Anne, there are lots of variables, here. some … What’s the square footage? need to lay sprinkers? Need to grade/trench? sod or seed? (My sister in the Seattle area did well with seed. I’m in San Diego, so went with sod.)
I just landscaped my backyard (~1400 sf) and did as much as I could to keep the costs down, given that I wasn’t physically able to do any of it, but the supervising.
We had to have the area graded and, because the gound in the area is mostly decomposed granit, we had to have a guy come in with a machine (frontloader?) to dig the sprinkler lines. $500 total, here.
Had my gardner order/install the sprinklers, top soil and sod for $2800. The sod and top soil were ~$800. The sprinkler parts and misc items were ~$300
There was a lot more to my landscaping project than putting in sod/sprinklers, but my boyfriend did the rest.
Anybody ever had a front yard landscaped? The yard will be just dirt when the rehab is done. I’d like to have the front landscaped- you know, clean grass, a few nice lilies, whatever, something classy but not too fussy.
I called a local nursery and the young-sounding guy told me it would be $4000! He gave me the lecture on how good landscaping would increase the value of the home by $10K, and that he knew all this because he was a ‘landscape architecture student’. Yeesh. Heck, even I can put in a few lilies to save $4K.
How much does this cost where you live? The rehab will have oodles of street appeal when it’s done- I don’t want an unfinished or underfinished front yard to detract from the appeal.
If the front does not need a lot of grading work, then just order up the sod right from a local sod farm. Sod is easy to install, just keep it watered. Also why not just sod it and when you place the ad in the paper include a line that reads something like “$2000 landscape credit available”…or what ever you feel comfortable with. If you are going to sell this property on a L/O I would think this would work well for you.