4 Tips for Incredible Kitchen Rehabs in 2016

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4 Tips for Incredible Kitchen Rehabs in 2016

April 21, 2016

By Tarek El Moussa

It’s no secret that kitchens sell houses. If you create a space where your buyers want to hang out, cook together, eat, and enjoy their morning coffee, your house probably isn’t going to stay on the market very long. While Christina does all of the design work for our rehabs, we work together on which materials to use and which rehabs are the most cost effective. As we’ve teamed up to stay under budget without skimping on important rehabs, we’ve come up with a few really great tips for incredible kitchen rehabs that’ll sell more houses for you in 2016.

Neutral Colors – Not Boring Colors

Christina has such a great flair for style and colors that I trust her to pick out color palettes that’ll wow just about anyone. Everyone has different tastes, and Christina and I both know that we can’t just pick the colors she’d put in our kitchen (even if they’re completely perfect for us).

But you don’t want to just choose white or beige. You want a kitchen that will work with a bunch of different styles, but you don’t want boring colors that won’t inspire buyers to imagine themselves living in this kitchen. That’s why we go with rich wood tones, grays, and blacks. With a muted, neutral palette, you leave room for colorful splashes and personality, but you don’t create something so generic that your buyers will immediately think, “Well, I’d have to paint that!”

Integrated Kitchen Spaces

Thanks to the popularity of open floor plans, you have a lot more options for your kitchen designs. We like an open kitchen with an island counter where your buyers can put some barstools for a fun communal space for cooking or hanging out together. The island divides the kitchen and living spaces without blocking them off like a wall would, so your buyers have more room for entertaining guests and enjoying each other’s company.

Commercial-Grade Appliances

Especially when we rehab higher-end flips, we really like going with commercial-grade kitchen appliances. When buyers walk in and see a commercial-grade refrigerator, oven, and stove, they see quality, and they imagine themselves cooking there and really enjoying it. These appliances usually don’t cost much more than regular residential refrigerators and ovens, and they look cool, too.

Lookalike Granite Countertops

Here’s one of our biggest “secrets” (if you’ve seen our show, you know that we don’t actually keep any secrets about our rehabs). You can get a faux granite countertop that looks and feels like granite, with all of the variations and cool visual textures, but costs a lot less. With an engineered countertop like this, you can put more money into other rehabs, and your buyers will still get a really great countertop that looks and feels just like granite.

These are some of my favorite kitchen rehab tips for our fix-and-flip projects this year because they let you save money and create kitchens that buyers love. These tips have saved our kitchen rehab budgets more than a few times, and we’ll definitely be using them to keep selling more flip homes in the future. Try them out and see how much better your kitchen rehabs can be.

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Tarek El Moussa

Tarek and Christina El Moussa have over a decade of professional real estate experience and have been featured in national print publications, online media outlets, and a popular real estate TV show. Tarek is known for his determination to get the job done and doing it right.