How much value does good landscaping add to a house?

Good landscape design can add up to 20 percent to your home's value, so it's not surprising that poor exterior choices can have the opposite effect. Landscaping can add tens of thousands of dollars to the value of your property. In fact, it's one of the few home improvements you can do that not only adds value right away, but also increases in value as the years go by. While the concepts of decoration and interior design go out of fashion and mechanical systems wear out, plants grow fuller and more robust over the years.

Here are 10 landscaping projects that industry experts say are worth investing to increase the value of your home. If you don't plan to stay in a house long enough to reap the fruits of your landscaping choice, do a review and decide if it's right to let out your indoor Johnny Appleseed. The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) recommends that homeowners invest 10 percent of the home's value in landscaping. A Virginia Cooperative Extension survey found that gardening expenses, especially large ones, “significantly increase the perceived value of They can be equipped with sensors that detect your garden's air and water levels and water only when needed.

While a well-designed landscape would prove to be beneficial in increasing property values from the point of view of exterior attractiveness, poor landscaping can cause property values to drop by 10 percent, according to a study by the Journal of Environmental Horticulture. A tidy lawn leaves the buyer with the impression that they are seeing a landscape that is easy to maintain. The University of Michigan conducted a study and found that consumers place more value on a garden home. This advantage ranges from 5.5 percent to 12.7 percent, depending on the type of landscaping and the original value of the home.

Many of today's shoppers love landscaping, but don't have the time or desire to spend the time it traditionally takes to maintain it. Landscape architecture goes beyond plantations to include structural features such as lighting, fences, garden paths, fire pits, swimming pools and ponds. During a meeting with customers recently to discuss how to prepare their home for sale, the topic of landscaping came up.