The Great Escape meets Charles Dickens
Creative Ideas To Close the Value Gap
The dreaded event is happening! We had been given some warning but hoped against hope it wouldn’t actually come to pass. But here it is! A For Sale sign in our next-door neighbor’s yard announces that soon we will lose our beloved friends and quiet neighbors.
Who will buy it? Who will move in? Surely it won’t remain a rental. After the shock came the questions … I wonder what they will ask for it? Will they get it? Inevitably the big question: What would ours sell for?
We soon find out the asking price and it’s a whopper! We are excited! We’re rich! Maybe we should sell … we’re rich! Oh yeah, but where would we live? Worse still I realize we could never get that much. I now have home value envy!
From the street we are both one-story brick bungalows, but public records reveal that we are smaller. Smaller lot. Smaller house. Smaller basement. Well, we’ll see about that. I dig out my tape measure. I discover that while the houses’ street frontage is the same at about 25 feet, theirs is at least another 25 feet deep into their fancy shmancy larger lot. Did I mention they have a larger lot? 5,950 to our paltry 4,460.
The wheels begin to spin and it’s a short leap from what we might make now to, how can we make our home worth more? I’m determined to close this value gap. Do we pop the top, add a bedroom, open the floorplan, remodel or expand our garage? What’s the best way to increase the value of our home? Popping the top would be incredibly expensive, and where would the staircase go? I know, ask a Realtor. So we did.
I thought adding square footage to the 1911 garage and making it a functional two-car garage rather than an oversized brick tool shed would be an inexpensive way to increase value. Right now I can drive into the garage alright, but I just can’t open the car door to get out. Someday someone will want our spare formal dining room table and eight chairs, which are also currently parked in the garage. Maybe we could throw them in for a future buyer for more value? People like big garages, don’t they?
It turns out that most of my bright ideas were wrong. Go figure. As patiently explained by several long-suffering Realtor friends of mine the overriding factor is square footage, plain and simple.
What is the square footage of your house? What is the price per square foot in your neighborhood’s recent sales? Voila, you have a value. Now of course it is not quite as simple as that, as all square footage are not created equal. There is above ground, basement and finished square footage prices to be parsed and compared and it takes the experience and expertise of a Realtor or builder to do that. There are many fine Realtors with plenty of Park Hill experience who can help us determine the value of our homes.
I have another idea! Why not expand the crawlspace! Dig it out and finish it, simple. Except there are no windows, and to remove the 2,000 square feet of petrified clay would be a big job even for the Count of Monte Christo with 20 to 30 years to kill.
I can see myself, having pressed my grandchildren into service, removing the dirt by bucket brigade through the finished basement up the steps and out into the garden. The Great Escape meets Charles Dickens. If you see free Park Hill dirt being touted via social media … well, first come first serve.
Neil Funsch has been a mortgage broker for 19 years, the last five in Park Hill. He can be reached at 303-229-2684 or neil.funsch@gmail.com.