Cash in the attic?

Unless you’ve been on Mars, you’ll know property values have slumped over the last 18 months or so and as a result the housing market virtually ground to a halt in that time too.

Image: Dennis was desperate to move to a bigger kennel, but nobody wanted his old one

So in a buyers market such as now, sellers itching to move are desperate to make their property the one that stands out from the crowd.

However, a quick hoover around and making sure the pots and pans are washed up is unlikely to cut the mustard when buyers are in the box seat.

Fortunately, a new report from Nationwide has revealed the things about your home that could make a difference when a prospective purchaser turns up on your doorstep.

Certain characteristics are likely to make a home relatively more attractive and increase its value to boot; equally, there are a few things that can lop a few pounds off its price too.

Top of the list, unsurprisingly, remains location, although unless you live in a caravan, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to do much to alter it.

More feasible to most is extending your home, with a 10% increase in floor space thought to add almost 5% to the value of a typical house.

What is more, the larger the property, the more people are willing to pay for extra room, with a similar size increase in the floor space of a detached house adding almost 7% to its price.

Add a decent sized bedroom to your property and not only is it likely to increase your home’s desirability, but on average it can add around 11% to its price too.

In a similar vein, getting DIY SOS to pop round and convert your loft to create an extra bedroom and bathroom can add up to 20% in value.

Likely to be cheaper, and certainly less intrusive than having a TV crew in your living room, would be to install central heating. Considered now to be the norm, homes without it are often sold at a price around 9% lower compared with an otherwise identical property. Meanwhile, rising energy costs and a nation’s increasingly green conscience has seen double glazing alongside cavity wall and loft insulation become an ever more sellable feature of a property. So if you’re one of the many waiting for the housing market to wake from its slumber, there’s probably never been a better time to dust down the toolkit and find out if DIY really is as simple as Handy Andy will have us all believe

Tim Leonard, Senior Reporter, Moneyfacts Group