Spring DIY fever is on the way - how will you pay?

Should you be considering home improvements? And if you decide to go ahead, how will you finance them? The obvious answer is to consider a personal loan - and there are plenty of good deals on the market - but since the improvements are tied up with the value of your home, you might find a better deal by remortgaging.

Remortgaging tends to be the cheapest way that most of us can borrow money and, if youre going to be adding value to your property, it may well be the most sensible way of paying for home improvements.

Remember that you can often take out additional borrowing on a different basis from your existing loan, perhaps borrowing a new tranche of cash with a discounted loan to add to the fixed rate offer you have already, or vice versa.

An extra bathroom should pay for itself, as long as it does not replace a bedroom in a small house. A large house with several bedrooms could stand losing a bedroom and an extra bathroom in a house with five bedrooms would be a plus.

But beware - some "improvements" are a sure-fire way to send a property's value falling. These include bodged DIY, such as poorly fitted cupboards and kitchens, loud external decoration, polystyrene ceiling tiles and the removal of period features.

Read more:Spring is coming, and so are home improvements - the knocking of the first hammer into a thumb is due shortly!

12 March 2007 © Moneyextra.com

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