6 Home Improvements to Help You Sell
Remember buying your first home? What a big moment in your life – filled with potential, excitement and a sense of independence.
If you want to get the best price as a seller, you need to foster that same feeling in your potential buyers.
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Buying a home is an emotional decision, so as a seller you want to ignite the imaginations of everyone who turns up for an inspection.
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Here are six home improvements that you can make to best showcase the potential of your property, and get people hooked on an emotional level so that they really want to buy.
Clean Up
Simple, yes, but it is unbelievable how often this gets overlooked. It is pointless spending thousands of dollars on a paint job if you are going to have junk lying around and attracting the wrong type of attention.
Not only are dishes in the sink not a good look, they remind potential buyers that someone is living in the space. This is bad because it doesn't allow them to picture their own potential life of filling that sink with their own dishes.
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If you want to make the home seem attractive, people have to be able to picture it as their home.
So de-clutter. Remove all traces of yourself and your family. No family photos, no toys, no dishes. Hire a storage unit if you have to. This is the easiest and cheapest home improvement you can make, and it will make everything look better.
Painting
If it's looking weary, spruce it up. You want things looking new because for the buyer, this is new. It is the 'new' factor that makes a new car so much more expensive than a used car, and the same psychology applies here.
Painting is the cheapest way to make the walls look new, without actually getting new walls.
If you are selling a weatherboard home then you will need to spend some time painting outside, but it will be worth it. For interiors, keep it simple.
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This is not the time to add a feature wall that may discourage conservative buyers.
Fix any chips or cracks, get rid of anything that is dated(such as wall paper), and if the walls are looking dull, then brighten them up with some simple neutral wall colors.
Have a look through a magazine / catalogue for ideas and ask the opinion of your local paint seller.
Kitchen
We want to emotionally hook buyers to the feeling of new, and everybody who looks at a place will look at how new the appliances are. Including them in the sale will also have people feeling like they are getting something for free which means that they will be inclined to spend more.
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Depending on your budget, you may want to re-do the whole kitchen. The kitchen is the heart of the home and a place where people spend a lot of time.
If it is modern, functional, comfortable and up to date then you can be assured that you will get more interest and a higher sale price.
Bathroom
Similar to the kitchen, this is a highly used area in the house. The most important thing here is for it to feel clean. It is a room for cleaning after all.
Absolutely no mold is allowed and make sure the drains are clear.
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Consider re-tiling it if the tiles are looking tired. People want to picture themselves being comfortable and clean is this room, so make it look as comfortable and clean as you can.
Landscaping
Dead plants don't look nice.
At the very minimum, visit the nursery the week before inspections begin and replace all the sick looking plants with vibrant growth.
If the back yard is as exciting as a slab of concrete or is a square of three-foot weeds where there once was lawn, then you should hire a professional gardening service.
Cleaning up and neatening the garden needn't be expensive, but for those with a budget adding a lifestyle feature, (such as a deck, a pagola or even a fresh shade sail), can help people picture a happy life in the garden.
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At the very least, a couple of hundred dollars to have some professional gardeners clean the space up will likely add a substantial amount to your sale price.
Professional Staging
If you don't have the time or the money to do big renovations, or you have done renovations and want to showcase them, hiring a professional stager is a good option. These people are like set design experts for movies, except for homes.
They know how to position furniture, get the most pleasant lighting, where to put plants and how to build a feeling in a room to encourage certain emotions.
If this sounds like hocus pocus to you, then I urge you to conduct a google image search of: 'before and after staging residential'.
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See what comes up. If you really don't want to pay for it then use google to help come up with ideas. But if you are trying to improve your home in order to effectively sell it, then professional help is worth the investment.
There is a reason that 'staging' exist as an industry, and that is because it helps people sell homes.
Article by Timothy Day | Edited by Ogbe Airiodion
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