Renovating to Sell to Your Target Market

Greville Pabst writes for Homely, drawing from his experience as a vendor advocate, on how to approach a renovation when the goal is a sale, and why the work should start with the buyer rather than the builder.

The central warning is overcapitalisation, which he describes as the common mistake of spending on work that will not return its cost in a given area. Avoiding it means establishing who the likely buyer is first, since an investor and an owner occupier want different things from the same house.

From there he sets out where money tends to work hardest, noting that kitchens, bathrooms and outdoor living areas are what sell houses, while pointing out that fresh paint, new fixtures and replacement hardware can shift a presentation considerably for far less.

He argues for keeping original features such as cornices and stained glass rather than stripping them out, and pairing them with modern elements.

The piece closes on floor plans, which he treats as the thing most likely to limit a result, listing a poorly placed kitchen, a bathroom set away from the hallway and living areas without northern light as the faults he appears most often.

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