty flowers.
Sunken driveways, (common problem in YEG and surrounding areas) peeling paint on window frames, a yard full of weeds or dog waste, (or both) crumbling concrete steps, rotten wooden steps, broken or missing downspouts, curling shingles, and leaking gutters are just some of things that put buyers off.
When a buyer is shopping for their dream home, unless the buyer is looking for a renovation project, they usually want a home that they can move straight in to, without having to spend a lot of money on costly repairs immediately.
We’ve been in this home for 12 years now and whilst we are not considering moving, the exteriors of our homes need care and attention just like the interiors do, so over the last couple of summers I’ve been fixing up some of the exterior issues.
This year we decided to focus on the drive which had dropped quite a lot, on one side in particular.
Why should you care about a sunken driveway?
It’s very common to see sunken driveways. I am no expert on driveway construction but after getting several quotes, one of the common causes seems to be that the ground beneath them wasn’t properly prepared before the concrete was poured. When that ground settles, your driveway sinks as there is no longer anything to support it.
You may wonder why a buyer would be put off by a sunken driveway when it is a common issue here in Edmonton and the most obvious reason of course is the cost to repair. Depending on the size of your driveway and the amount that it has dropped, it may well end up costing several thousand dollars to lift, and lots more if you decide to replace it entirely.
In addition to not having thousands of extra dollars to devote to a driveway when they are just about to make what may be the biggest financial purchase of their lives, buyers are often concerned about how much damage to car tires a significant bump up from the drive to the garage will do as well. Attending to a sunken driveway may be one of the jobs to put on your to do list, particularly if the drop is very noticeable.
A home inspection will point out exterior flaws.
Another thing to note is that even if the buyers don’t really notice the driveway drop that much on that first viewing of your home, if they decide to proceed with an offer, it’s highly likely they will have a home inspection condition and their home inspector is going to point it out to them, which may lead some buyers to ask for a price reduction.
Once we decided this would be the year of the drive, we started asking friends, colleagues, and some of my clients, for recommendations for companies that specialise in concrete lifting and leveling and then after reading reviews, asked three to provide us with quotes.
All three of the companies came out to see us quickly, all three provided us with good information on the process and their quotes were very similar.
It was a difficult choice just because all three companies were so professional and answered the questions we had, but we did make a decision, and it worked out great.
Do you need to do anything to prepare?
Each company mentioned in their quotes that we were responsible for making sure any underground utilities were marked, so we made sure to contact Click Before you Dig, to have those lines marked. You do need to contact them at least 3 business days before the work is done, and their markings are valid for 30 days. You can see the little flags in this photo –
You can’t see it very well in the above photo, but in addition to showing the location of the underground utilities, the company we chose to lift our driveway had run a line across from the top of our driveway to a spot just beyond the big dip (secured by the brick in the photo)to show how much the drive had sunk in that area and therefore, how much it would need to be lifted.
In order to lift the drive, small holes were drilled in the concrete to inject the product (this will differ depending on whether you opt for mudjacking or polyurethane) under the concrete.
Funnily enough, after the work was completed, our neighbours who came over to take a look were surprised because they couldn’t see any holes!
One of the concerns we had was the tripping hazard that had been caused by one part of our drive lifting as it met the sidewalk to our front door, and thankfully once the driveway was lifted, it leveled out again.
As you can see, it looks much better now and if we ever do decide to move, the sunken drive will not be an impediment to our sale.
If you’re thinking of working on your homes curb appeal this year, but aren’t quite sure which part to prioritise, reach out to your agent early for some tips!