Friday, August 13, 2021

Home Style || 5 Top Tips To Sell Your House Much Faster!


Home Style - Collaborative Post

Selling your home is pretty much always tiring, often costly and definitely stressful. Keeping our houses neat for possibly months on end for viewings, the ups and downs of people changing their minds, asking never ending questions or picking apart the home that you've loved can be hard work. There are a few things we can do to make things go a little smoother though and hopefully not only speed up your sale, but also make it easier for you in the process. Here are my top five tips for selling your home much faster!

Add curb appeal

The way your property looks from the outside isn't everything, but it can be the difference between someone stopping by for a viewing or giving it a miss altogether. You don't have to fork out thousands for a landscape garden or completely upgrade the front of your building, but there are lots of simple things you can do to make a good first impression without breaking the bank. Tidying up your front garden, touching up paint work, planting a few colourful plants, giving uPVC parts a good scrub and generally making things a little tidier will all fall easier on the eye for potential buyers and highlight less work they would have to do if they decide to buy. Even if you live in a block of flats, keeping the hallways clean, the door area tidy and maybe adding plants or decoration to pretty things up a bit can always help.



Show how spaces can be utilised

Sometimes even an empty room can be hard to judge by size. We can sometimes think a space is huge, only to get in the new sofa and find it dominates the room, or totally underestimate a space and furniture looks completely lost. To help potential buyers see the true value of the space, add something for scale such as a single bed in a box room to show how much room there actually is, or dress up an empty space to show it simply looking more homely and appealing. You may even want to dress small or strangely sized areas up to show what they could be used for, so they aren't dismissed as wasted space, but instead a cosy reading nook, hideaway office or kids play corner. Show that every area is useable, but if it has to be empty then that's still a better option than showing it's usually used for a dumping ground or piles of washing.

Remove clutter and bulky furniture - temporarily!

A house looking lived in is all good, especially as you'll most likely be living there while you're having viewings! Having excess things laying around that make the house look cluttered and rooms appear smaller, not so good. Even if you have kids with ample toys (like mine) then you can simply box up some bits temporarily, as well as bulkier bits of furniture that you can live without for a while and send them into a local storage facility. Wherever you live, places like Now Storage self storage in Basingstoke are ready on hand to keep your belongings safe until you're all moved and ready to put them into their new home. This is also a good way of  'quarantining things' to see if you missed them while in storage, as you may not even want them back at all! Freeing that extra space can just make your home feel that bit more calming and airy for viewers and allow them to see past your 'stuff' a little easier.

Have a deep clean

The most off putting thing when viewing a house has probably got to be overwhelming smells (good or bad!), clutter, mess and dirt. It sounds harsh, but most people will probably notice these things more than we do, so try and see your home with fresh eyes and give the house a good deep clean before you start the viewing process. Before visits it's a good idea to open windows and air out the house well too as even good smells to us such as food or house perfumes can be off putting to others. Give everything a little more of a clean than you would normally and make sure there will be no surprises if cupboards are opened or rugs moved! 

Save your pennies

Although it may sound contradicting, don't do anything too drastic just to sell your home such as fitting out new kitchens or bathrooms. The reason for this is that they may not be to the buyers taste anyway and it's actually better to have a tidy old bathroom that needs a redo than a shiny new one that they will have to rip out due to it not being suitable for them. Most people can usually see past decor, but things like structural changes can't always be envisioned, so instead of embarking on these, you could simply make suggestions or even speak to a builder so you know what would be possible to recommend to potential buyers. Touch up paint work, make everything squeaky clean, but unless it adds substantially more value to the sale price than you're selling out, leave it! If you're a pretty skilled DIYer then you can probably do some work that will add a little extra appeal, but it's unlikely that by paying out £10k for a new kitchen that you'll add that value back onto the sale price, so save your pennies for your new home and let the buyers do the work to their own tastes. That said, if anything is in a dire state, of course giving it the best repair you can to look a little more appealing.




So there we have it, the top five things to keep in mind when you're selling your home. We all have such different tastes that you can't please everyone design wise, so stick to the basics of making the house as spacious, airy, and clean as you can, with useable spaces and a bit whack of curb appeal!