Top 3 Improvements to Make your Listings Shine

PREPARING to sell your home and hoping to get the best possible price from your buyers?

Well, a bit of careful thought and preparation of your house can help you achieve that higher asking price without having to spend a lot of money first.

The trick is to remember to think of your property now as a house for someone else, not your home. There is a difference. Your prospective buyers will be looking for a house to be their next home, which is not the same thing as your home.

It is time to put your sentiment and happy memories to one side and look at your property a bit more critically, through the eyes of the buyers.

The first key tip – depersonalize your property and return it to a blank canvas. That is not to say it should be a sterile box – clearly play to any interesting architectural features, but it is time to neutralize the décor. Fresh paint always makes a room feel clean and new, ready for the next chapter of its existence, and it is ideal to go for plain, neutral colors – beige is always a standard for homes for a good reason as it goes with any décor, which helps the buyers visualize their furniture and effects in the space. If you want a more contemporary look, lighter shades of grey are currently both fashionable and neutral.

While you are refreshing the room’s walls and ceilings, making sure any particularly bold colors or heavily patterned wallpapers are removed, it may be a good time to get a head start on your packing and put into storage many of your personal effects that dominate a room. You will be moving them soon anyway, so do yourself a favor and take down any overly large or distinctive pictures and paintings, and maybe slim down the ornaments and even remove some furniture – you want the buyers to see a large clear space with huge potential for their own possessions taking center stage. They are buying their next home – not a version of yours.

Secondly, get the honey-do list completed. It is surprisingly easy to put off doing those small maintenance jobs around your own home as you get used to them and stop seeing them.

But a prospective buyer will see a cracked windowpane, feel a broken door handle, and hear the dripping in the toilet. You are immediately sending two messages to them you absolutely do not want to – first, how many jobs they need to tackle, and second, causing them to wonder how well you maintained the property and how many more jobs may be lurking they have not yet spotted.

Spend some time picking up the repair items at the DIY store and get stuck in – you will wish you had done it a long time ago so you could have benefitted.

And finally, the third top tip to make your listing sell fast is to update your property. This certainly does not mean you need to rip out the bathroom and kitchen, but have a look around for features, fixtures, and fittings that may be suggesting the home is outdated. Freshly painted window frames and neutral colors are a great start, but it does not cost much to freshen up cupboards with new handles or update a light fitting or two – especially with LEDs now affordable and energy-efficient.

And you can maybe treat yourself to some new appliances, or new furniture or rugs, that will look modern in the house you are selling – but you get to take with you to your new home and enjoy.