Before the dawn of the internet, curb appeal was a key factor in selling your home. Now it’s “internet appeal” that leads to a quick home sale and a good selling price. When deciding what homes to tour, homebuyers first check out photos of the property on the online listing. If the kitchen is outdated, prospective buyers apply a value in their mind to the remodel and, depending on the size of the kitchen, the value can range from $30,000 to $100,000 or more.

Based on this logic and the market for available homes in your area, a homebuyer may not even visit the house. A homebuyer also realizes that a long and painful remodel can delay the move-in date or disrupt their life after they move in.

Some sellers have a mindset that they don’t want to waste money on a kitchen remodel because the buyer will remodel it to fit their own style, but this logic is flawed for a few reasons. First, many homebuyers are stretched thin when buying a new home and, after the down payment, don’t have the finances to embark on an expensive remodel after they purchase the home. As a result, a homebuyer will seek out other listings with an updated kitchen and/or bathrooms that fit their taste. They may not get their dream kitchen, but they know they’ll be avoiding an expensive and disruptive project.

The good news is Kitchen Tune-Up is uniquely poised to provide different services to complete the process of updating kitchens and bathrooms in a more affordable and timely manner. The typical kitchen project when gutting a kitchen and installing all-new quality cabinets (classified as a major remodel) will cost, on average, $64,203 as reported in the 2018 Cost vs. Value Report from Remodeling magazine. In addition, the amount of value recouped for this investment is 59 percent. While that’s not a bad return, the same report shows a minor kitchen remodel that costs an average of $21,745 will actually return more than 75 percent of the value of the investment. We find it quite interesting that the larger remodel ends up providing a much lower ROI and, at the end of the day, will have a similar impact when trying to sell your home.

When updating your kitchen cabinets with refacing, homebuyers will see a new kitchen and are more likely to be interested in your house. For sellers, they are able to update their kitchen for one-third the price of a traditional kitchen remodel. The best part is that the Kitchen Tune-Up services (beyond the major remodel) typically fall below the range of the average minor kitchen remodel price tag. Cabinet refacing allows a homeowner to update his/her kitchen for a much lower investment, while achieving a higher perceived value to a potential homebuyer. Basically, you can get a new kitchen that will look like a $60,000 kitchen for approximately $15,000.

With cabinet refacing, the existing cabinet boxes stay in place. New doors and drawer fronts—custommade to fit the boxes—are installed, and all of the exposed ends and face frames are covered in the new matching material. The kitchen gets a completely new look and new door style, but without demolition. An oak kitchen can be changed to a modern white shaker style, for example, or a maple kitchen can be transformed to cherry. And it will be done in three to five days.

Seeing is believing. Come visit their new showroom at 391 Lancaster Ave. in Malvern. To schedule an in-home estimate, call (484) 318-7205 or visit KitchenTuneUp-Mainline.com.

Kitchen Tune-Up
Malvern, Pa.
(484) 318-7205
KitchenTuneUp-Mainline.com

Published (and copyrighted) in House & Home, Volume 20, Issue 8 (February 2020). 
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