When the housing market was up, credit was readily available and selling your home was just as easy as placing a for sale sign in your yard, the easy way to trade in your home for a new one was to sell and get the heck out of it.

Most homeowners spend thousands of dollars on home improvements, renovating areas of their home in hopes to improve their appraisal and get ready for a trade in. Some of these improvements such as landscaping, upgraded floors, renovated bathrooms and etc… did not even satisfy the current homeowner’s desires, and was thought of as simply “the thing to do”.

Well, why not take a different approach, since chances if your home is upside down, it might be a little while before you are able to trade in that home of yours. Why not renovate the home in a way that makes YOU happier and more comfortable living there for awhile longer? When you get around to selling when the market improves, you’ll probably recover most (though not all) of the costs – and maybe you’ll find you’ve been liking the place so much that you don’t want to move after all!