Inherited a dated house I never planned to renovate, and now I'm pricing paint

41 and 52 for that list is a big enough gap that one of them misunderstood the scope. Get both to break it out by line and compare the kitchen line specifically, because refresh means five different things. Paint the cabinets and swap counters is one number. New boxes and a tile backsplash is triple.

Also the wood paneling. If it's glued to plaster, removing it is a drywall job and your paint line becomes a hang and finish line. Ask before you assume it comes off.

No mortgage matters more than people give it credit for. Your carry is taxes, insurance and utilities, and vacant dwelling insurance is usually a different and pricier product than a normal homeowner policy, so confirm the rate in writing before you assume the carry number. That's often a few hundred a month on its own.

There's a third option nobody's said. Do the cheap third of it. Carpet out, paint everything, remove the paneling if it comes off easy, leave the avocado bath and the 1985 kitchen alone. That's maybe 14,000 and it moves an as-is number up meaningfully because the house stops smelling and looking abandoned. You don't get 262 but you don't take on a four month project either.

@verity that's what I'd do too. Partial cosmetic gets a bigger share of the lift than its share of the cost, in my experience, because the first thing you fix is the thing that makes buyers walk out.

@parcel the risk in the full version is that you're managing your first renovation with your own money and no contractor relationship. The 41 quote could become 55 and you have no way to tell whether that's fair.

How confident is the 262 to 270? One agent's opinion on both ends of a spread is one person's guess twice. I'd want closed comps for renovated 1960s ranches in that subdivision before I spent 41,000 on the strength of it. Note that some states don't publish sale prices at all, so you might need the agent to pull them from MLS.

Have you priced keeping it as a rental? You own it free and clear, which is the position everybody in this forum is trying to get to, and selling it means you have cash and no house. I'd want to know the rent number before I chose between two ways of selling.