Curb Appeal: How Landscaping Affects Your Home's Value

By Colleen C. Wilcox — Certified Negotiation Specialist (CNS), SFR, Luxury Specialist. Compass, Hinsdale IL. Last updated August 2026.

What Is Curb Appeal? (Short Answer)

Curb appeal is the impression your home makes from the street — landscaping, entry, driveway, and roofline — before a buyer ever steps inside. It's the first thing they see online and the first thing they see in person, and it sets expectations for everything that follows.

Here's what I tell sellers in Hinsdale and Oak Brook: if your landscaping looks dated, buyers assume the inside is dated too. That assumption is expensive, and it forms in about four seconds.

Does Curb Appeal Increase Home Value?

Yes — and landscaping has some of the strongest cost recovery of any pre-sale work you can do.

According to the National Association of REALTORS® / National Association of Landscape Professionals Remodeling Impact Report: Outdoor Features, standard lawn care service recovers an estimated 217% of its cost. Landscape maintenance recovers 104%. An overall landscape upgrade recovers 100%.

Read that first number again. Very little you can do to a house returns more than double, and lawn care is among the cheapest work on the list. Compare that to a kitchen refresh — more money, more disruption, and a lower recovery rate.

If the cost of getting the exterior right is what's holding you up, Compass Concierge funds pre-sale improvements — landscaping included — with no interest and no upfront payment. You repay when the home sells. For sellers whose yard needs real work rather than a cleanup, that's usually the answer.

Not sure whether the work is worth it on your specific property? Find out what your home is worth first. The right amount to spend depends entirely on your price point and your competition.

Does Curb Appeal Affect an Appraisal?

Indirectly, and it's worth understanding the mechanism because sellers routinely conflate the two.

An appraiser is primarily comparing your home to recent comparable sales — not scoring your flowerbeds. Fresh mulch will not move an appraisal. But overall condition and quality ratings do factor in, and deferred exterior maintenance is exactly the kind of thing that shows up as a condition adjustment: cracked walkways, dead trees, failing retaining walls, a driveway breaking apart.

The practical distinction: curb appeal moves your offers far more than it moves your appraisal. Landscaping determines how many people walk through the door and how they feel when they do. That shows up in the number and strength of offers, which is where the real money is. The appraisal is a backstop, and it only punishes you when neglect crosses into actual disrepair.

Both matter. They just work differently, and you should spend accordingly.

How to Improve Curb Appeal Before You List

Most sellers assume improving curb appeal means adding things. It usually means removing them.

Remove What's Overgrown

The yews planted when the house was built are now eating the front windows. The evergreens that were a nice privacy screen are now bare at the bottom and blocking light. Overgrown foundation plantings make a house look smaller, darker, and older than it is — and they're the single most common problem I see on pre-list walkthroughs in the western suburbs.

Take them out. Not trim — out. A clean foundation line with modest new plantings reads immediately as maintained.

Same for dead trees and stumps. A dead tree in the front yard is a buyer's mental deduction of several thousand dollars in removal cost, and they will overestimate it every time.

Restore Beds, Edging, and Hardscape

Black plastic edging that's heaved up out of the ground is worse than no edging. Crumbling stone borders read as neglect. Both are cheap to fix relative to the impression they leave.

Fresh mulch, crisp bed edges, weeded beds, and a power-washed walkway will transform a front yard for a few hundred dollars. This is the highest-leverage work available to you.

Resist the urge to overplant. More is not better, and neither are oversized boulders or ornate multi-tier fountains — those read as dated to most buyers and make a yard feel smaller than it is. The goal is for the landscaping to match your home's architectural style, not compete with it. A formal Georgian and a mid-century ranch want completely different front yards, and buyers register the mismatch even when they can't name it.

Clear the Clutter Buyers Actually Notice

Lawn furniture in the front yard. Play equipment the kids outgrew four years ago. A cluster of planters in varying states of life. Garden ornaments. Hoses left uncoiled.

None of these are defects. All of them signal that the property isn't quite being kept up, and collectively they cost you more than any single one of them would suggest.

If your lot backs to brush or you're on one of the larger lots in Burr Ridge, clear the property lines too. Buyers want to see where the yard ends. Ambiguity there makes a big lot feel smaller — the exact opposite of what you paid for.

How to Improve Curb Appeal on a Budget

If you're spending under $1,000, here's the order I'd do it in:

1. Remove, don't add. Cutting out overgrown shrubs costs a fraction of installing new ones and delivers more visual change. Start here.

2. Weed and mulch. Highest visual return per dollar of anything on this list.

3. Power wash. Walkway, driveway, front steps, siding near the entry. Rent one for a day. The difference is dramatic and it costs almost nothing.

4. Re-edge the beds. A clean spade-cut edge looks more expensive than plastic edging and is free.

5. Paint the front door. One can of paint, one afternoon.

6. Fix what's obviously broken. House numbers, a leaning mailbox, a burnt-out porch light, a wobbling handrail.

Every one of those is removal, cleaning, or a sub-$100 purchase. Together they cover most of the gap between "neglected" and "well kept" — which is the gap that actually costs you offers.

What Landscaping Mistakes Cost You the Most?

Ranked by damage in my experience:

Dead or dying trees. Buyers assume the worst on removal cost.

Overgrown foundation plantings. Makes the whole house look dated and small.

Heaved plastic edging and crumbling borders. Reads as deferred maintenance everywhere else.

Unused play equipment. Ages the property and narrows your buyer pool.

Overplanting and oversized ornamentation. Fountains, statuary, boulders out of scale with the house.

Front-yard lawn furniture and scattered planters. Small individually, cumulative in effect.

Unclear property lines. Makes a large lot read as average.

The through-line: none of these are structural. All of them are signals. And buyers extrapolate from signals to conclusions about the parts of the house they can't see yet.

When Should You Start? A Western Suburbs Timeline

Timing matters more here than most sellers expect, because our climate gives you a narrow window for the work that takes longest to look finished.

Fall (September–November). The best time for hard removals. Take out the overgrown yews and spindly evergreens now — a bed that was cleared in October has settled and looks intentional by April, while one cleared in March looks freshly torn up in your listing photos. Fall is also ideal for overseeding in our climate.

Winter (December–February). Plan and book. Good landscapers and stonemasons in Hinsdale and Burr Ridge fill their spring calendars by February. If you call in April you are getting whoever's left.

Early spring (March–April). Mulch, edging repair, power washing, seal coating.

Listing season (April–June). You want the work finished before photos, not during.

If you're listing next spring, the removals should happen this fall. That's the single most common timing mistake I see, and it's the one that's impossible to fix once you're behind on it.

This sequencing holds across the communities I serve, though the specifics shift with lot size and architecture — preparing an Oak Brook estate for market is a longer runway than a village lot in Hinsdale, and selling a custom home in Burr Ridge often means coordinating landscaping with the architectural character of the house itself.

One more option worth knowing about: if you'd rather get the exterior right without the pressure of a public countdown, a private listing lets you test the market while the finishing work wraps up.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does landscaping increase home value?

Yes, and it has unusually strong cost recovery. The NAR / National Association of Landscape Professionals Remodeling Impact Report puts standard lawn care service at an estimated 217% cost recovery, landscape maintenance at 104%, and an overall landscape upgrade at 100%. At the $1M+ level in Hinsdale and Oak Brook the effect is amplified, because buyers at that price point are comparing a small pool of homes and the exterior is the first differentiator they see.

How much should I spend on landscaping before selling a luxury home?

There's no fixed percentage, but the useful test is proportionality. On a $1.5M estate, a $600 cleanup that removes overgrowth and refreshes mulch often outperforms a $25,000 redesign, because luxury buyers are reading for maintenance signals, not design ambition. Spend on removal, restoration, and scale — an entry that matches the size of the house. Skip anything a buyer would want to change anyway.

Is professional staging worth it for a luxury home?

Interior staging is standard at this price point, but exterior staging is where most sellers underinvest. Buyers form their first judgment from the street and from the lead listing photo, and a poorly presented exterior discounts everything that follows. Clear sightlines, define bed edges, put furniture only where it reads as intentional, and photograph after the work is finished — not during.

Do property taxes affect what luxury buyers will pay?

In DuPage County, yes — and directly. High effective tax rates get capitalized into offers, meaning buyers subtract expected annual carrying cost from what they'll bid. It's one reason presentation matters more here than in lower-tax markets: when a buyer is already mentally deducting the tax bill, visible deferred maintenance becomes a second deduction on top of it.

How far ahead should I start preparing a luxury property for market?

Longer than most sellers expect. On an estate lot, plan 9 to 12 months. Hard removals should happen the fall before a spring listing so beds settle and look established in photos. Quality landscapers and stonemasons in Hinsdale and Burr Ridge book their spring calendars by February. A village lot can compress to 3–4 months; acreage cannot.

What do luxury buyers notice first from the curb?

Scale and upkeep, in that order. Whether the landscaping is proportionate to the house, and whether it's been maintained. Overgrown foundation plantings, a dead tree, or a cracked walkway signal deferred maintenance — and at this price point buyers assume that what's visible outside predicts what's hidden inside. That assumption is expensive and it forms in seconds.

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