Buried deep within all the grim, boo-hoo statistics about the current housing market lies a sparkling little diamond of datum no one’s noticing.
This is probably because, as a society, we require a steady diet of concern and prefer the familiar comfort of bad news. Why else would we be so fixated on Britney Spears?
True, in most of the country, home appreciation has slowed, housing starts are down. Foreclosures up. Credit’s tighter because too-generous lenders made bad loans, blah, blah, blah.
But read 13 lines into the downbeat findings out last June from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies and you’ll cheer up:
Home-improvement spending set a record for the fifth consecutive year, up $6.2 billion in real terms to $228 billion.
Say what? Why are people fixing up their houses in a down market? I get that in an active housing market, people spend money to fix up the houses they want to sell and the ones they buy. Moving and home improvement go hand in hand. But, turns out, so do not moving and home improvement. Stay or go, we still fix up our digs. We don’t need market analysts to tell us this. All we have to do is visit Lowe’s or The Home Depot on a Saturday. We’re all dancing to an updated version of an old hit: If you can’t live in the house you love, honey, love the house you’re in.
Right after people haul in their for-sale signs because they can’t make the killing in real estate they had hoped to – at least not this year – they flock to their local home-improvement stores like style mavens to the new Cherry Creek Nordstrom. They put in home theaters, gourmet kitchens, spa baths and underground bowling alleys.
Why? Because we don’t all live by the housing index. I don’t look to interest rates or housing sales to decide whether it’s time to remodel the family room. I look at my family room, and say: Who vandalized this place?
Here’s another reason we’re hooked on home improvement: Life goes fast; where we live and how we live matters. Why else would we invest so much time and energy covering our gray? We want to look good – now! – and we want our homes to look good, too. Not because we’ll get a great return on our investment, but because we want to love the house we’re in.
So, yes, amid all those sad statistics, we’re still spending $228 billion on home improvement this year, and probably more next year. Sorry to be the bearer of good news.
Marni Jameson is a nationally syndicated columnist who lives in the Denver area. Contact her at .
When a fix-up isn’t a foul-up
If you’re leery of investing in your home when the market is softer than a featherbed, here are some guidelines:
Do the improvements you’ve been wanting to, for less, says Dan Fritschen, author of “Remodel or Move? Make the Right Decision” (ABCD, 2005). Last month, Fritschen’s California-based real estate and remodeling company conducted a survey of 5,000 homeowners. It revealed that while homeowners intend to spend as much as ever on home improvements in the next year, they plan to get more for their improvement dollars by doing the work themselves. Thirty-three percent said they planned to be their own contractors, up from 25 percent in 2005. More than half said they planned to do some of the work themselves.
If you can’t take it with you, think twice. Separate improvements into two categories: Stuff like landscaping or built-ins that will stay with the house, and stuff like furniture and artwork that will move with you. The second group can make your home look better without as much financial remorse.
Don’t neglect maintenance. A sinkhole in the driveway, a leaky roof or a broken air conditioner will negatively impact your home’s value. These problems will get called out in an inspection, and buyers will likely want you to fix them. Plus, ignored maintenance issues get worse – and more expensive.
Great kitchens and baths won’t hurt – usually. Stay or move, upgrades in these rooms will likely pay off, plus you can enjoy them in the meantime, with a few key exceptions, says Fritschen. If you have a really nice kitchen and just want to change it, you won’t get that money back. Also if you put a Mercedes kitchen in a Hyundai neighborhood, or a Hyundai house, you won’t get that money back. But if all the homes on your street have three baths and your home has one, adding a bath is a sure bet.
Don’t overimprove your home for your neighborhood. This is good advice regardless of how the housing market is performing.
