If you’re thinking about selling your home but are worried about being stuck on the market without any offers, there are many things you can do TODAY to make your home more attractive to potential buyers. With only a few hours work and a little bit of effort, you can create a house that will have buyers knocking on the door with offers coming at you left, right and centre. How? Read on to find out..!
- Get in touch with an estate agent. This should be your first step to putting your home on the market because (not only will they be the ones selling your home for you and will need to know a lot about you) they also know everything there is to know about what their buyers want. They can advise you on home layout, low-cost improvements, tidying up the garden and whether staging a bedroom as an office is a better idea than having a spare guest room. Listen to everything your estate agent tells you and be ready to make some changes. This will help your home get noticed by the right buyers and will be snapped up within days.
2. Something you can do THIS weekend is clean your home. Clutter often puts off buyers because they just can’t see past all your possessions. You may live a perfectly tidy life, but to the viewers it might just look like a big mess. So why not start packing now? If you’re going to sell your home as quickly as you hope, you might as well start packing straight away and minimise the rush when your home gets offers within hours. Once you’ve packed up some boxes with non-essential items, you can start to give your home a thorough clean. Scrub the tub, dust all surfaces and make sure you look up to spot any cobwebs!
3. The deep clean might have revealed some niggling DIY jobs that need doing so get started on them straight away. Chipped skirting, floor tiles lifting or mouldy grout can all put off buyers. And if the buyers aren’t put off by the DIY tasks, they will certainly use them as a reason to knock down your asking price. Just a quick coat of paint on the woodwork can be all it takes to brighten up a tired room. But don’t be afraid to make a big change if it’s needed; a bright or dark colour on the walls might benefit from a neutral coast of paint to really brighten up the space. Ask your estate agent and they will be able to advise you on the colours that sell well.
4. One final tip is to think about what makes a house into a home for you and try to replicate it. Rather than taking everything out of the home (which can make it rather clinical and unloved) keep some of your own belongings in the house to make it seem welcoming. Staging a cosy living room with classy coffee-table books, candles and flowers could be all it takes to make a buyer imagine themselves actually living in your property. Again, the most valuable advice on setting up a welcoming home will come from your estate agent so check in with them to see what improvements you can make. Simply draping a blanket you already have over the master bed will create that “hotel feeling” and a pot-plant in the kitchen might infuse the room with fresh scent.
Best of luck with selling your home and I hope that these suggestions will help you get your house sold in super-fast time. Let me know if you have any other tips for neatening up your home by leaving me a comment below or tweeting me @cassiefairy.
