Brian Vogt: Welcome back everyone to Ready, Set, Sold. I am your host Brian Vogt. Thanks for joining us.
As I mentioned in the last segment and also in the first segment beginning the hour today there is a subject that needs discussion, and that has to do with retaining walls. Retaining walls, I think most people know what they are. They’re usually keeping something back, usually a hillside, people put them on hills. Sometimes you can have steps going up the side of a house, sometimes even the backyard. Sometimes for swimming pools, where they may be a must.
The reason why I’m bringing up retaining walls is they are beautiful, they are fantastic, but unless you have an erosion problem, a serious one, when it comes to getting ready to sell your house, don’t decide to put them in now. Just had it three times in a row, we heard stories about people that love the look of retaining walls. One particular situation had a hill.
Now, the hill was not an erosion problem in their backyard. It was very, very nice. But they had always wanted a retaining wall, and they thought that would look so, so, so nice, and it did. After $15,000, and when they put it on the market and found out that they weren’t going to get any value for that, they were, to put it mildly, disappointed.
Again, retaining walls are fantastic when they have a purpose. If you’re buying a home and now you want to start putting that hill on a retaining wall and planning on being there for seven, 10, 15, 20 years, who knows? Hey, that makes sense. But when you’re getting ready to sell your home, retaining walls, as I mentioned earlier in the another segment about brick patios, instead of having concrete, those are the things you really don’t want to over improve. Okay?
We had another situation where it was a side of a yard, and they decided to put steps in, and they started putting some minor retaining walls in as they went up. Again, at $5,000 when they were all said and done. Return investment? Practically zero. And again, there is also the appraisal aspect of it. Most of the appraised value, I think it’s something like 94, 96%, I don’t know what it is exactly, but is on the inside of the home, and that’s usually above ground. So, that’s your first and second story, if you have one. So, it’s important to know that when you’re doing any of this yard work coming up.
Again, sometimes you want to, to put pools in, but if you did and we’ve seen that happen, that’s probably not going to be a return investment either. Yes, I know they’re very expensive, but again, as far as reselling your home, you’re just not going to see a return investment for that money, but it does look great. And I mean, I think retaining walls are fantastic. But when it comes down to the tip, understand very simply, if you can do without retaining walls, do without them. There’s not going to be return investment, cost you thousands of dollars on the other end.
With that said, I want to thank everyone for joining me today. I hope you learned something and I hope you got some information you needed to move forward. Always making sure that people know about the book, again we’ve had some great responses back. We do appreciate thatpeople have taken advantage of the offer. It’s absolutely free.
There’s no strings attached. Go to readysetsold.org, put a few bits of information so we can mail you out the book, and happy selling. Hopefully that you’ve decided to make the move and have some great success on the market, because we’ve got a great one going on right now, and hopefully sellers are taking advantage of it.
Ready Set Sold with Bryan Vogt #19-05: $5000 tip of the week: Beware of retaining walls
September 30, 2017