Painting Before You Sell: What It Costs Against New Siding

Pete's house in Rockford did not look like it was failing. It was sun faded, and it had been about ten years since anyone put a brush on it, but from the curb it read as tired rather than urgent. That is exactly the problem. Without a keen eye for what failing paint actually looks like, you would never have guessed the paint was coming off that house. What was there were tiny cracks, hairline stuff you have to be standing close to see, and those tiny cracks were already letting go of paint in large sections.

If you are getting ready to list, that matters more than it does for the rest of us. A buyer forms an opinion walking up the driveway, before they ever reach the front door. And a buyer's inspector gets a great deal closer than the driveway. Paint that is quietly letting go is the kind of thing that turns into a conversation you would rather not be having in the middle of a negotiation.

So the question we get is a fair one. If the exterior needs attention before you sell, do you paint it or do you replace the siding? On the houses we walk, painting is almost always the better move for somebody who is listing, and the reason is not complicated.

Start with what actually leaves your account. Published figures put a typical exterior repaint on a 2,000 square foot home between $3,000 and $9,000. Replacing the siding on that same house generally starts around $10,000 and climbs past $20,000, and in Illinois siding runs roughly $11 per square foot installed. That is a gap of $10,000 or more on the same house, for a result most buyers read exactly the same way from the sidewalk: this place has been looked after.

Siding does earn back a healthy share of what you put in when the house finally sells. Earning most of it back is not the same as keeping it, though. On an $18,000 siding job you are still writing an $18,000 check right now, and you are waiting on a closing table to see the bulk of it again. That is money sitting still during the exact months you are trying to qualify for your next mortgage and cover two sets of costs. A $6,000 repaint leaves something in the neighborhood of $12,000 in your pocket the whole time your house is on the market, and it puts very nearly the same face on the property.

Then there is the calendar, which sellers feel just as sharply. A full exterior repaint runs about a week and a half to two weeks of working days. Replacing siding on the same house is generally a month or more once you account for permits, material lead times, and whatever the weather decides to do. If your listing date is already set, that gap is not a small one.

The agents tend to agree on where the attention belongs. In a National Association of Realtors survey, 66 percent of agents said exterior paint is essential to curb appeal and is something a homeowner should handle before listing.

Pete's house is a real number rather than a range. We charged him $6,500, and that covered the whole exterior: siding, eaves, trim, fascia and doors, plus the deck, the railings and the porch posts. A siding quote would have covered the siding. Before any color went on we pressure washed the house, scraped it and primed it, because ten year old sun faded paint with cracking in it cannot simply be coated over and expected to hold. He went with Sherwin-Williams Granite Peak on the siding and Morning Sun as the accent, and the deck and railings went to a Honey Oak.

We are not going to tell you paint is always the answer. If your siding is rotting, if the substrate underneath is failing, if boards are cracked or missing or holding water, then paint is a cover up and a decent inspector will find it anyway. That is a siding job, and you should call a siding contractor. What we are saying is narrower than that: if your siding is sound and simply looks tired, replacing it in order to sell is an expensive way to solve what is really a cosmetic problem.

If you are listing this year and you are not sure which of those two categories your house falls into, that is worth an honest look. We will walk it with you and tell you which one it is. Free quote, no pressure either way.