It's odd how often I come across prospective sellers who have lived in their house without doing almost any upgrades (other than the those that are pretty much mandatory) and then want to list their house for close to the same price as the competitors who *have* not only put maintenance money into their home, but kept upgrading it as well.
For an example, I've been in a number of homes where the owner bought new from the builder and lived in it for several years without even freshening up the paint over the builder's bland default paint colours, or where they haven't even upgraded even the most prominent light fixtures from what the builder installed (usually very cheap).
Home buyers and sellers should keep in mind that spending a little money on a continual basis to keep the house up to date is often times a lot cheaper than finding out down the road that no one wants to buy the house for even close to market rates because "it's dated" and they would need to spend a lot of money on top of the purchase price, to bring it up to date.
Imagine yourself going to the fruit market to buy apples - which ones do you pick?
The cleanest, shiniest apple that's in the best shape, right?
It's no different with a house.
The typical rule of thumb is that you should plan *on average*, to spend 1% of the value of your house, on maintaining your house every year. Now, some years you might not spend anything but that's just going to catch up on you at some point.
And if you try to sell without having spent the money, well, it will catch up on you in the form of lower than expected offers for your home.
To paraphrase the the old TV commercial for Fram oil filters
"You can pay now or you can pay later"
