Whilst staging your property to sell is growing in popularity, it’s not always achievable for every seller or relevant to every home.
If you’re on a tight budget and can’t afford to work with a styling professional, here are my top 5 must do’s for selling your home:
Clean
If you’ve ever slept in a hotel room, you know how important cleanliness is. Selling your home is no different. Nothing puts a buyer off more than a dirty home. A clean home looks well cared for and is more far more likely to sell faster, and for more, than one in need of a tidy up.
Declutter
You’re moving anyway, so may as well start packing and culling now!
It’s hard for buyers to engage with spaces that are too filled with furniture and personal affects – they see it as your home rather than theirs. The more of your stuff there is, the harder it is for a buyer to gauge the size of the space and imagine living there.
Think light and neutral
White bed linen, white towels, light coloured rugs – the lighter the better. Introduce pops of colours through pillows and artwork – ideally picking a colour scheme that flows through the home if you can.
Decorating doesn’t need to be expensive – Kmart, IKEA and Spotlight are terrific for cheap linen, towels, prints and cushions and you can put them away and only pull them out for the photos and home opens if you’re worried about the kids or pets getting them dirty. Check Pinterest for cheap decorating ideas. And those dark feature walls? Paint them out!
Spruce up outdoors
Get rid of the cobwebs, weed & remove dead plants, mulch the garden beds, mow and edge the lawns, prune back anything that’s overgrown (especially if it’s obscuring the home) and pop a nice pot plant near the front door. If you’ve got dirty paving, hire a pressure cleaner.
Your front and rear yards are the first and last impressions of your home – make them count.
Essential maintenance
Nothing screams potential (and possibly expensive) problems to a buyer than a poorly maintained home.
Anything you choose not to fix buyers will calculate a $ amount for and deduct from the price, or worse still, be turned off from buying it altogether. The obvious exception to this is a renovators delight, but as a rule the less work a buyer needs to do, the better.
If you’re thinking about selling and looking for advice on getting your home ready, ask an experienced real estate agent. That said, never trust an agent that tells you your property is fine as it is – they’re too scared of losing your listing than giving you the best possible advice to get the best sale price – this is probably your biggest asset, don’t undersell it.
