Preparing Your Home For Sale

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June 14, 2019

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How to get the best price when selling your home.

So your house is on the market for sale and you want the best price.  Who doesn’t right!  You want to make the best impression possible so those buyers are ready to give you the price you want.  We have a few handy tips and ideas you can use.

Outside

Compare your home to that of your neighbours. How does it compare? Have you:

Mowed the lawn?
Cleaned the gutter?
Painted the woodwork?
Put away all the garden clutter?

Don’t have time to make it good? Consider hiring a handyman or gardener. They can take care of it quickly and inexpensively.

De-personalise

Those photographs of your family or favourite pet that line the hallway and stairwell, take them down, all of them, the ones in the rest of the house too. Don’t forget the cute finger painting your daughter made you for your birthday last month that’s still stuck on the fridge.

Your buyers don’t want to see the great life you’ve made for yourself. They want to imagine the life they could make for themselves in their beautiful new home. Don’t allow anything to spoil that vision.

Speaking of a mess…

Get rid of your clutter. If you’re a hoarder now’s the time to either throw away or give them to charity or find a home away in a cupboard. You might even consider having a car boot sale (you might make a few pennies along the way). Do whatever you need to so that your buyers never have to lock eyes on it.

Be aware of:

Books, CDs and DVDs
Ornaments
Kitchen tools and appliances that live on the workbench
Plants
Posters on your bedroom walls (we all know what kids are like)

How about temporary storage, clear the floors to impress.

Spring clean

A good clean is needed, pay attention to;

Dust and repaint the skirting boards
Clean the windows
Dust light fixtures and furniture
Polish taps and mirrors (a nice shine will impress)
Clean tile grout

Pets

Would you want to be greeted at the door by a charming King Charles Spaniel. Remove pets altogether when you’re showing your property.

Showing Buyers Round!

Your estate agent should and probably does know what he/she’s doing and has sold several houses already. Why not leave the professionals to do their job?

Buyers don’t really want you hovering over them while they’re trying to look around your home. They don’t want to be pressured into the amount of time they can spend looking, they like to linger. If they feel awkward, they’re much less likely to linger in your home and get the full impact of how great it is and how they’d very much like to buy it.

Fix It!

The devil is in the details, and the sale of your home could be hampered by simple little things that you’ve stopped paying attention to. Try to look at your home from the perspective of your buyer, and think about the details that would impress or dismay you if you were in their position. Then take care of those details immediately.

Ensure all light bulbs work
No dripping taps
Fix doors and drawers that don’t open or close properly
Repair cracks in the walls
Touch up paint and repaint altogether where necessary
Hang up fresh towels in the bathroom
Make the walls neutral ( a few pounds on fresh paint will make all the difference.
Eradicate odours – particularly those from cigarette smoke, mildew and pets.
Open the windows and air out your house. Simply masking bad smells with a
perfumed air freshener won’t do the trick
Replace cushion covers

Make it bright

Use natural light as this is the top of the list of things people want in their new home.  There are other ways to maximise the light in your house – natural or otherwise – and give the impression of having plenty of bright, airy space.

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