Top 5 tips to prepare your home for sale

First impressions count when you are selling, so it’s important to invest a little bit of time and energy into ensuring your property is attractive as possible to potential buyers.

With a high amount of properties on the market, home buyers can afford to be picky. Your home could potentially fall through the cracks if it is not presented in its best light.

Taking the time to prepare your home for sale is a proven way to maximise your properties sale potential. Buyers are going to pay more for a property that looks neat, clean and cared for.

Find out how we can help with staging your home.

Below are our top 5 tips to prepare your home for sale

• 1. Street Appeal: First impressions are lasting impressions when it comes to selling your home. In order to get the best price possible, your home needs to look attractive and appealing to buyers from the street. “Street appeal” refers to everything potential buyers see as they drive up to your home. It includes your garden, exterior paintwork, windows, roofing, gutters, driveways and even your mailbox. Make sure that everything outside looks clean and well cared for. Studies have shown nine out of 10 Australians admit to offering below the property’s asking price, with vendors losing on average $90,0000 simply because the home lacks street appeal.
• 2. Basic Maintenance & Repair: Rule of thumb: if it looks like it needs repairing or repainting, fix it! There may be several things such as cracks, peeling paint or discolouration in walls that you have simply become accustomed to over time. Buyers will mentally add up their perceived costs of repairing all those minor flaws and end up with an amount that is generally much higher than the actual amount it will cost you to repair this for sale. Adding up these costs will therefore affect the amount the potential buyer is willing to pay for the property and they will want to pay you significantly less.
• 3. Depersonalize & Declutter: Your home almost needs to be become a blank slate, where all personal taste and “living clutter” will have to be put away. Potential buyers need to be able to visualize where they can put their own possessions and how they can make your home their own. The average person will have difficulty looking beyond all of your possessions. If items are cluttering spaces buyers won’t be able to see how they could live in the property or where they could put their own possessions. All spaces must be clear, clean and tidy. If the property looks clutter free, prospective buyers will form a positive opinion of your home.
• 4. Cleaning: A “normal clean” when presenting your home for sale, will just not be enough unless you regularly do spring-cleans of your property. Your home will need a thorough head to toe clean.Focus on the rooms that potential buyers are most interested in, giving major attention to the kitchen and bathrooms. Try to look at each room as a potential buyer and see what catches your eye first. Make this the starting point for the cleaning process. Then, follow the top-to-bottom, left-to-right rule for cleaning each room. That way, no surface is overlooked.
• 5. Property Styling: The key to property styling is creating a look that will easily enable potential buyers to see themselves living in your property and feeling as though the home is already theirs. It’s smartest to modestly furnish and decorate your home as these feel homely an inviting. The buyer should get a sense of what each room could be used for and what size furniture could fit in the space. This can be achieved by small changes such as rearranging existing furniture to create better traffic flow and through the use of accessories.