Renovating to Sell in Vancouver

Denny:
Early in the year, we have these conversations quite often with sellers and there have been a lot of them even just in this January 2026 of what should I be doing to get my home ready for sale? And we also have past clients reaching out asking, you know, I’m thinking about doing a renovation. These are my ideas. Is there anything I should be thinking about in terms of potential resale value down the road when I go to sell my home of things that are going to help or hurt the value of the home?

So, I think the reason for this podcast is just because we have these conversations a lot early in the year. A lot of people reaching out thinking about selling this spring and thinking about how do I get the most out of my home and how do I help it sell faster in what has been a pretty slow market the last couple years. So, I think we just want to share a few ideas of what to do, what gets a return, what to avoid and what not to do.

Jamie:
Yeah. And I think kind of highlighting you’re probably listening to this podcast hopefully in February. February is a good month to get organized. It is a lot easier to get some of these trades. Part of the reason for this topic now is because for some of you listening that might be thinking of doing a move. Hopefully, it will incentivize you to phone a few trades after this episode because it’s easier to hire someone in February or March than it is in May and June. Or that it has been historically anyway, specifically for landscapers or anything that you might need done.

As Denny mentioned, January is a month where we start having early conversations with people thinking of selling in the spring. And some of the most common things we run into is, well, landscape needs a spiff up. The house needs some paint. Floors often come up as well. Floors are one of those pain items because you have to move all your furniture to do them. But there’s things that you should be doing now to give yourself the option to take advantage of the spring market if you choose.

And we run into sellers and clients that don’t prep in advance, rush to get their homes prepped up in two to four weeks in the spring when they find a place they want to move to. And it’s a scramble and it’s stressful and ultimately you get in a situation where you may not be showing your home at its best or you may not move because you’re just not ready.

So, I think right now is a good time to start painting what needs to be painted, start repairing what needs to be repaired. Call that handyman in, get those cabinets and doors working, get that window working. And it’s a little bit early February to say do landscaping, but it’s a great time to get quotes on landscaping. And now is the time you’re going to get someone locked in for March or April. If you start trying to look for landscapers in April or May, they’re just often insanely busy.

And most common things are like if your yard looks run down, make it look low maintenance. Make it look neat and tidy. Clean those gardening beds. Aerate that lawn. Fertilize that lawn. Edge that lawn. Do the prep work today for that lawn to look good in 2 months. Those little things go a long way. And right now is a market where the better your place looks, the better the outcome.

Denny:
You mentioned the exterior and that’s such a huge first impression piece as people are walking up to the door if you’re selling a single family home. The feeling. You can change someone’s perspective before they even walk in the front door with how good your garden and yard look, how well-maintained the home is, the cleanliness or a fresh paint job on the exterior, cleaning moss off the roof, power washing gutters. Things like that go a super long way in terms of the first impression as people walk up the door.

Jamie:
Items like townhouses in Burke Mountain there’s lots of them out there. I’ve walked into some with clients that sellers put no effort into showing it. There’s stuff everywhere, the blinds are closed, the yards run down. And then a similar unit that looks immaculate. When you have a buyer seeing a bunch of places that are similar, showing matters extremely. It’s different if you’re an entry-level home and you’re the only one available in a neighborhood. But when you’re a townhouse these little touches matter.

Denny:
Inexpensive things I’d say that make a big difference and you mentioned a couple there is one is decluttering. It costs $0. Maybe you might have to rent a storage locker. So it might cost a little bit of money. Cardboard boxes. Yeah. But decluttering is at the very top of the list for almost any listing that we take on is showing your home as close to show home material as possible.

Jamie:
It moves the ticker the most.

Denny:
You know, when someone’s limited on time and they say, “What’s the one most important thing I can do to improve the sale of my home?” Clean it up. Get the stuff out. Another couple things that are low investment would be cleanliness. Whether you’re doing it yourself, just time consumption, or whether you’re hiring a cleaning company, a few hundred for a cleaning company goes a long, long way, especially the day before you have people come through your home. Just that fresh scent as you walk in the door and doesn’t smell like your pets or whatever that may be.

And then the next big thing is painting. I think as I get deeper into my real estate career, I think paint is more and more important. I used to be like, “Whatever. It’s white walls. Yeah, there’s some nicks on them, but people can overlook that stuff.” No, people can’t overlook that stuff. People see a red room or a yellow colored living room and they think, “Oh my gosh, this is so dated. What’s wrong with this house?” Versus painting all the walls a light neutral off-white color. It goes a long way. It’s a time suck for sure, but most people can do painting themselves.

Jamie:
Light and bright. You don’t want bright colors, light neutral colors. And if you’re going to have off-white, it’s okay to have white walls in a lot of homes. Just to be specific, one color I constantly run into is light grays, whites. Benjamin Moore has this color called silver satin. I see it everywhere. It’s like the lightest gray that’s kind of a warm light gray that’s just dark enough to complement white trim.

But light and bright. If your favorite color is red or deep blue or deep green. Yes, sometimes a nice deep blue cabinet looks good, but it’s a bold move. And when it comes to painting walls or painting a bathroom, I’d suggest just going safe.

Denny:
You know, bold would be light gray.

Jamie:
And for paint, like Denny said, it’s probably the best bang for your buck. It’s the thing that moves the mile the most. When you go into a house that has worn baseboards and window ledges and that vacuum corner that’s wiped down the drywall in the corner of the rooms, it doesn’t have the same impression as a freshly painted place. And so the overall impression can be moved the most for the least amount of money with paint and decluttering.

Denny:
Next on the list, it takes a little more time. It’s a bigger investment. You mentioned moving all your furniture out. Floors. It’s flooring. This goes such a long way, especially in those older homes, older condos with 25-year-old carpet that has odors in it from pets and stains in it from dropping nail polish and all this stuff. The floors go a long way. And just the impression as people walk through the door, they think, “Oh, wow. Updated.”

Versus walking into something with old carpets, they think, “Oh my gosh, I have to spend so much money here.” Buyers are picky right now. You have one piece of damage. You leave one cleaning agent with a mop in the middle of your laminate floors and destroy a circle or a plant that overflowed 2 years ago. Or sometimes in these townhouses, the edges of your staircase get black because the vacuum doesn’t get the edges as well, but there’s also a little draft of air flow that just constantly gets those edges black. These little things that come up in new construction frequently. A buyer is going to see I have to spend $15,000 on floors. And if you don’t do the work, in this kind of market, it’s going to come off your price.

Jamie:
If you do the work and it’s more turnkey, and if you’re turning floors from ugly to good and it comes with paint and impression, you’re going to get your money back and in often cases maybe a little more. And if you have an old historic heritage home and you have fir floors, the cost of refinishing those fir floors is probably half the cost of installing a lower-end floor. So, it can be worth it. In many cases, a main floor of a modest 100-year-old cottage might be $3,000 to refinish them, maybe four. Obviously it can go up from there, but the impression when buyers walk through is huge.

So, paint floors, declutter, landscape, those are the most common sequence that we suggest to sellers that want to invest time and energy into a $2 million home for the spring.

Denny:
You mentioned it coming off your price if you’re not doing the work, which can be true, but in town homes or condos where there are multiple units available in the complex or lots available that are very similar in a neighborhood, it can be the difference between whether your unit sells or not, regardless of price, unless you’re taking a big significant discount. If you walk through a unit that’s priced at $899,000 that has new floors and paint, the impression is really good versus walking through a dated unit that doesn’t have floors and paint that’s maybe listed at $875,000. Yes, there’s a $25,000 discount there, but a lot of buyers will elect not to do the work and pay more money for the unit that has done these lower cost items that might cost you 15 grand total.

Jamie:
What not to do, Denny?

Denny:
There’s a few what not to do. One thing we mentioned right out of the gate on what to do is landscaping exterior. Making sure your home has curb appeal making sure your home looks as good as possible from the street as people walk up to it. I’d say one of the big things people don’t do because it is time consuming and not a fun job is neglecting landscaping. Overgrown gardens, not cutting the grass or not putting a little bit of effort into making sure the lawn looks good. Leaving moss on the roof, not cleaning gutters, just having the house look a little bit run down from the exterior hurts your value quite a bit.

Jamie:
A lot of houses go to families with young kids. If that little private backyard grass is well manicured and looks like a great play space for kids to play around, huge bonus. If it’s run down and doesn’t look favorable for kids to play around, you might lose those buyers. So these little touches move the ticker and you’re up against other homes. It’s not that everything’s selling predictably after week one anymore. So, in this market, it matters more than ever. You have one chance to launch a listing. Most successful sales for listings are when first-time listings hit the market. That’s when you have the best chance of success. And if you believe that, then you don’t want to launch without doing everything right.

A lot of clients will ask us about renovations and what to think about when they’re doing renovations. If you’re doing a renovation for your family to live in the house for 20 years, I think our answer is a little different than if you’re doing a renovation to sell or if you’re trying to do some updates to potentially sell in the next couple years. And being really specific about your renovations can hurt your value. Picking a countertop in your kitchen that is really grainy or a black countertop with gold veins. It’s very specific and buyers especially in slower markets like this will turn away just because of the aesthetic of something like that. So going a little more neutral will help your buyer pool.

I think also adding where do you draw the line? Like what we’re talking about—paint, floors, landscape—those are things that are laborsome but relatively low cost for the amount that they move the needle. But items like kitchen and bathrooms come up. Should we replace our appliances? When you do a spot replacement and say you have white appliances that are old, should we update them to stainless steel to make our kitchen look a little better? But if you have a dated kitchen, dated bathrooms, and you do a partial upgrade, you’re not really changing the overall impression.

If you have a 10-year-old kitchen and the stove broke, then replace that stove so a buyer feels like they have an operational kitchen. But changing a let’s say a 30-year-old kitchen. Partially updating a 30-year-old kitchen when you have 30-year-old bathrooms isn’t going to do much. It’s either you turn ugly bathrooms and kitchen into beautiful new bathrooms and kitchen or you fix what’s broken if there’s an obvious item broken or you just make it clean and functional. Partial renovations don’t work.

The low quality renovations don’t work. If you’re doing floors yourself and you’re not taking out the previous flooring underneath and you’re left with a bunch of big transitions in different rooms and unevenness, that does not add value. So the quality of the work matters. Poor renovations—the majority of buyers do notice. A poor quality renovation where you went bargain hunting for tiles or cabinets and it’s not configured right or doesn’t look great, it’s not going to get the same return. Spend, do it right, do it well, or don’t do it at all. And that comes from the many homes that we’ve seen floor on top of floor on top of floor.

Denny:
I feel like this is an obvious one because we mentioned it in the what to do, but loud paint colors. Avoid loud paint colors, especially if you are just updating your home to sell. Go neutral. Don’t go reds and blues and dark colors in bedrooms. Makes your house look darker. Some buyers can’t overlook that stuff and don’t want to do any work. And repaving a black wall takes how many coats? Three or four or five?

Jamie:
If you’re an interior designer and you use a dark green as a bold feature wall, we’re not talking to you in this case. We’re talking about the typical person that makes their own subjective opinion. And a bold color can tie in really well in some cases, but for the typical seller, go light. Go either white or light gray. Keep it light, keep it bright.

And also change your lights because if you’re going all white wall everywhere and you have science lab lighting mixed with warm incandescent lighting, it’s going to look funny. So, have consistent lighting throughout. Change your light bulbs. It reflects off it. It makes a huge difference. Don’t go bright white. Go soft white. I like a warmer light myself. Brighter soft white. Light bulbs reflect the paint color, too.

Denny:
The last one I want to mention, which I think is really key, especially in these older homes throughout Greater Vancouver. When you’re buying a bungalow or if you own a bungalow that is 1,600 to 2,200 square feet, you’re already limited in bedrooms. So eliminating bedrooms is something that will hurt your value resale-wise. I’ve seen in some of these older 1950s and 60s homes where they want to put a suite in the basement and they need to find a solution for laundry or they want a walk-in closet and they turn one of the bedrooms into a laundry room or into a walk-in closet.

Then when you go to sell now, buyers are walking through and they’re thinking, “Okay, well this main floor only has one bedroom and then I have a suite downstairs that has two bedrooms. So where is my kid going to live?” And they can’t really get over this idea of how to turn it back into a bedroom. And so that I’ve seen either just eliminates buyers or hurts your value because people think that moving a laundry machine or adding a door back to a room because it’s now a closet will cost a lot more than a lot of people think it does.

Jamie:
I think the most common thing that we’ve seen is turning that three-bedroom upper floor into a two-bedroom. There’s some neighborhoods that might have an empty nester retirement crowd on the water that would value a big master instead of three rooms up there, but 90% of Lower Mainland is going to want those three rooms. And yes, you might be the exception that didn’t work for you, but don’t eliminate bedrooms.

On the other note, don’t buy hot tubs to add value to your home. A hot tub is not going to add value to your home, but people like hot tubs and if you do have a hot tub it better be functioning otherwise it’s a discount or a devaluer to your home. There was a time where a pool was a devaluer but during COVID that completely 180 and a pool became valuable. Today a pool settles out where some areas it’s valued and some areas it’s not and if you have a pool it needs to be operational. If you have an unoperational pool, expect a discount on your sale price. Things need to work.

An item that probably won’t change your sale price but might be a convenient thing to do this time of year is roof repairs. Roofers get swamped busy in spring and early summer when it’s re-roofing season. You might have a better chance of getting a roofer out today for that roof repair. That roof repair, a buyer when they fall in love with your home isn’t going to know necessarily about a roof repair per se. They might fall in love with your home without it, but it’s going to get discovered in inspections. So, if you know you have something to do on your roof, it might be easier to get that roofer in today than it would be a couple months from now

Denny:
One thing I want to ask you about and hear your opinion on is electrical updates and adding EV chargers and air conditioning units. What is your thought on adding value to a home by adding an AC or running electrical out for a level two EV charger?

Jamie:
The cost of adding—well, I think it’s more of a return than ever. I added a heat pump to a large 1980s home that I live in. I think that will have a return on investment. It will make it more desirable and it’ll pay itself off. I don’t necessarily think that adding heat pumps adds value, but it makes it more sellable. If we have a heat wave this summer, everyone’s going to want one. There’s moments where you can’t sell a place because it’s hot or because it doesn’t have AC.

And sometimes when like last summer wasn’t so bad, but when heat waves are fresh of mind, it can be challenging to sell something. There’s been condos I walk into that don’t even have the option for a heat pump. There’s condos that face the sunset that are much easier to sell in the winter and difficult to sell in a July market just because they’re so hot. So, I think in some cases a heat pump helps. I’ve seen heat pumps become more of an option for more townhouse complexes that I’ve been looking at lately.

And when it comes to the only reason why I say it’s not necessarily a return on investment is because the cost of these things are quite a bit. It might be 30 or 40 grand to get your place cooled in a townhouse. I could see you getting that money back in a good scenario but it’s and I could see it making your place easier to sell, but I don’t think you’re going to get an $80,000 return on a $30,000 or $40,000 system.

So I think the important thing about heat pumps is all these properties are given a certain service that come to their door and maybe it’s 100 amp and now we’re in a world where heat pumps and EV chargers are coming into the equation after these townhomes were built. So a lot of these stratas have to get these electrical reports, these analysis that basically outline what they can do.

I think in a lot of cases there’s complexes that just don’t have the electrical capacity to have an EV charger and a heat pump. And even ones that were sold with promise of an EV charger, they’re going to be a very slow charge or you’re going to have to do some load sharing electrical to get the EV charger hooked up with the dryer and not operating at the same time. Or same for the heat pump. So ultimately like a lot of these townhomes that want a heat pump and EV, they may have to do load sharing to get that. It may not be feasible. The only way it may be feasible is a non-code compliance way to get there.

What creative things will we see happen over the next decade? Will stratas that don’t have the electrical capacity for heat pumps and EVs, how will they adapt? Because there’s a lot of them that don’t. I don’t have the answer to that question. But moving forward, everyone’s going to be planning for it.

Denny:
One more thing I wanted to ask you about is older homes. I’m thinking about selling in the next couple years. Should I put in a basement suite? Because this has kind of done a bit of a roller coaster ride in the last 10 years. But when I first started selling real estate, 2014, I’d say a basement suite added maybe $40,000 to $60,000 worth of value, which essentially is roughly if not less than the cost of putting it into your basement. Versus through COVID when house prices went crazy in 2020 and 2021, we saw the value of a home with a basement suite versus a similar home on the street sell for $150,000 to $200,000 more, which is significantly more than what it would cost to put a basement suite in. And I think that’s backtracked a little bit as prices have come down.

So, would you still think it’s worth putting a basement suite in? Depending how your basement’s set up, depending on the age of your home, depending on your electrical panel capacity, it could cost you anywhere from 50 to 80 grand to put in a basement suite.

Jamie:
Obviously, it depends, but let’s try to find some generals here. If you are living in say East Burnaby or New Westminster in a mid-century bungalow style home, say it’s a 2,000-foot box. If you can still achieve three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a little rec room for kids to play in, I think adding that suite in half or two-thirds of your basement makes sense.

If you live in the same era home in Deep Cove, I don’t think that buyer needs that suite. And I say that because the price point’s different. People move there that want to be close to the water. Not all price points and areas of the city value the income from a basement. Some people need more living space for their own family. So higher end markets don’t need suites as much as lower end entry price point markets.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying a house in Deep Cove doesn’t need a suite. It might help expand some of the buyers, but a lot of the buyers in those higher end markets want livability for their own family. They’re not at the top of their budget needing a suite to get in. So, the cases where that house goes up $100,000 or $150,000 for the suite are the ones where the buyers are at the top of their budget and can afford more to get that suite. And those are very common in entry level detached markets like Poco or Coquitlam.

If the suite doesn’t take away from what a typical family would need to live, most often I’m going to say add a suite. This is thinking of a 2,000 foot mid-century box home. If you have a ’90s built 4,000 foot home and the suite is just a matter of finishing half your basement, do that because you still have a significant amount of home left. But if you’re completely reconfiguring a home and a suite involves more structural work, opening up walls, and moving things around, I’d probably lean towards not. And in cases where these suites are easy to add, like the mid-century home or the 1990s home, usually the layout works and you’re not messing with the structure too much. That’s my thought, Denny.

Denny:
Anything else to note?

Jamie:
No. I think I encourage you to add a suite during the winter. I don’t encourage you to add a suite during the spring. Get the suite in now if you’re going to do a suite. Get yourself ready for a May market. Don’t do work on your home if you might want to sell it when the market has the best chance of being active. May, June, a typical spring. That would be my only closing comment. And get out there and start phoning some trades today. February is a slow month.