Bucketsful. We are putting it on the market (again) tomorrow. The first time it was up for sale, we spend $4000 "neutralizing" and removing wallpaper, and about $2000 in general repairs and replacements. This time, we spent $15000 on landscaping, mold removal, and waterproofing the basement, another $2000 on more paint, another $1800 to replace a ceiling fan, fireplace screen, replace a faucet and do some repair to the siding. I hope it sells this time. It's a great house with 1 1/2 acres and 3500 square feet, but it's 40 years old, and although built to last forever, most people shopping in this price range want new...think McMansions on postage stamp lots. I'm tired of worrying about it. We moved out 2 years ago, and I'm tired of sinking $ into it.

Well at least a portion of the money spent is tax deductible.
Ron

Isn't it only tax deductible if your have to pay a capital gains tax on the sale of the house? Not many have to do that anymore.

Jeff, we spent about $6000 fixing up our $150,000 house to sell about a year ago. It hasn't sold yet. Things we did included removing wallpaper that we had grumpily lived with for 12 years, texturing the walls and painting where the wallpaper irregularly pulled off the skim coat of plaster. (This is why we had lived with it - we wanted it replastered and had no place to live while all that work was done.) We repainted two of the three bedrooms and the bath, touched up the third bedroom. We scrubbed, primed, and painted the basement cement walls, repaired the stair treads and put down new vinyl tile and aluminum stairnose going down the basement stairs. We installed laminate wallboard over the peeling wallpaper in the basement stairwell. We also had a small crack in the basement wall repaired with high-pressure urethane injection. We had the bathroom ceiling repaired (we had lived with stains and some gaping around the new heater/vent fan. We had the hardwood floors refinished. There is a built-in shelf in the dining area of the living room that was pure 1950 - scalloped trim and chipping white paint. The built-in is on a piano hinge and is the door to a cedar closet that is situated in the stairwell going down to the basement. We had the built-in removed and remade with oak, which I stained and polyurethaned. There is a stairway going up to a room above the garage near the dining area. We had the top of the wall cut-out for the stairs topped with oak, and oak trim put on the newel post at the bottom. I also had a new floor put into the front closet and I tiled that with the same vinyl from the basement stairs. We also painted the stairwell between the house and the garage, and tiled those stairs. We had the trim on the door to the back yard from the garage replaced and painted. We put a new storm door on the back door from the house to the back yard. We painted all four exterior doors and the garage door. Most of the work was done by neighbors we hired, since I cannot do hard labor anymore (joint problems) and DH was busy at work and not that handy. I painted doors and stained and urethaned wood, bought supplies, and supervised. BTW, the house started out at $165,000. I did FSBO for five months before we had a realtor take over and not one realtor showed the house to a client when it was FSBO and in the MLS. It gets shown occasionally now, but the market here has been almost frozen, not just slow.

Probably $3-4K and a lot of sweat equity to sell our $180K house.

Nothing. Other than straightening it up and decluttering, we didn't spend anything at all. We'd lived in the home 12 years and made all routine maintence, painting, etc. for our use of the home and didn't wait until we wanted to sell it. We enjoyed it while we lived in it. Upon sale we listed and sold.

I think I will blow your curve!

Under $1k, probably. And some of that was because after we listed, things started breaking! Replaced a ceiling fan, replaced the built-in microwave, a/c started making noise, kitchen disposal started leaking, etc.

Mostly we just sold extra furniture, decluttered, cleaned, etc. Listed in August of last year, had a buyer the first week that dropped out 2 weeks later, sold in October and closed in November. So it was a total of about 3.5 months from listing to close.

On the advice of our agent, we replaced the kitchen sink and faucet (inexpensive stainless) about $250. About $75 to replace the kitchen hardware. We moved about 1/3 of our furniture into storage ($35/mo) to make the house seem more spaceious (1650 sq ft). The exterior had been painted 2 years prior, so looked fine as did the interior paint (neutral warm white). New welcome mat ($15), some new annuals by the entrance (less than $25).
About $50 to rent a steam cleaner for the carpet. I scrubbed and polished the interior. Scrubbed the front door, flanking shutters, polished the glass in the outside lights.
Total spent was less than $500. (The house was 14 years old; we had purchased it new and had maintained it meticulously)
Had a full price offer in 11 days ($307,000). The buyers lived out of state and didn't even see the house. Their agent liked it and they sent their parents to look at it.