Prepare your Home for Sale

Preparing your home for sale is like a form of art. It’s creating an illusion; an illusion designed to entice potential buyers and get the highest possible sale price. You’d be amazed what a difference the right prepping and home staging would make to a) how quickly your home will sell and b) the price you get.

Stick around and we’ll walk you through how to beautify your home to a point where no one will be able to resist her. Your house will be the bricks and mortar version of a seductive temptress, a beacon of allure, a utopian space. We’ll be looking at the lighting, considering home fragrance, staging objects, making the place more spacious and perfecting every little nook and cranny. By the time we’re done – You might want to stay!

The main trick will be your attention to detail and to disassociate yourself with your home to the point of harsh scrutiny. You’re going to want to cast a judgemental eye over the place as if it’s the first time you’re seeing it and considering if you’d want to live there. The overall goal when preparing and staging your house for sale is to make everybody who walks in the door think ‘I can see myself living here’.

Tips to Prepare your Home for Sale

Follow our house selling tips to increase your chances of selling:

1. Disassociate and Depersonalise

OK, so let’s delve a little more into the idea of disassociating yourself from your home.

You’ve already made the decision to sell so it’s time to start letting go of any emotional attachment you have to the place. Making your home homely is something you have been doing the whole time you’ve lived there and although you will still want others to view the place as ‘homely’, you don’t want them to see it as ‘your’ home. Depersonalising is an important part of this. As harsh as it seems, you need to hide the family photos, the valentine’s teddy bear and the holiday magnets from the fridge. When the potential buyers see photos of you and your friends in Malaga, they are thinking about who lives in this house, rather than imagining where they would hang their family photos if they lived there. You should also move anything that is there due to your own personal interests such as framed posters of your favourite film or band or a picture of the New York Skyline. These are not things that appeal to everyone so they’ve got to go.

2. Declutter and Organise

Decluttering is a huge part of preparing your home for sale. You really should think about having a cut-throat clear out. Check out our decluttering guide for some great tips on getting the job done. Once all the junk has been tossed and some sort of order has been restored in your home, it’s time to organise the place with an obsessive-compulsive attention to detail. We’re talking alphabetising, labelling, laminating and categorising. Get into cupboards and closets, create clear sections for everything. People are nosey and if they come to look around a home they are thinking of buying, they will open cupboards and they will be keen to see how much storage space there is. By making it look as though there’s a place for everything, people will think there is ample storage.

3. Storage Units

You might find that to declutter and depersonalise, you need to shift some of your things that you don’t want to get rid of. It is a great idea to hire a storage unit while you’re in the process of selling. Creating a feeling of space is massively recommended when trying to sell a home so if you can move some of your furniture, personal items and clutter into storage, the house will seem more spacious and therefore more appealing to potential buyers. It’s also important to consider any fixtures or features in your home that you plan on taking with you. If there’s a beautiful fireplace or chandelier that you will be taking then put that into storage and replace with something else because buyers might expect it to come with the house and this could be a sticking point.

4. Cleaning

There is nothing more off-putting when viewing a property than seeing a place that looks as though it needs a right good clean. Now, we don’t mean to suggest that your home is unclean but trust us, when it comes to selling a house, it is never quite clean enough. The place needs to gleam and sparkle. Have a spring clean when you’re done with the decluttering and depersonalising and then it’s just about staying on top of that for the duration of your time there. Think about cleaning the windows, dusting constantly… We don’t want there to be a single cobweb in sight! Corners, skirting boards, mirrors… no smudges now people. Also, keep a close eye on marks on the walls… If you have kids, you’ll have more fingerprints on the walls than you’ll ever care to mention. A great tip is to purchase a magic eraser… they work a treat! It’s also advisable for you to reseal the bath... A nice fresh white seal will do wonders for the appeal. White bathrooms look lovely and clean… So be sure to bleach the heck out of the place. You really need to be thinking about all those finicky little jobs that you don’t often get around to doing… dust the ceiling fans, wipe down blinds, clean the curtains. Scrub the fridge and the microwave. Hop to it.

We are all taught not to judge a book by its cover… but when we are looking for a new home, our first impression of the place can make a huge impact and it can cloud what we later see inside. You need to make sure that the outside of your home is attractive and enticing so that the potential buyers feel welcomed in. If they are hopeful and they expect it to be beautiful inside then they have already started to make their mind up. Think about painting the front door and the window frames so the house looks fresh. Potted flowers are always a nice touch. Consider adding beautiful and happy colours with a flourish of yellow and orange blooms. Pressure washers are a godsend if you are looking to seriously spruce the exterior of your home. You can use it on the front doors, the bricks, any stonework, the sidewalk and the driveway. You’ll be flabbergasted by how clean the house will look. You must also cut the grass and trim back or neaten up any bushes or hedges. Another great tip is to look at your house number, make sure it’s visible and give it a quick polish. If it’s brass, it’ll come up lovely.