10 ways to get a better price for your house
Are you having trouble selling your house? Not turning viewers into buyers? Before you reduce the selling price of your house, why not try home staging.
When I buy properties to rent, I look for the opposite of the advice I will give you just now. I can typically buy a house, which looks as if it’ a mess and needs a lot of work, decorate it for a few thousand pounds and make a £10,000 - £15,000 profit on it, within the space of a few weeks.
The tips I will give here can be done by you and does not require a professional home stager. However if you do not have the time home stagers are great value for money, so you might want to consider hiring a professional.
What is home staging?
Simply put home staging is decorating your house to make it more attractive to a prospective buyer. It can add 10 – 15% to our house value and can certainly help sell your house a lot quicker and turn those viewers into buyers.
Your taste may not suit everyone else’s taste
You might think your home is beautifully decorated but other people may not think the same, or have the same taste as you. You can change this by simply decorating your house in a neutral way, which makes it more appealing to a broader market of buyers.
10 ways to attract buyers with home staging
- Paint the rooms in your house in neutral colours. This will appeal to the broader market. Imagine having 100 viewers in your house and your rooms are painted in bright vibrant colours. You may get 5 % who have the same taste in colours as you but what about the other 95%; they will be put off by the amount of work they have to do to change the colour scheme. Painting your house in neutral colours is one of the most effective ways of adding value to our house and one of the cheapest and easiest to achieve.
- Clear the junk. Nobody wants to view a property if all the rooms are full of junk, it puts you in a bad light and might make the viewers think there is a lot more work they need to do to make it their own. This is basic stuff but you would be surprised at the amount of people who do not clear the junk before viewers come to view their home.
- Fix all outstanding repairs. Another easy way to make your house more attractive. Fix the leaking tap, patch the holes in the wall, oil the squeaky doors, and replace cracked tiles. These are only a few of the repairs many people have in their homes.
- Depersonalise your home. If you have a lot of personal photographs on the wall and throughout your house take them down and box them for your new house. Prospective buyers want to imagine themselves living in a new house and find it harder to do this when you have the family photos all over the house. This is purely psychological but it does make a difference.
- Put excess furniture in storage. Almost every home has furniture that is surplus to requirement and can be put into storage to make the rooms in your house seem larger.
- Rearrange your rooms. This again is to give the illusion of more space. The more floor space a viewer can see the better. This is another psychological factor and the more floor space a viewer can see the bigger they think the room is.
- Clean the house. Another often-overlooked way sellers can put viewers off their house is to not clean it. Clean all the windows thoroughly, clean sinks and toilets, re-grout your shower cubicle tiles, re-grout floor tiles, open all windows to let fresh air into the house, put clean towels out, clear away any dirty washing.
- Let the light in. Open curtains and blinds to their maximum or in some cases take the curtains down altogether. This will let a lot more light in and make it feel more airy and spacious.
- Clean the garden. This amazes me as well the amount of people who do not tidy up their garden. Your garden can be a major selling factor so make sure it is clean, tidy and presentable. Re-seed the lawn, get rid of the weeds, clear any rubbish away.
- Kerb appeal. You have probably heard this one a million times, if you watch all the home makeover shows on TV, but it is a great tip. Make the front of your house as attractive and inviting as possible. This is the ‘first impressions’ effect, whereby viewers who see a great looking house from the outside are more forgiving of any minor problems inside the house.
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August 29th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Nice common sense approach - like it!
September 1st, 2007 at 8:43 pm
I didn’t know you could spell curb that way (kerb). Now I do.
September 2nd, 2007 at 7:03 am
Fresh Flowers, according to season. Very improtant.
September 2nd, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Wow, thanks for such a great list of “Common sense stuff”…I don’t think there’s an original thought it this entire article!
September 4th, 2007 at 8:58 am
10 essential tips
September 4th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
my parents have been trying to move for the past year, hopefully this may give them some help.
September 5th, 2007 at 1:18 am
I have done all of the above and the house has still not sold. Don’t you think what is going on in the mortgage industry is making people scared. My house has been totoll remodeled inside and is priced right per all the realtors that have see it.
September 9th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
I would also recommend extra advertising to increase the size of your potential market of buyers. Try the free house for sale listings sites such as homebuyer.com.
September 19th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Very nice post here. The comments were great too and I really enjoyed reading it… =)
October 3rd, 2007 at 4:00 am
Great post. This is so true…most people are really just visualization-impaired, so this just helps them to see the potential in a place that they may not have seen before.
November 9th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Personally I think that having a ‘home condition report’ would help a great deal too . I have found a web site that will put put you in touch with a local independent Home inspector and give you an energy report set out in an easy to read way, like on a fridge. Neat! http://www.inspectedhomes.co.uk
November 21st, 2007 at 6:31 pm
I found another blog with some suggestions.
http://easyclickhomes.com/blog/market-uptick/net-worth-of-property-upgrades/15/
January 11th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
If you are really having trouble selling your home, it may be time to take a long hard look at your estate agent. Are they really earning their over priced commission? A recent survay by Alliance & Leicester showed that people who choose to sell their property privately, without an estate agent, do so on avereage 2 months quicker. http://www.MoveWise.co.uk are a user friendly ‘For Sale By Owner’ site that offer everything you will need to sell your property privately. The process will save you thousands of pounds and speed up your sale!
January 20th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
ya………It s is great list of things which the person do have the interest while selling property or any other thing.
This is 1 to 1 pointed detail that should be take care of .
I like that………………
January 28th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Well that s nice post I think it will help the urban community download bollywood Movies
January 28th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I think you have provided the details in such a good manner that the people will try to have the copy of this article in the safe corner which may help them in future when they try to sell any property.
inch by inch, Information and best way of Selling the property.
January 30th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
The best way to sell your house fast, and avoid any hassle is to sell to an investor. You could sell in days, avoiding the months and months an estate agent would take, and saving on those months of mortgage payments.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
thanks for sharing your views.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
cool, it will helpful in selling my own house, i want to sale my house and want to purchase a new one.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
nice post dude….keep posting such a valuable matter.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
awesome post mate.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
i am also a real estate agent and this post is really gud.
March 6th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
ya………It s is great list of things which the person do have the interest while selling property or any other thing.
This is 1 to 1 pointed detail that should be take care of .
I like that…………
March 6th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
As the real estate market softens, you may need to work a little to sell your home. Rod Thomas has some great tips for cheap and easy ways to make your house more appealing to potential buyers.
March 6th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
I would also recommend extra advertising to increase the size of your potential market of buyers. Try the free house for sale listings sites such as homebuyer.com.
March 6th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
I have done all of the above and the house has still not sold. Don’t you think what is going on in the mortgage industry is making people scared. My house has been totoll remodeled inside and is priced right per all the realtors that have see it.
March 9th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Presentation when selling anything is vital, when you’re talking about your house that would always by my number one point.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
I have to say, that I could not agree with you completely, but its just my opinion, which could be wrong.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
I am not sure that I can completely understand your comments. Would you be so kind as to expand on your reasoning a little more before I comment.