How to ‘Dress Up’ Your Home before a sale
The collapse of the housing market has resulted in so many homes being put up for sale that it is difficult to get a good price for your property in this crowd. Even if you have prime property and hire the best real estate agent in your locality, you still have enough competition to make getting the best price a tough task. One good way to make your home stand apart from the many others on sale is to ensure that it presents a pleasing picture to prospective buyers. Here are some ideas on how you can ‘dress up’ your home so that buyers like it at first sight.
What does the buyer want?
Thinking from the buyer’s perspective is the first step you need to take when you are staging your home for sale. If you were looking at your home with an idea of buying it, what would you like to see? A sound structure, which has evidently been well maintained, crack free walls and floors, clean interiors, bathrooms, sinks and other damp areas in good condition- these are all important factors considered by buyers. Both the exterior appearance and the interiors of your home play an important role in attracting prospective buyers.
The exterior of your home
The buyer’s first impression of your home is formed by what he can see of it from the street. This is why the exteriors and the setting of your home make a huge difference to its salability. Trim the lawn, clean up the frontage and spruce up the garden before you put up the “For Sale” sign. A coat of paint to the outside walls of your home makes it stand out among the many houses on the street. All of these serve to give the impression that your home is well maintained.
The interior
Your home’s interiors need to be spruced up to reinforce the good impression. Take each room in turn and clear out your personal belongings. A buyer would like to visualize his personal stuff in your home and it is difficult to do this in a room that is cluttered with your belongings. Leave a very few impersonal decorative items to relive the monotony of blank walls. Next, repair the most visible damage to walls, doors, windows etc. A coat of paint to the interiors is also a good option if the walls are dirty and smudged following years of use.
In addition to dressing up your home’s exteriors and interiors, you should also get rid of all the junk you have accumulated over the years. After all, it will never do for a prospective buyer to get a wonderful impression after looking at your home and walking through it, only to end up facing a pile of junk in your back yard.