How Does Flooring Affect Your Home’s Appraisal Value?
One of the most commonly overlooked aspects of a home is the flooring. When homeowners start looking to sell they will first take a look at the kitchen, appliances, bathrooms, and such.
All of these aspects of a home are still important, however, flooring tends to fall by the wayside. This is especially true if the current flooring appears to be in good shape. But don’t forget, just like other design trends, flooring will also become outdated.
So let us ask the question, how does flooring affect your home’s appraisal value, and does it really matter?
How Does Flooring Affect the Value of Your Home?
The better question is how doesn’t flooring affect the value of your home? To be honest, it is really surprising how many home sellers don’t think about their flooring. Obviously, quick kitchen updates, bathroom remodeling, and painting projects seem to always be the go-to renovations before selling a home.
Flooring is often forgotten about in the chaos of selling a home. But why? When looking for a new home, buyers absolutely take flooring into account. A home can easily be overlooked by buyers simply because of outdated flooring.
Color and style seem to be the biggest deterrents for buyers just like wallpaper is. Anything too bright or oddly colored will leave buyers with a bad taste in their mouths. So if your flooring is outdated you should probably look at your budget and try to work out some new flooring.
But what type of flooring should you choose?
What Type of Flooring Is Best?
Well, the easiest way to figure that out is to simply ask yourself, “what type of flooring would I like best?”
More often than not the answer is going to be hard surface flooring. Most often around the country hardwood is considered the best type of flooring to have. And the most amazing thing about hardwood is that it almost never goes out of style. Sure there are some specific types and styles that are a little niche.
However, most standard types and styles of hardwood are considered timeless. And many homebuyers will look at hardwood floors and simply fall in love.
Another very popular type of flooring we see a lot here in Florida is ceramic or porcelain tile. Because of the tropical weather ceramic and porcelain tile are often the best choice and so many home buyers here in Florida prefer only to have these types of floors.
One of the best things about tile is how versatile it is. You can get it in any color, shape, size. You can even have tile flooring that has the appearance of wood.
Now if you live in a flood zone ceramic tile is by far the best option to choose. It is far more resistant to water damage from flooding. And it is usually a more affordable flooring option.
Luxury vinyl and laminate flooring is another great choice. They look absolutely stunning when installed properly and are more cost-efficient than other flooring options.
Vinyl and laminate are even made to be moisture resistant and withstand our tropical climate better than hardwood flooring so they often are the preferred option over hardwood. However, they are not as resilient to actual standing water, so if you live in a flood zone you might want to rethink this flooring type.
One of the biggest things to remember about flooring is to keep it consistent! You don’t want to use several different flooring types, colors, etc. Keeping your flooring mostly the same all throughout is best when it comes to aesthetics.
Some people do prefer to switch to carpet for bedrooms, however, we still highly recommend hard flooring all throughout the property (including bedrooms).
Should You Worry About the Flooring at All?
What if your flooring still looks excellent and doesn’t show any damage? Well, then you might not need to change it. One of the upsides of tile flooring can also be a downside. Its versatility can cause issues when certain prints or designs go out of style.
So how does flooring affect your home’s appraisal value really? If your flooring looks great and is in good condition, you might not want to change it. But if it makes your home feel dated, it still might be something that you need to really consider.
Outdated or ugly flooring can turn a buyer off in a major way. It can be the difference between you receiving multiple offers in just the first few days your home is on the market, or your home sitting on the market with no offers for weeks or even months.
Seriously think about your flooring and what it can do for your home.
