If you are thinking of home improvements that will offer the best return when you sell your home, you may want to wait before updating the kitchen or adding a new bath.

Your greatest return on dollars invested now could be for increasing a home’s curb appeal. Your goal should be to make the outside of the house look really great so people fall in love with it before they even step out of the car.

Freshly painted trim and new hardware also help a home show well. And landscaping, including well-manicured trees and shrubs, can help older homes compete in the marketplace.

New windows, doors and siding are more expensive improvements but make homes look well-attended. They also help make homes more energy efficient, which is a factor with today’s high energy costs.

During the housing boom, kitchen and bath projects brought a 90 percent return on investment when the home was sold. That’s not true anymore. Now the return is about 70 percent or lower. Remodeling activity peaked in 2006, declined in 2007, and is expected to decline by 4.8 percent a year through 2009, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

If a remodeling project makes a home stand out from others in a similar price range, it might still be a good idea. But beware of remodeling on the cheap. Inferior cabinets and poor workmanship won’t fool buyers. Home searchers aren’t making snap decisions in these times. They’re taking their time and paying more attention to value.

That being said, go back to improving the appearance of your home from the outside. Potted flowers, trimmed bushes, and an edged lawn are less-expensive projects that give buyers that all-important, positive first impression.