Landscaping is one of the few improvements
that can increase not only the value of a home, but the speed with which it
sells. Here are two articles that expound on that concept.
The
ANLA article is lower on the page.
This is the Wall Street Journal article:
Selling Houses by the Yard
Worried Owners Hope Landscaping Adds Value; Trucking In Mature Oaks
By JUNE FLETCHER
August 17, 2007; Page W8
Most homeowners know that replacing the roof or
upgrading siding can enhance a house's
curb appeal and boost its sales price. Now, as the housing market continues to
weaken, some people are considering what the payback will be if they invest in
things that appraisers routinely overlook: flowers, shrubs and trees.
Real-estate agents say a nicely landscaped
property can have a pronounced effect on the asking price of a home, depending
on the region and the condition of the neighbors'
yards. Doreen Drew recently sold a house in Anthem,
Ariz., that had sculpted hedges, a lush lawn and a
backyard waterfall for $1.1 million, nearly twice the asking price of a similar
home nearby with a plainer yard. Bill Good, a broker in
Colorado Springs,
Colo., says he just sold a house
with newly planted mature bushes and fresh sod in the front yard for $1.225
million; previously it had languished on the market for more than a year at
$1.175 million. In Palm Beach County,
Fla., homes with colorful flowers and tall palms
typically sell for 10% to 15% more than those without these features, according
to agent Nancy Macaluso. That's why
she'll often lug huge potted plants
to the homes of clients whose greenery needs a boost. "It makes a difference,"
she says.
Kathleen Wolf, a researcher at the
University of Washington
in Seattle,
recently reviewed several regional studies that used appraisals or sales data to
analyze the impact of trees on single-family home prices. She found that,
overall, a lot with trees adds about 7% to a home's
price. Nearly 20% of buyers say they consider landscaping to be a "very
important" factor in their decision to buy a house, according to a new study by
the National Association of Realtors.
No Unanimity
Still, it isn't
easy to establish the worth of a living thing. And home appraisers generally don't
take green amenities into account. Ronald Napier, a Stickney, Ill., appraiser,
says there's nothing on his
assessment forms that addresses landscaping, and he rarely even mentions it in
his comments unless a yard is completely torn up or plantings are unusually
extensive. Elizabeth Sawyer, assessor for the town of South
Portland, Maine,
says her office never figures in landscaping when it values properties for tax
purposes: "The worth may be impossible to prove."
Tom Barnhart, director of appraisals for
Palm Beach County, Fla.,
uses a mass appraisal system to keep tabs on the more than 248,000 single-family
properties in his area. His office assigns a certain dollar amount to the value
of landscaping in individual neighborhoods -- there are 650 in his county -- and
then applies that number to each house within the neighborhood. That means that
homes whose owners have spent thousands on their landscaping are judged exactly
the same as those with withering trees and skimpy shrubs. "We're
using a broad brush here," Mr. Barnhart says.
Homeowners who need a professional opinion for
insurance or tax purposes typically turn to an arborist or other landscape
expert, as do insurance companies investigating claims. But even here, not all
specialists are uniformly trained. And there's
no unanimity of opinion or law as to how to judge the value of a plant. Some
people use size, trunk diameter and condition to determine the value of a
planting, while others figure the cost to replace it with the same or similar
nursery specimen. Although a guide for appraising plants has been established by
the Council of Tree and Landscape Appraisers, a consortium of industry groups,
"there are no official standards that are published as such," says Russell
Carlson, an arborist in Bear, Del.
Even professionals with years of field experience
are sometimes confused, according to Logan Nelson, an arborist in
Dane County, Wis. She
says a fellow arborist once told her that he calculated the worth of a diseased
ash tree by figuring what he would charge to treat it for five years and then
remove it when it died (which he thought was likely) -- a method that isn't
mentioned in the council's
guidelines. Homeowners need to ask arborists what sort of experience they've
had in appraising trees before hiring them, Ms. Nelson says.
Perplexing standards aren't
the only problem. Three-year-old Horticultural Asset Management of Raleigh,
N.C., also known as HMI (the company's
motto is "Money Grows On Trees"), has found a niche assessing the worth of trees
as they grow; it says sales have jumped 30% in the first six months of 2007 over
the same period last year. For an average cost of $500, their appraisal of a
yard notes the condition of each plant and what it will be worth in five years.
Among their customers: Dan Sharp, an information-technology executive in
Stamford, Conn., who's
shopping for insurance for the more than 100 trees and shrubs in his
acre-and-a-half yard. He's worried by
forecasted spikes in hurricanes and nor'easters,
which could wipe out the leafy canopy of ornamental cherries, Japanese maples
and other foliage that he's been
nurturing for decades. "Right now, I'm
unprotected," he says. HMI recently assessed the plantings at $600,000.
Chris Pieper hired HMI to prepare a similar
assessment, not for insurance purposes but as a marketing tool to highlight the
$100,000 of dogwoods, gardenias and other ornamentals that he recently planted
in his two-acre yard in Cary,
N.C.; the property is on the market
for $1.7 million. Mr. Pieper says he isn't
a "plant person" -- he can't even
identify most of the greenery in his own yard. Still, he felt mature trees and
bushes would give his 10-year-old home a more "settled" look and an edge in a
slow market. He says of potential buyers, "I think it will sway them."
Builders and developers are trying to sway buyers
with beefed-up landscaping, too. Taylor Woodrow, the American division of Taylor
Wimpey headquartered in Solihull,
England, has raised its
per-lot spending on landscaping in new subdivisions by 5% to 10% since 2005,
according to Tom Spence, a vice president for land development for the company's
Florida division. Mr. Spence says that he can't
always build around existing trees -- in fact, in most of his projects he must
remove all of them to satisfy building regulations. But whenever possible, he
tries to move plantings to a nursery, keep them alive and then replant them once
construction is complete.
Winthrop,
a new 60-acre project in Riverview, is being built on what was once a cow
pasture. Now it's being turned into
an Old Florida-style landscape, complete with mature live oaks, pines and crape
myrtles, plus a 30-acre wetland. (The community will eventually have 400 homes
ranging from $300,000 to $500,000.) Greening the site will add $1 million to
development costs, Mr. Spence says, but he estimates that each dollar spent on
landscaping adds about five more to the price of the home. "People like a
community to have an aged look," he says.
Tree Swipes House
Real "aged" landscaping has its drawbacks,
however. A little over a year ago, Gina Congrave, a retired investment banker,
bought a brand-new, $2.13 million home in
Westport, Conn., that
was built on the site of a house that had been torn down. Although the builder
had cleared most of the half-acre lot, he left six towering pine trees that
helped the new home blend into the existing neighborhood. Ms.Congrave admired
the trees for a few months -- until a windstorm blew down several huge branches
and one of them "swiped" her house. An arborist told her that her big trees had
been held up by smaller ones when the lot was heavily wooded; now they were
unsupported, and more vulnerable during storms.
Afraid that the trees might topple onto and
damage her roof, Ms. Congrave spent $6,000 to have them removed. "That's
a big chunk of change," she says. Since then, she's
spent $80,000 to bring in more manageable 15- to 20-foot-tall arborvitae,
hollies, pears and dogwoods to restore her yard's
established look. (She made sure to have them planted far away from the house.)
Poorly maintained lots can also be as big a
turnoff to buyers as bare ones, says Joy Brillante, an
Austin, Texas,
real-estate agent, even reducing the perceived value of the property. And upkeep
isn't the only issue. Ms. Brillante
recently represented a buyer who paid $249,000 for a home with a tangle of brush
and trees. When the new owner trimmed them back, she discovered a lake view. If
the seller had cleared out the yard, Ms. Brillante estimates that he might have
gotten as much as $10,000 more for the house. "Nobody knew the view was there,"
she says.
For some people, the value of trees can't
be measured in dollars and cents. Tab Bottoms, a businessman, and his wife,
Leigh Bielenberg, a designer, have spent a total of $24,000 in legal fees and
appraisal costs to protect a 200-year-old red oak, valued at $25,000, that
towers over their yard in Atlanta.
They've spent three years in an
ultimately futile legal battle to get a developer to re-site the house he plans
to build on the lot next door, so that construction won't
hurt the tree. So far, the builder's
bulldozers haven't shown up, but if
the tree does die, the couple plan to move. It's
old trees, rather than architecture, that make a property distinctive, says Mr.
Bottoms. "Money can't replace them."
end
This publication source of this
article has been lost, but it is good information:
Smart
Landscaping Adds Curb Appeal (and Value) to Your Home
First impressions are lasting impressions,
and in the highly competitive real estate market smart landscaping can enhance
curb appeal and benefit both Realtors® and their clients, says the American
Nursery & Landscape Association (ANLA). Gina Carr, Broker/owner of Century 21
Advantage in Atlanta, agrees. "The main reason Realtors® don't show a house is
lack of curb appeal. Take a so‑so house, add nice landscaping, and it's going to
get shown more frequently and sell faster," Carr explains.
The details around the front door, the presence of trees, shrubs and attractive
plants, and the overall appearance of the front yard are among the first things
the buyer sees. This first impression leads the buyer to make assumptions about
the entire house. A neat and inviting yard encourages the buyer to think
positively about what's inside and a "nice yard" becomes a “nice home." A tired,
poorly maintained yard, on the other hand, suggests that there may be other
things inside the home that the owner has neglected to take care of.
