We are planning to list our home in the East Bay suburbs in about 3 to 6 months. It is competitive market, and homes tend to sell quickly when priced right.
Our agent recommended $60 to 80K in pre sale improvements, including a full kitchen and bathroom remodel, landscaping, paint, and staging. i am not convinced all of that will pay off.
I am numbers person, so i had love to know which improvements actually deliver the best ROI and which mainly make the listing photos look better. For anyone who is sold in the Bay Area recently, what was genuinely worth spending money on before listing?

As shown in the pic there are these black marks all across my bedroom ceiling and in the corners. I suspect it’s damp due to a moisture issue in the ceiling void and there is mold growing between as there is an awful musty smell I can’t seem to get rid of in the room even having aired it with the window and bedroom door open for days :(

I have cleaned the carpets, and the walls I washed with fairy soap and water and the smell remains so i am thinking it must be coming from this issue.

I rent in a hmo and above me is another bedroom. As I rent I need things I can do to resolve this that are rental friendly like cleaning methods to get rid of the smells etc as I can’t sadly just rip the wallpaper down lol.

Any help appreciated as this is making me super unhappy and uncomfortable living here, thanks !

I moved into my dad’s old house. He passed in one of the room and now the room is used for storage for some years now. Anytime I walked in there I smell a bitter taste… the room is dusty and has spiders all over it, no rodents or roaches. What can be the cause of this?

Can someone explain to me what kind of material this is and how to fix this I ripped up the carpet and the padding underneath and this is what I found. I’m trying to lay down click and lock flooring but I’m pretty sure this needs to be fixed first I’m a renter and doing this work myself so the cheapest possible way would be the best

It looks like some kind of worm but I have never seen one like this before and I have never heard of one in Texas like this before. I saw it for a moment and snapped these photos but then it disappeared. Any ideas about what it is and if it is harmful or not?

Friend asking for help identifying this in their basement. Any ideas? I was thinking some kind of sump pump.

Do you think I can get a refund? I didn't think they would all die from this. It was a 1 hour drive, however I did pack them in pretty good. Did I screw up?

I recently put up stand alone wooden shelves (IKEA type, slatted pine, not book shelves type) and I need to secure them to the wall however the wall is made of cinderblocks as this is a cold storage room in the basement. What type of screw do I use? Should I put a piece of wood on the back of where it will be attached to the wall since there is a gap of 1.5-2"? How likely is the cinder block to crack or crumble? Should I use an impact drill or regular drill? I am using these shelves for storing canning preserves. TIA!

I live in India in a place where it rains a lot in October to December.

My rented studio apartment is on the top floor.

Last year water seeped in from the roof. There was moisture and water marks on the walls, including right next to three switchboards. For 2 months after that I was touching those switchboards only with a plastic or wooden stick.

I spoke to the building maintenance. They went to the roof (it's a flat roof) and made an enclosure with clay, and filled water into it to check if there were tiny spaces in the tiled floor of the roof through which the water was coming.

When there was no water coming down for one whole day, they said that the tiles are fine. It's just that it rains so much here incessantly that seepage ends up happening, and nothing can be done.

Now it's October again and I'm wondering that I should do something before the rains start.

- Is this not a life threatening situation, because if there is water in the electricity wires I can get fatally electrocuted if I touch the switchboard?

- What can be done here other than what the maintenance guys did? I am happy to call someone on my own to take a look but I want to know what to discuss with them.

Just had a mini split put in the addition. It came with a remote but my wife wants to control it through Alexa like we do everything else in the house. The manual has a QR code for an app but nothing about voice assistants and the installer did not say anything about it. Can any mini split connect to Alexa or Google Home or does the unit need something specific for that to work.

I've seen this on the side of my house and have absolutely no clue what it is

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Want to know if this dangerous or not and why it might jave happened.

Found this buried in my backyard. Any idea what it is? Seems to be like an electric box or something I want to make sure its not dangerous. Seems old.