CURB APPEAL tips from Kathi as featured in the Birmingham-Bloomfield Eagle

Paper: Birmingham-Bloomfield Eagle (MI)
Title: Increased curb appeal boosts neighborhood merit
Date: September 15, 2010

Curb appeal can go far beyond home maintenance, landscaping and design. It's also a crucial element to maintaining the value of a home and the surrounding neighborhood, especially with more and more foreclosed properties popping up, marring the aesthetics of neighborhoods across metro Detroit and making it more important than ever to stave off blight by keeping homes and lawns in tip-top shape.

Whether selling or staying put, maintaining a home and increasing its curb appeal not only helps maintain a home's value, but also enhances the surrounding neighborhood's allure, said Kathi Jones-Cutler, a Realtor with Max Broock in Birmingham and a staging expert.

"People want to live in a nice neighborhood, and they can tell at a glance if a home is well cared for.
Things like overgrown shrubbery, rust on railings, peeling paint, tired-looking lawns … all those things send out red flags that the home hasn't been well-maintained," Jones-Cutler said. "If a neighborhood has well-cared-for homes - no matter what size - people want to live in that neighborhood; they feel comfortable investing in a stable and desirable community." Not only are well-maintained homes more desirable, they also cost less in the long run: Many costly repairs can be avoided by taking on such projects as painting wood so it doesn't rot, and having the roof cleaned to increase its longevity, Jones-Cutler said.

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