New paint inside and out, and basic landscaping are typically the most common and necessary improvements when getting ready to sell a home. But what if you need to do more to beat out the competition? Here are three of the best exterior projects to tackle for the ROI.

Below is a transcript of the entire video, and be sure to download my Tips for a Great Photo Shoot.

Hi there. This is Michelle Hatch with Beacham & Company REALTORS® in Atlanta, Georgia, and welcome to video number two in this series for sellers with the projects that you should be taking on when you’re getting yourself ready to go down the market.

Tip number two is: Up your curb appeal.

Nothing scares a buyer away faster than an ugly house. I mean, I’ve even driven past homes and not even toured them on my own personal house hunt because it was the ugly duckling on the block. It was too bad because the house had amazing potential, but I couldn’t see past the exterior.

Painting the house is a must and definitely pick an on-trend color. Do not go with your own personal preference. I’ve seen sellers do that both before and wastes a lot of money, so pick a color that your neighbors are using to paint their house.

Right now, white is really, really hot in the Atlanta market which is the white exterior with the black trim on the windows. Extremely popular. If you’re going to make that investment, make sure it’s a smart one.

Also, basic landscaping and these are things that you can do in a weekend. Things like putting new mulch down in the garden, replacing your mailbox, replacing your house numbers, pressure washing your driveway and your sidewalk, installing new flowers and planter boxes. These things are really economical and really wow a buyer right from the get go.

Sometimes your house needs a little more TLC than just a paint refresh and basic landscaping. So I went ahead and pulled the Remodeling 2019 Cost vs. Value Report (www.costvsvalue.com), specifically for Atlanta, Georgia to find out which outdoor projects yield the best return.

Three outdoor projects yield the best return

The first one is a deck addition.

Buyers today want outdoor spaces. They want a private sanctuary. So if you currently don’t have a deck in the back—like if you just had those sliding doors that step out onto a little concrete patio that you can barely fit two chairs on—really consider spending $4,000 on a deck you’ll get 81% of that cost back in sale. It’ll help your house sell, fail faster and stay above the competition.

Install manufactured stone veneer.

When you’re adding that deck, you can wrap your columns with a manufactured stone veneer or if you have a retaining wall, which is very common in Atlanta because we were so hilly, put a stone veneer on that and you’ll get a 116% return.

Replace the garage door.

Sometimes garage doors get dinged up—or like in our neighborhood we have a bunch of 1950s ranches and our garage doors flip up. These doors are known in the industry as a chin splitter… you pull it up and hit your chin, replace that door—spend 2,500 bucks on a new energy efficient door, which—ding, ding—is a buzzword with buyers and you’ll get a 91% return on your investment according to this value report.

Speaking of buzzwords… and bonus staging tip!

Another piece of research I came across was a Zillow’s research on listing features. These features appear in the listing description and Zillow analyzed and found that one of those buzzwords was “outdoor kitchen.” While I’m certainly not suggesting that you install an outdoor kitchen, my point is that you want to set the stage to make your backyard feel as if there’s an outdoor kitchen there.

If you’re going to put a deck in, make sure you’ve got your grill set up and you have maybe a rolling cart next to the grill that can serve as a bar cart, or a place to serve food, or just a prep area. Set out a nice cooler, fill it with ice, put some drinks in there—especially for your photos—to convey this outdoor living outdoor kitchen feature.

According to a Zillow that properties with outdoor kitchens, like true outdoor kitchens, sell for almost 25% more than properties that don’t.

Again, you don’t need to put the outdoor kitchen in, but absolutely, you can set that ambiance yourself, and really wow buyers where something like that.

So that’s tip number two in this a selling series. See tip one here, and check out other videos in the series.

Best,

Michelle