5 easy home improvements during coronavirus lockdown

1. Refresh your outdoor entertaining area

If your outdoor space is looking a little bit sad, it’s a great time to get outdoors into the sunshine and spruce things up.

No matter how big or small your outdoor space is, there are plenty of little things you can do to improve the way it looks. Hang some fairy lights for night-time ambiance, add cushions, pot some plants, tidy things up, and update your outdoor furniture.

If you want to get really stuck in, consider building a beautiful big deck with built-in bench seats, or even create an outdoor kitchen so you can still entertain outside in winter - just don’t forget to get an outdoor heater.

2. Update the facade

There’s nothing worse than seeing a house with peeling paint and a neglected front yard. If you’re trying to sell your house, it will immediately put buyers off because there is little street appeal.

Your house is the first thing people see so you want to make sure it looks enticing and well looked after. You may want to repaint the gutters and doors in fresh colours and tidy up the garden by trimming hedges, freshen up garden beds and give the lawn a good mow.

You can even repaint fences and the rest of the facade to really ‘lift’ your home.

3. Update tiles

Splashback tiles can seriously date a kitchen or bathroom.

It’s hard to go wrong with modern, white tiles (like subway tiles) especially if you’re trying to sell your home as these will appeal to most buyers.

4. Change your light fixtures

Replacing dated light fixtures with modern new ones is one of the quickest ways to update your space and make it feel brand new.

5. Style your home

When you’re living in your home, it can be hard to see it with fresh eyes. But try and imagine that you’re a potential buyer seeing it for the first time. Does it feel cluttered or even too empty? Is your furniture too big for the space or positioned badly in the room? Have you mashed too many different design styles together or played it safe by being matchy matchy?

If you’ve got a keen eye for design, it’s easy to make your space look like it was designed by a professional. Rearrange the furniture so it flows better, sell furniture that’s too big and bulky and replace it with more slimline pieces that suit the space better.

Add cushions and rugs, replace ugly dark curtains in favour of light, neutral ones. Consider hanging pendant lighting, creating open shelving, updating the hardware on your cabinets, placing a throw over a chair, and adding potted plants.

Fund it with an offset sub-account

You may be thinking “I’m not made of money” but there are ways to fund these simple changes without breaking the budget.

If you’ve made extra repayments on your home loan, you could consider taking advantage of your offset sub-account.

An offset sub-account allows you to dip into the extra payments you’ve made on your home loan.

These extra repayments will accumulate separately to your normal repayments. Let’s say for example, your minimum monthly mortgage repayments are $2,000 and in one month you repay $5,000. You could withdraw the extra $3,000 whenever you like.

Some homeowners choose to redraw from their offset sub-account for expenses like:

for expenses like:

• Paying down debts

• Funding renovations

• Paying for a holiday

• Funding a wedding

Keep in mind you can only withdraw the extra repayments you’ve made on your loan - not the minimum regular repayments.

At loans.com.au, you get the flexibility of accessing your offset sub-account 24/7 by using our Smart Money app and an unlimited number of withdrawals with your redraw facility.

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