Toronto real estate - improving your property value

When you purchase a new home in a new development, it comes, most of the time, with a bare piece of property covered with sod. Very often even fences are not provided, and the backyards blend together in a monotonous way.

It would seem that a new home in a new neighbourhood would be hard to improve to make it possible for its value to increase quicker than the neighbourhood average. There is, however, a cost-efficient way to raise the value of your new home by spending some money and effort on landscaping.

Landscaping is an economical solution to make your new home appear even more attractive than when you originally purchased it. When recently built homes are listed for sale, some of them are beautifully furnished and decorated, but the interior warmth and charm does not flow outside their walls. Newly developed residential areas are usually barren, with no mature trees or bushes, and hardly a perennial plant. You can make a tremendous difference by planting an attractive garden and landscaping your front yard.

When starting with an empty garden, it is important to work with a design, and plan for the future. If you don't want to spend time watering your new garden, you can install automatic watering system before planting. It will not only free-up your time while ensuring healthy growth of your plants, but it will allow you to travel without having to worry about your garden getting damaged by drought.

Once the watering system is in place, it is time for planting. To achieve the best visual effect you should, at this point, consult a good gardening book, or get someone to prepare a design for you. If you can afford hiring a landscaping company, it would be money well spent. It is, however, possible to design and plant a beautiful garden by yourself.

If you are comfortable with designing your garden yourself, you can simply use gardening books, which often provide design ideas. Some garden centres offer a service where a landscape designer will prepare a planting plan on a base of a sketch of your garden's boundaries (prepared by you). The service is offered in the hope that you will purchase plants from them.

Professional landscape designers pay attention to colour, texture, shape, height and blooming time. If you are planting flowering perennials and shrubs, you will want to ensure that your garden is equally lovely throughout the season. It is also important to use plants that will thrive in your climate and will do well in your soil type and exposure. If the size of your backyard allows, do plant a tree or two - it will provide privacy and shade. Just make sure to pick a tree whose mature size is compatible with the size of your property.

You will find that, by landscaping your front and backyard, you have extended your pleasant living space beyond the walls of your house. And, if, for any reason, you'll need to move in the next few years, your beautifully landscaped home will have a distinct advantage over other properties in your neighbourhood. And you will have increased the value of your property by far more than what you have spent.