Your home is likely your largest asset. You’ve probably cared for it lovingly, and put some blood, sweat, and tears into it — whether you bought it move-in ready or not. Most homeowners make changes to their homes because usually, they aren’t perfectly suited to their tastes on move-in day. Perhaps you’ve added a fresh coat of paint to your living room wall, or installed new hardwood floors, or even undergone an entire kitchen remodel.

Regardless of the scope of the project, you should track the improvements you’ve made.

Sometimes when we get a new listing, our seller clients will send us a bulleted list of updates they’ve made to their residence over the past few years. This is fantastic! We “pretty it up” and make it available to potential buyers so they can see the list of improvements that have been made and get an idea of how well the current owners have cared for the home. This adds value.

If you ever plan to sell your home, start tracking your home projects now, using this free printable Home Updates Worksheet.

To give you an idea of what we mean by seeing a home’s improved value by simply tracking updates and projects made to the property, take a look at this example:

One of our most recent listings — my own house, actually — was purchased as a 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath brick ranch in 2008 with a dated, closed off kitchen, small dining room, vanilla basement, and boring yard. Over the past 8 years, my husband and I made several improvements:

• Built a huge deck + pavered patio in the backyard
• Added tons of perennials, a few trees, two raised garden beds, and a rose garden
• Installed a new hot water heater and added a water softener
• Completely remodeled the kitchen
• Converted the half bath to a full master bath
• Painted every room
• … and more

I tracked every single update on a worksheet. When it came time to put it on the market, I knew exactly what we had done to the property and when. And we could easily portray this to potential home buyers.

Do you own a home? Print this worksheet, store it in a safe place, and next time you finish a house project, record what you did. Simple as that.