I have a very old house and plan to sell in 2-3 years. I could spend an large amount of money and time to make my house really nice. If I planned to live here a long time (I once did), then I would do it, and would do 90% of the work myself.

But, now our focus with repairs is as follows:

1. If not doing it will make the house very hard to sell, then we do it.
2. If it'll improve the value of the home and we'll get the money back, then we do it
3. If it is going to show up on the home inspection and we'll have to negotiate a value or cause people to walk away, then we are doing it.

I usually go all out with my own, personal repairs buying good hardware, fixing all the defects I can find, etc. I spent a long time in my attic pulling out old fiberglass, repairing every leak in the building envelope accessible from the attic, repairing every hole in duct work, rewrapping ducts, installing lighting, installing a platform to work on the HVAC system so you don't have to stand on ceiling joists, sistering some rafters, etc.

I saw a huge energy savings from the above work, and most of it was mainly work and not a ton of money. But, I could have spent one weekend up there putting down new insulation and that work would probably look the same as the work I actually did to potential home buyers.

Another example is our fence is falling down and we need a new one. A few years ago we priced out a nice fence (cedar boards, sch 40 metal poles, metal hardware, etc.) Now, we are doing the fence but are going with pine for the boards (~40% cheaper) and wood posts (like 100% cheaper).

We had also planned to replace our driving and parking areas with stone. Our soil is clay so this installation would pretty much be a permanent driveway. Now, we aren't even fully replacing the drive because you don't need it...

Because we had originally intended to build a garage in the backyard, but now we just put a nice looking shed in the back that we purchased used and I fixed up. This allows us to get tools out of the back of the house.