If you’re like most people, you’ve heard time and time again that purchasing a home is a great investment. But in recent years, financial experts haven’t quite been singing that same tune like they were in times past.
In fact, if you don’t have a solid plan when you buy a home, it could actually prove to be a very poor investment on your part. So to help ensure that you don’t find yourself stuck with a home that isn’t proving to be a good investment for you, here are three ways you can make your home a better investment.
View It As A Pure Investment
One of the best ways you can make your home a good investment is to have this be your purpose for purchasing this home from the beginning. This means that you’ll make decisions based more on the home as an investment rather than just as a place for you to live.
A great way that many people do this, according to Tanza Loudenback, a contributor to Business Insider, is to purchase something like a duplex and then rent out the homes that you’re not living in. This will allow you to be making money off the rent you charge your tenants and use that to offset your costs. This could prove to be a great way to make money off of your home purchase.
Make Financially Modest Upgrades
Another way you can use your home purchase as an investment is to take steps that will ensure that you make money off the home when you sell it. While this can be a hard thing to ensure, there are some things you can do that will increase your chances of being able to make a profit off the sale of your property.
HGTV shares that one of the best ways to do this is to make financially modest upgrades to your property that will then allow you to ask for more when you sell the home. Some projects you might want to take on could include finishing a bare basement, adding a deck, painting the interior and exterior of the home, and upgrading the kitchen and bathrooms. Just make sure that you’re not putting more money into the home than you’ll be able to get out of it.
Rent Out Some Of Your Space
Michelle Fox, a contributor to CNBC.com, shares that even if you don’t buy a piece of property where you can rent out an entire living space and act as a landlord to make more money, you can still take advantage of some of the perks or space you have as a homeowner to make your home more of an investment opportunity.
Doing things like renting out a room, renting storage space, renting parking spaces or finding other ways to bring in additional income could help make your home purchase more of investment and less of just a pure cost to you.
To help you view your home purchase in a positive financial light, consider using the tips mentioned above to help your home be a better investment.