Top Tips for Selling your Home

Are you thinking about putting your house on the market? Or maybe you’ve had your house up for sale for some time now and are wondering what you can do improve your chances.

With the housing market in the state that it is at the moment we thought it would be a good idea to bring you some useful tips to help your home stand out. Just follow these simple steps to improve the viewing experience for potential buyers…

Curb appeal…

Curb appeal is all about first impressions, how do other people view your home from the outside? Is the front of your house doing what you want it to?

Make sure window frames and doors are clean and give them a fresh lick of paint if they are  wooden. Also make sure there are no weeds if you have a garden area, no dead pot plants and no tatty door mats. If your house is full of immaculate clean lines make sure the front of your home reflects this, keep it simple and low maintenance. If you are trying to give off the feel of a country cottage, even in the middle of a city, make sure you have well looked after flower pots or window boxes.

Finally take a walk across the road from your house and look at it as if you were a passer-by. Is the front of your home doing what you want it to do? Don’t under estimate the power of first impressions and kerb appeal really does count.

Get a second opinion…

Get a friend or neighbour to come and take a look around your home as if they were looking to buy. Then get them to advise you on what they like and don’t like about the property. This is the best way of getting the perspective of potential buyers as you are too emotionally attached to your own home to be impartial.

To decorate or not to decorate…

You don’t have to completely re-decorate when you want to sell your home but it would be a good idea to freshen up any painted walls that you have. It gives the impression of a well looked after home that people have loved living in so much they have taken the time to look after it. If you do have any room that have particularly garish colours or wallpapers it might be a good idea to paint over them with a neutral colour so that people see the room first rather than the colour of its walls.

Let there be light…

Simply by updating your light fittings you can create a whole new atmosphere in a room. By replacing out of date light fixtures with adjustable halogen lights you can use them to highlight different areas and potentially make the room seem larger. It also gives the room a much cleaner look rather than having dusty light shades hanging from your ceiling.

Another good lighting tip that will help make your room seem light and airy is removing heavy dark curtains and drapes. By swapping your curtains for light fabrics you can let more natural light in to the room making windows appear larger and lift the general mood of the room.

Change is good…

Don’t be afraid to change the floor plan of a room. By moving furniture around you could find you can create multi-purpose rooms. This is a great idea if you live in a 2 bedroom house but would like to create the option of a third. If you find that once you begin moving furniture around that there are stains on the carpets that you forgot were there, have a go with Dr. Beckmann Carpet Stain Remover. It is perfect for various stains with its brush head attachment that gets right to the heart of the stain. If you find the stain has been there so long not even Dr. Beckmann can help, a strategically placed plant works just as well.

Make the most of what you’ve got…

If you have wooden or natural stone/ tile flooring you want to show them off at their best. Natural flooring can be a big selling point of a home, especially in period properties, so it is important their natural beauty can be seen clearly by potential buyers. Dr. Beckmann’s great range of floor cleaners has a bio-protect formula inspired by nature, designed to give all wooden, parquet, stone, tile and laminate floors a natural shine.

Out of sight, out of mind…

Another essential tip is to de-clutter and de-personalise your home. As you will (hopefully) be packing up all of your things to move anyway this is a good way of making light work of the packing duties. As much as you love your Royal Doulton figurines they might not be every viewer’s cup of tea so it is a good idea to pack ornaments and sentimental things out of sight. You want people to be paying attention to your home and not the things in it. The same goes for family portraits and posters on the kid’s bedroom walls. You want to give a feeling of space and let people imagine where they could put their prized possessions. This step can often be the hardest but if you think about it as it is not forever and you are simply packing them away so that they are safe and ready to go to their new home, it can make the process a lot easier.

Also make sure you have plenty of storage for kids toys. Toys are one thing that it very difficult to remove as children play with them so often, if there are things that have not been played with for sometime and take up a lot of space try to move them out of the way. If this is not possible having good storage is the answer, something that is big enough to hold all the toys and still shut so that they are not over flowing but not so big that it takes over the room. If your viewers have children they probably wont mind seeing a few toys neatly put away in a child’s bedroom, but if they do not have children it can be very off putting and distracting to see toys around.

Keep it clean and tidy…

You want to make your home feel inviting and hygienic at the same time, so making sure your sofas and soft furnishings are looking clean and plump is very important. Dr. Beckmann Stain Devils Survival Kit is great for any washable fabrics such as cushion covers; the handy kit removes over 40 of the toughest stains from felt tip pen to baby food.

Concentrate on the biggest selling areas, the kitchen and the bathroom. Make sure there are no nasty smells coming from your washing machine with Dr. Beckmann Service-it and Service-it Deep Clean, this two tier system tackles both the dirt you can see and the dirt you can’t see leaving your machine hygienically clean and smelling fresh. Spruce up your taps by polishing them with a solution of vinegar and water, this will make your taps sparkle like new whilst the vinegar also kills bacteria.

Another way to make people feel comfortable in your home is to make sure it is a good temperature, if you have not had your heating on for a while, providing the weather is not too hot, put it on an hour or so prior to the viewing. The last thing you want is your perspective buyers to walk into your home and feel cold. At the same time you do not want it to be too hot as all they’ll want to do is get round your home as fast as possible so they can out of the heat.

From the outside in…

The garden has now become more than just an outdoor space for the kids to play; it is now seen as an extra room. People want to see how they can use the garden for relaxing and entertaining and that it is also child friendly if they have children or grandchildren. So make sure you utilise your garden to its full potential.

If you have a snug little area surrounded by blossom trees at the bottom of your garden put some nice chairs in it and create a relaxing environment for reading a book. If you have decking that is perfect for barbeques and summer evenings with friends then make sure your decking is looking its best. Dr. Beckmann has a number of products that work outside of the home as well as inside, Dr. Beckmann Hardwood and Parquet Floor Cleaner can make decking look revived, giving a great first impression to anyone entering your garden areas.

Timing is everything…

According to research the best time to sell your home is between February and June. This is a time when the garden is blooming, the evenings are lighter making for better evening viewings, and most importantly there are the most potential buyers on the look out for new homes.

In the summer months the market tends to go very quiet, especially if it is a family home you are selling. With the kids off school people have less time on their hands to view properties, also families will be planning for starting school in September and many people are unlikely to move to a different area once their children have been accepted into their chosen school.

Winter is a very quiet time of year and some advisors would actively discourage selling your home at the back end of December, for obvious reasons.

However, it only takes one person to sell your home so in reality you could sell at anytime.

Over to you…

You need to create the full experience of living in your home. You want perspective buyers to get an instant feeling of what it would be like living in your home and how it would feel to pull up into the driveway after a hard day at work. Keep your drive or the front of your house free from cars to leave space for the viewers to park their car. You want them to feel like you have put in the effort to make them feel welcome and by following these easy steps you will have come some way to making your home feel inviting and appealing. After that it’s over to you…