A cleanout is low cost and fast, and it lets a $400 to $600 home inspection do its job properly, surfacing what genuinely needs disclosure rather than what is simply hidden behind boxes. Renovation, by contrast, ties up estate funds and time for weeks with no guarantee the spend comes back at closing.
The one exception is anything that affects safety or financing, exposed wiring, a failed furnace, a roof actively leaking, since a lender may decline to fund a purchase on a home with an unresolved defect of that kind regardless of price. Everything cosmetic can usually wait for the next owner to decide.
What does move the number, in either direction, is confirming what a previous owner actually did to the house without a permit. Joel Dyck's hand-reviewed valuation documents that work so the estate prices the home on what it really is.
Get your hand-reviewed valuation from Joel Dyck.