Stuck in your home? Low-cost home improvements can make it feel new again.

Spring House Hunt

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Improvements can make a big difference in your home — to refresh it, make it more livable, and enhance your enjoyment of the space.

Do you feel stuck in your home?

Perhaps you purchased what you thought was a starter home, but when you tried to buy a bigger place, you discovered you were priced out of the market. Considering that the median sales price of a single-family home in Greater Boston was $883,000 in February 2025 — up almost 13 percent year-over-year, according to the Greater Boston Association of Realtors — many wannabe move-up buyers are finding themselves stuck at home.

“Home prices are only getting more expensive, and the [mortgage] rates haven’t dropped, so a lot of homeowners are trapped,” said Morgan Franklin, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Realty in Boston. “They might be younger couples who maybe went from one child to two or three, and they now need more space.”

Luckily, there are relatively low-cost improvements that can make a big difference in your home — to refresh it, make it more livable, and enhance your enjoyment of the space until the time comes — if it does — to move into a larger place.

Patrick Hope, 45, purchased a two-bedroom, one-and-one-half-bath home in Medway in August 2012, paying $270,000 and financing it with a 3.5 percent mortgage. At first, Hope’s two sons were sharing a bedroom. As they got older, the boys needed more privacy.

Hope considered moving, but interest rates and prices had risen substantially in surrounding neighborhoods. So, Hope invested $130,000 into improving his 1,291-square-foot home, building a 500-square-foot addition with two additional bedrooms. He also replaced the roof and siding.

“It allowed for personal space for the kids, which freed up some of the downstairs living space,” said Hope, who works in product marketing for a tech company. “I don’t see the market changing any time soon, so I built the house I wanted instead of buying something else.”

Jasmine Edo, 34, lives in a 950-square-foot condominium in Revere on the second floor of the building, but would like to have a backyard for her dog to enjoy. She purchased her home in September 2020 for $285,000, but due to the high housing costs and her 3.5 percent mortgage rate, she felt stuck.

“My only option was to make the place more livable, to upgrade,” said Edo, a wealth planner.

She invested about $5,000 to repaint, replace a sliding glass door, upgrade the electrical system, and replace ceiling fans and light fixtures. Now she’s saving for larger projects, like new floors and a new kitchen and bathroom.

“You just have to do it,” she said. “You want to enjoy the space you live in, so whatever you need to do to make it better for you, just make it happen.”

Lee Bardin, owner of Expert Renovation Team in Newton, said there are many projects homeowners can make to create more usable space if they are stuck in a small home.

Finishing a basement, for example, typically costs $20,000 to $25,000, he said. Due to code requirements, he recommends using that space as a home office or gym, not a bedroom.

Converting a porch into a finished den would typically run $25,000 to $30,000, he said, and minor updates to a kitchen, such as cabinet refacing ($8,000), new quartz countertops ($5,000), and a tile backsplash ($2,500) could significantly enhance the room.