How to Present Your Home when Selling

This blog will be a short series of Real Estate Tips for those who are wanting to sell their homes.

I understand that your home is most likely your biggest asset and is something you will want to achieve the highest result for when selling. I have formed this short series to help you achieve the highest price possible for your home. The first post/video I am sharing with you is all on how to present your home. This post should help you to clean and style your home to attract buyers. When you are selling there will be 2 buyers that will want to purchase a property. The first buyer is someone that buys with their head which is most likely an investor. The second buyer is an emotional buyer that loves the property and will pay more because they found that attachment to the home and can see themselves living there. This is the buyer you will attract by perfectly presenting your home.

Some of these tips aren’t gonna cost you any money, it’s more about putting in the effort and using that good old elbow grease. There’s other things that will cost you some money, but you know the old saying that spending money, makes you money. 

Having perfect presentation means:

• Decluttering – have as much clean space as possible to make the space look larger (even if everything needs to be stored in the garage!). Ensure there is as little as possible on desks and tables, children’s toys and equipment are put away, etc.
• Cleaning – Now, it’s the small things! It is the light fittings that you may not get to all the time, ceiling fans, cornices (you can go around your cornices with a soft broom), then start on your light fittings and your fans. Work your way down wall. So you’ll do the insides of your windows, blinds, window tracks, windows sills, skirting boards (and again, you can use that soft broom with the skirting boards). These are all so important to clean so even the fussiest buyers will be satisfied!
• Pets – Something that wasn’t mentioned in the video was everyone who has dogs/cats especially, ensure their fur is cleaned up from absolutely everywhere! This includes carpet, bedding, pillows, lounges, door tracks, etc. It is so easy to miss all the fur around the house when they are inside pets so ensure you thoroughly clean all of that and ensure their area outside is tidy.
•  Bathrooms/Kitchen – Tapware can make the biggest difference! If your bathrooms and kitchens are dated putting in chrome tapeware really does give it a more modern look and feel (tapware sets are around $100 from Bunnings). Adding nice matching towels in nice colours and minimal matching soap dispensers and canisters can add a more homely feeling to the property as well. When cleaning these areas please consider cleaning the grout if they are looking a bit horrible, shower screens, benches and cupboards, mirrors and tiles. If they are dirty it sticks out like a sore thumb in photos!
• Styling – We do have stylists we can get you in touch with but it is easy to style the property yourself. Adding greenery through the home lightens the place up, adding in nice pillows and throws on beds and couches, having a colour scheme throughout, matching towels and canisters, etc. By styling your home and making it desirable to a large audience will ultimately attract that emotional buyer all vendors want.
• Gardens – You’ve got to get in there and weed your gardens. Depending on the time of year, if you can get some nice pretty annuals, pop them in the garden because your street appeal is everything! Most people would drive past your home before actually making an appointment to come and see it. So you want that home to be enough to draw them inside. 

I’m hoping those little tips will help you when you are ready to sell your house. If you’re looking at painting and recarpeting, I’d love come out  go through the house with you, room by room. If you’re really serious about selling, I’m really serious about you getting as much as you possibly can. I’ll come to your home, I’ll go through each room with you, give you advice. If you need trades people or anything like that, or even some interior designers, I’ve got all of those people at my fingertips.

In a future video in this series I will also be talking about those who are wanting to fully renovate their homes and some tips I can give you on that. Watch out for that video!

Hope to see you soon and I hope these tips have helped you.

Belinda Watts

Director / Licensee in Charge