Guest Author - Donna Coogan

One of the reasons we do home improvements is to reap rewards at resale and Designed to Sell specifically targets the things you can do to improve your home when preparing to place it on the market. However, this book goes deeper than that by providing design advice and how to make the home a better space overall, which is applicable to any homeowner whether you are selling or not.

Designed to Sell is 187 pages (plus an index and resource section) and features the team from the popular HGTV show of the same name. This includes the host, Clive Pearse, the two real estate experts Shannon Freeman and Donna Freeman and the show’s interior designer, Lisa Laporta.

This book is not a “how-to” book but more of an interior design and idea book brimming with very useful home improvement advice for everyone. You’ll learn design tips about proportion, traffic flow and focal points. You’ll understand that home improvements involve decluttering, cleaning, organization, maintenance and decorating. You’ll begin to see your home in a new way and recognize the flaws and potential for every space.

The first part of the book discusses how to ready your home for sale and provides lists on what you can do a month in advance, a year in advance or longer. These suggestions include decluttering, making simple repairs, finishing bigger repairs, painting, replacing dingy carpeting, etc. This chapter also covers choosing an agent, how to see your house the way a buyer does, and how to prepare yourself emotionally to sell it.

The meat of Designed to Sell is in the decorating and home improvement tips for each room of your home. The book takes you through the living and dining rooms, the kitchen and baths, the bedroom and extra spaces like the garage. Each area of focus is from the home of someone actually trying to sell his house.

Each room begins with one “before” photo and a description of what is wrong with the space. Then the book zeros in on the “Action Plan” and the final “Make-over” with several “after” photos.

I was a little disappointed in the before and after photos. We are given one very small 2-inch “before” room shot and only partial views of the “after” shots. I must admit the after shots are very nice close-up views and because there are plenty of them, you still get a good understanding of what the design team is doing with the room. But, it would be nice to see a larger before and after picture of the entire room, in addition to the partial close-up shots to help the reader better see the real problems of the room prior to viewing the solutions.

Each section also provides the “cha-ching” which is a breakdown of the budget spent to fix and prepare the space for resale. By investing time and money in these home improvements, the buyers were all able to sell for a higher price than comparable homes on the market. Including this information further drives the point that improvements really do increase the market value of our homes so keeping them maintained is always a worthwhile investment.

After reading this book, I want to mention that Designed to Sell offers valuable information to improve your home at any time – whether you have intentions of moving or not. Sometimes people get in a rut and don’t think to fix up their home until they are planning to move and need to make it appealing to buyers. Better to embrace the idea that your home can be a beautiful, well-maintained space while you’re living there, too.

The strength of Designed to Sell is in the multitude of design tips and in sharing what is wrong with each room and how to make simple, inexpensive changes that make a world of difference in the appearance of your home.

You won’t just get the same old ideas like paint your walls. You’ll understand how to make a harmonious flow throughout your home by your choice of paint shades. You’ll learn what decorating styles in your home are detracting from the overall market value and what you can do to change that in your favor.

At first glance, I wasn’t sure if I would like this book because it seemed a bit “busy.” There are lots of photos and colors and boxed insets and it just seemed a bit on the flashy side and I questioned how valuable the actual content would be. The more I read the book the more I appreciated not only the layout – those flashy colored pages draw your attention to “Lessons Learned” and valuable tips - but I also happily discovered that Designed to Sell provides very useful and insightful nuggets for home improvements. If you follow the design team's advice and do eventually reap what you sow at resale, that makes the content all the more worthwhile.

Recommended!