If you’re looking to sell your home in the near future, you want to get as much money as you possibly can for it. After all, your home is most likely your biggest investment. So what can you do increase the value of your home?

New Jersey realtors recommend using a professional landscaper. When prospective buyers look at your home, the first thing they see is the front yard. They want a home that has curb appeal—a home that looks inviting. If they see a lawn overgrown with weeds or a bare dirt area that looks unattractive, they may quickly move on to the next house.

In fact, surveys show that home buyers are looking for homes with sophisticated designs. Survey participants were shown photos of a new home with landscaping consisting of various designs and plants. They preferred homes with more intricate designs, large evergreen plants, annual color plants and colored landscape.

The increase in value from a home with no landscape to a home that is well-landscaped depends on the location. In Louisiana, the average increase is 5.5 percent, while the increase is more than double that amount in South Carolina (11.4 percent). This means that a home worth $200,000 can increase by $11,000 with new landscaping. In South Carolina, the same home would increase its value by $22,800. 

What Should You Do?
Some real estate professionals recommend investing 10 percent of the value of your home in landscaping. So for the same $200,000 home in the example above, you should invest $20,000. But many homeowners don’t have that much money to spend. So what are the options in this case?

At the very minimum, you should focus on adding color to your yard. Focus on a good mix of flowering shrubs, annuals and perennials. Remove all the weeds and work on mulching and edging. Do what you can to get your lawn as full and green as possible. Doing this is fairly inexpensive. In fact, if you don’t have the time to do it yourself, you can hire someone to do it for you for just a few hundred dollars.

Focus on the actual home as well. Touch up the paint. Put a fresh coat of paint on the front door. Add new house numbers. These simple fixes will boost the attractiveness of your home.

How Tussey Landscaping Can Help
Do you have ideas for what you want to do the exterior of your home? If you have a design in mind, Tussey Landscaping can help you achieve it. We have more than 20 years of experience designing beautiful outdoor spaces for homes in Hollidaysburg, State College and the surrounding areas. 

​Our award-winning company specializes in many aspects of landscaping, including design, swimming pools, gardens, outdoor audio and lighting, pergolas, pavilions and hardscapes. We handle ponds, patios, garden fountains, waterfalls, retaining walls, landscaping services and much more. Our dedicated staff will provide you with top-quality customer service and help you design the front yard and backyard of your dreams. Contact us today to get started on a gorgeous outdoor space that will have your neighbors talking.
​

So you have been saving pictures you find online or in a catalog for months, or maybe even years, and now you are browsing the internet trying to decide who to hire. How on earth are you supposed to make a decision? You may have talked to several contractors, why was the one contractor's estimate so high priced? And the other is so low you wonder how they could possibly do it for that budget? What about finding a contractor in the middle somewhere?

Stick around and read on. We'll offer some pointers on things you can do to double check and make sure you are hiring a respectable trustworthy contractor. ​

The above pointers are our best effort to give you all the things that you should consider in the process of hiring a landscape company. Our goal is to do our best to provide you with the information you need to know and consider, and the possible consequences of those choices, and then stand back and give you the freedom to make your decision. No pressure. So many people find this process overwhelming, others just call their buddy's friend who does landscaping and have them come over and do the project, and still others simply hire the lowest bid.

We've run into situations where the homeowner got 3 different bids on a project, one of them being ours. The lowest bid was literally 10 times less than ours. That homeowner later confided in us that as he considered these different bids, he decided there is no way possible that the lowest bid could accomplish his goal. (It would not even have covered 1/4 of the material costs, let alone the labor and equipment costs.)

This particular homeowner had had some experience in hiring contractors, he'd done it before, and understood what happens when something is "too good to be true" For instance, just a few blocks away, another homeowner had hired a company to do a large backyard project. That second homeowner spent 6 digits on a large outdoor living space project with this first company. But... 2 years later problems began surfacing. They brought in an expert from the product manufacturer, and discovered the entire project was failing due to improper construction. This homowner ended up spending 3 times what he originally had with the lower priced company to remove all the incorrectly installed product, and re-install his dream outdoor living space. Today, over ten years later, that outdoor living space is still functioning as intended and is more beautiful than ever. 

I just went off on that storytelling venture, simply to try to offer information and perspective as what can happen in the real world. The information is yours to digest and choose a way forward for your project. We understand, we are not a good fit for every customer, and every project. And that's ok. But regardless, we still want you to succeed with your vision for your backyard, and want to protect all of you from expensive regrets. 

Good luck with your project, and as always, we are always available to discuss and answer any questions you may have. You can easily message us on our Facebook page as well if you'd rather.

​Cheers!