Why Your Garage Door is One of the Best Ways to Increase Your Home’s Curb Appeal

Curb appeal means exactly what it says: it’s the ‘appeal’, or how attractive your home is, from the ‘curb’, or street. In other words, curb appeal means how good your home looks from the outside.

While most homeowners have pride of ownership and want their homes to look their best, curb appeal really has no dollar value unless you’re selling your house. Then it has lots of dollar value.

Still, people will go out of their way, and over budget, to keep their homes’ exteriors looking great, including improvements to the landscape, keeping windows clean and up to date, making the entranceway more inviting and so on. So why do they do it if it won’t pay off unless they put the house on the market? In addition to the pride thing, there’s more than a little ‘keeping up with the Jones’’ because no one wants to have the worst looking home in a neighborhood. Especially if they are selling.

Why is Curb Appeal so Important?

The term curb appeal was coined back in the day when home buyers literally drove around to look at homes. So the look of a home from the street, where the buyers would be in their cars, became the first hurdle to getting buyers interested in a home. Very often, buyers would not even get out of the car if they didn’t like the look of the home from the car – or its curb appeal.

Today curb appeal is even more important. With the advent of online shopping for a home, you don’t even have the luxury of presenting your house in person. Instead, it better look good on Google Streetview and any images on a realtor’s web site. If it doesn’t, prospective buyers won’t even bother to visit.

Your Garage Door & the Curb Appeal of Your Home

We’ve told you many times that a garage door can account for a large portion of your home’s appearance; up to 35% of the visible area of your home from the street.

Yet despite that fact, we were always disappointed whenever we saw “How to Improve Your Curb Appeal” posts and few if any of them mentioned garage doors.

That is, until now.

Last summer, U.S. News & World Report published the article “10 Home Renovations With the Best Return on Investment”. The articles, based on an analysis by Remodelling Magazine, listed home renovations according to the cost of the renovation versus how much the renovation increased the value of a home.

Unlike other similar articles, this one looked at the entire home, inside and out, to come up with their suggested renos. 40% of the highest return renos were to the home’s exterior.

To our great pleasure, the article’s author wrote, “when it comes to what it considers upscale renovations, Remodeling Magazine says replacing the garage door offers the best return on investment.”

Yes! In your face kitchen remodeling! Take that bathroom renos!

Homeowners could expect to get back 85% of their investment by installing a new garage door.

Why Curb Appeal is More Important than Ever

Home prices in Ontario and the GTA are cooling somewhat since the highs of 2017. That means residential real estate isn’t the sellers’ market it was not too long ago. If you’re even thinking of selling, you have to prepare for more competition from increased listings by people who are trying to sell their house before prices go any lower. Gone are the days of bidding wars for fixer-uppers.

To learn more about choosing the right garage door to maximize the value of your home, whether or not you’re selling, please contact us here at Upper Canada Garage Door.