One Easy Thing You Can Do To Increase Your Home’s Value By $6k In SWFL

If you've been thinking about selling your home, you obviously want to get the most you can for it and there's one easy thing you can do to increase your home's value by $6k.

In this housing market, buying and selling real estate can be tricky. Home prices in Southwest Florida have skyrocketed in the last few years since I've been living here. Even my rent for my apartment in Fort Myers has gone up over $300 per month since I moved in back in 2019. So if you've been thinking about selling your home, there's one simple thing you can do, according to Zillow, that can increase your home's value by $6k.

Sometimes when you go to look at a home, be it something to buy or rent, you can get distracted by cosmetics. I'm 100% that person. That instead of thinking "well, I could throw a coat of paint on it" or "I can swap out those cabinets", I just decide I'm not interested. It could also be that I'm just not that handy.

According to Zillow, they say the color of your front door could be a major player in attracting a potential home buyer. There's a study they did recently that found that because the front door is the first thing people see, it could set the tone for the entire home. And they found that certain colors could actually increase the value of your home by $6k. And it would cost less than $300 to do it. So what's the best color to paint your front door? Zillow reveals that black and slate blue-gray are at the top. In fact, buyers were willing to pay nearly $6500 more for a house with a black front door. The colors to avoid, Zillow says, are pale pink and cement gray.

Related: Home Prices In This Southwest Florida City Are Expected To Drop In 2024

In a new report released today by WalletHub, Cape Coral ranks near the top of the "2023’s Best & Worst Cities for First Time Home Buyers." Even with the rapidly rising prices and the yearly threat of being wiped out by a hurricane. Wells running dry and people on bikes being run down. And Nile Monitor lizards. And that when you drive over the bridge and don't have a transponder it's now $5 because of the service charge. I just wanted a pizza. Despite all this. It's still a great option for first time home buyers that can afford it.

Another study that may factor in on Cape Coral's attractiveness to home ownership was this one. "Renting A House Is Cheaper Than Buying For Most Of The County – Except in Cape Coral". That's a piece we did back in March that showed the two markets in the country where this was true. Cape Coral, Florida and Springfield, Massachusetts. And now to the sudy.

In 2022, 26% of home purchases were made by first-time buyers.

Often, people begin searching for their dream homes without a realistic idea of market prices. Factor in interest rates or even their eligibility to get a mortgage.

Where a home is located is just as important as what features it has. If the neighborhood is unpleasant, it can sour the experience of a great home. Potential buyers may want to narrow their search down to an area with a good reputation before getting into housing details.

To simplify the process, WalletHub compared 300 cities of varying sizes across 22 key indicators of market attractiveness, affordability and quality of life. The data set ranges from cost of living to real-estate taxes to property-crime rate.

An interesting stat here. Even with our home prices, Florida ranks tops in large, medium, and small cities. Breaking it down into city size, you see a lot of Florida in here.

To see the full study + expanded tables, check out WalletHub.

To determine the most favorable housing markets for first-time home buyers, WalletHub compared a sample of 300 U.S. cities (varying in size) across three key dimensions: 1) Affordability, 2) Real-Estate Market and 3) Quality of Life.

We evaluated those dimensions using 22 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for first-time home buyers. Data for metrics marked with an asterisk (*) were available at the state level only.

Finally, we determined each city’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order our sample. Our sample considers only the city proper in each case and excludes cities in the surrounding metro area. Each city was categorized according to the following population-size guidelines:

Sources: Data used to create this ranking were collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Council for Community and Economic Research, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Insurance Information Institute, The National Association of Realtors, ATTOM, a property data provider, and WalletHub research.