There are 3 principles that work when selling a home – Presentation Price and Promotion. Decisions house sellers make on these principles can avoid underselling their home.

Preparing your home for viewers and making the right choice of estate agent, will not only ensure your property is sold faster, but can potentially add thousands of pounds to its value.

Let’s start with Preparation

Watch this video to find out more

Declutter

• Get rid of all the excess stuff that has accumulated in every nook and over the year. Use the garage or your loft or give it to a friend
• People need to imagine what the property would look like if they were living there – so make it easy for them to see all the fantastic living space you’re offering
• Consider removing any bulky furniture that makes the room feel small and replacing it with smaller furniture into storage or the garage.

A fresh lick of paint

• Giving your walls a fresh lick of neutral paint will make your home seem lighter and bigger
• It will enable the viewers to imagine how they would adapt the rooms to their needs
• It will be easier for the buyers to move in and use the rooms immediately than if the walls were bright purple or lime green
• Create a good first impression – the garden gate to the front door

Fix and clean

• Make any minor repairs necessary – holes in walls, broken door knobs, cracked tiles, torn or threadbare carpets. The majority of buyers want to move in without making changes.
• Clean everything until it sparkles. Get rid of limescale, clean and repair tile grout, get rid of all odors, hang up fresh towels.
• Moving out to the garden: cut bushes back, clean the patio and furniture of lichen and dirt, and cut the grass. While this doesn’t add much value to your home it makes it more likely to sell as people visualise downtime

Light and airy

• Mirrors make a room look much bigger and lighter. Consider putting some up, especially in smaller rooms or hallways
• Clean windows inside and out, and replace any broken light bulbs. Making the place feel light and airy makes rooms feel bigger and the property more attractive
• Ensure that you have lamps on in any dark corners

Make it look pretty

• Plants and flowers bring colour, life and light to a room and also smell wonderful. So does that fruit bowl on your kitchen counter

Get the right smells

• Bad smells are the single biggest turn off for prospective buyers. Don’t just cover them up, fix the source of the smell. Conversely, good smells can make a property feel alluring. Clear drains, wash bins, open windows and air the kitchen from old cooking smells.

Promotion

Only ever choose the agent who can demonstrate the most marketing techniques and tools to attract the highest number of buyers. Afterall, more buyers equal more viewings equals higher bids.

The photo’s need to be professional to showcase your home in the best possible way. Ask the agent to show their examples of photography.

Virtual reality viewings are becoming more popular and floorplans are a must.

One very important marketing tool is video. Ask your agents to show you what videos they have recently promoted. Video is a great way to sell the lifestyle of living at the home to buyers – something pictures and floorplans cant.

In this new age of social media, more and more buyers are locating the property on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Videos are the new commodity to sell homes – if a picture tells a thousand words, then a video tells a thousand pictures.

• Showing the property
• You chose a great estate agent – so let them show the property
• It’s an agents job to know what things to say and what to highlight – great agents are trained with techniques to deal with objections and extracting offers
• On the other hand…when buyers are shown homes by the owner, buyers compliment everything! – this is known in the UK as being polite. Owners are often left unnecessarily optimistic and the buyer disappears – never to be found again

Price

• Choose the agent who can demonstrate the most experience, research, evidence and facts, when it comes to pricing your home. That is the agent who knows the most about your area. There is a wealth of information the agent should be showing you – the homes you are currently competing with – evidence of sold homes in your area – size comparisons – and their own local results.
• Don’t be romanced by the agent with the highest asking price when it comes to choosing which agent to use.
• The marketing price of the home is very important as 40% of properties reduce in price according to my local rightmove statistics
• Rightmove also demonstrates that if a home doesn’t sell in the first 4 weeks, the interest severely drops and often doesn’t sell. The home then reduces its asking price to then create new interest.
• What happens then is buyers will see that the home has reduced its price and can be forgiven for thinking the home hasn’t sold because of lack of interest or there is something wrong with the home…this is then often reflected in the offers the home and the home sells for less than getting the price right the first time.

So these are all of the tips we can give you for selling your home faster and make it more valuable, thank you for watching the video – Im Brendan Petticrew, reporting for Newman Property Experts

If you need me to answer any other property related questions regarding your home, please call me on 07989 596836.