Tips for Getting Your Home Ready to Sell

Are you looking to sell your home? If you are, then undoubtedly, you will want to achieve the maximum sale price, right? Well, unfortunately, this isn’t achieved by merely contacting a real estate agent and throwing up a For Sale sign. You need to put in the work to ensure you market your home in its best light.

So how do you do this? Well, you need to get your home ready to sell. By this, I mean tidy it up and take care of small issues that could come back to bite you in a building and pest report.

There are a hundred things you can do to help your home sell quicker and for a higher price. The key is knowing which improvements to employ. You don’t want to have to spend tens of thousands of dollars getting your home ready to sell, but it would be realistic to expect to invest around $2000 to $5000.

At Ross’s Discount Home Centre, we specialise in all home improvements, and we have the right products at the right price to ensure your home is fit for market. To help you reach the maximum sale price, I have populated some of our surefire tips, which you can read below.

Do your own house audit

My first tip in getting your home ready to sell is to do a thorough audit. Get a pad and pen, and go from room to room, taking note of every imperfection. Be particular because you know potential buyers will be.

In General: take note of any cobwebs around the ceiling, dust on fans, peeling paint or cracks in walls. These are the first things you need to take care of. Cobwebs and dust are easily removed with a good clean, but peeling paint and cracks in walls may require a painter if you have no experience yourself. Look at all skirting and architraves – do they need a good clean?

In the bathroom: take particular notice of the ceiling in the bathroom. Check for mould on the ceiling, grout and caulk. Mould is a major put-off, which, in most cases, is removed easily with a spray of Bleach. Also, check your shower glass. Is it as clean as it can be?

In the kitchen: areas to take note of in the kitchen are above the stove and the sink. Are there fat and grease deposits above your stove? Do the cabinets here have a yellow tinge? This can be often removed with some good old Gumption, as with your sink. Give it a good clean with Gumption or the manufacturer’s recommended cleaning solution to make it sparkling clean.

Invest in a pre-sale building & pest inspection

Go one step further than your own audit by investing in a pre-sale building and pest inspection. By having your own inspection performed, you can be informed of any major issues that may otherwise cause a sale to fall through.

A building and pest inspection covers the following areas:

• Exterior of the building
• Interior of the building
• Roof Space
• Under-Floor Space
• Fencing
• Retaining Walls
• Garage
• Steps
• Toilet
• Garden Shed
• Driveways
• Laundry
• Roof Exterior
• Solar Panels
• Walls
• Paths
• Surface Water Drainage

If there is something that should be addressed before putting your home on the market, the pre-sale building and pest inspection will find it. You will get a detailed report outlining the areas inspected, a summary of the overall condition of your home and a list of significant issues that need to be fixed. If your building and pest inspection has picked something up, you can guarantee a potential buyer’s building and pest inspection will. Therefore, it pays to review the findings and invest in repairs.

It should be noted that plumbing is not inspected in a standard building and pest inspection. There are pre-sale plumbing inspections to identify any additional plumbing issues.

Give your home a new coat of paint

One of the easiest and cheapest ways to get your home ready to sell is to give it a new coat of paint. With a little prep work, a few hundred dollars and a couple of weekends of your time, your home can look as good as new.

If you opt to paint your home, choose a light colour such as white or an off-white. Such a colour not only makes your home lighter and appear more spacious, but it offers an open canvas for potential buyers to style to their liking.

Colourful feature walls are very nineties and can be a big turn-off for potential buyers. People want a home they can readily move into. Not a home they have to spend weeks fixing before they can move in.

Upgrade your tapware and accessories

A surefire way to slash years off your home and make it more attractive to potential buyers is to invest in new tapware, which needn’t cost you a fortune. If your tapware has corroded, the finish has worn off, screams 1990, or worse, your tap’s drip, you will want to consider replacing it.

Today, you can get modern matte black tapware for as little as $48.00 at Ross’s Discount Home Centre. We have tapware to suit all applications, from the shower to sink, basin to waste, and beyond, all available at rock-bottom prices to make your home more attractive when it goes to market.

If you replace your tapware, it may also pay to update your bathroom accessories. In addition to tapware, we also have a swag of accessories in our matte black range. Towel rails and towel rings, toothbrush holders and toilet paper holders, shower shelves and towel shelves; we have everything needed to replace your old fittings with new ones.

Improve your kerbside appeal

The number one rule in real estate has to be to add kerbside appeal. People can fall in love with a house on kerb appeal alone. They will overlook interior imperfections if the external presentation is first-class.

First impressions really do count, and the first thing a potential buyer sees when they arrive at the front of your home.  The good news is it’s easy and often very affordable to turn a drab house into a fab house.

My best tips for improving kerbside appeal are:

Trim hedges and mow the lawn

It takes little time, costs you nothing and provides the biggest impact. A little TLC in the garden department goes a long way. But you can’t just cut your lawn and then forget about it. You need to maintain this vigilance throughout the duration of the marketing period. Only when a contract goes unconditional can you ease off!

Create a path to the front door

Kerbside appeal is all about leading the eye from the kerb to the entrance with an aesthetic approach. The best way to do this is via a path.

You don’t have to be a paver to create a welcoming path. There are many materials available to complete this project; cracker dust, pebbles and decorative gravel, garden sleepers, or pavers will do the job. Choose the best solution based on your budget and style of home.

Give the front door a pop of colour

When that potential buyer looks down your new pathway, you want it to lead them to something magical. From the moment you set eyes on a home, nothing captures your attention better than a colourful front door.

Adding a coat of paint with a splash of colour is all that you need to make your entrance stand out. Be bold. Consider a red, orange, green or yellow to really make your entry a focal point. This modern touch will only cost you around $30 in paint and a couple of hours of your time.

Add a couple of pot plants

To complement your new path and colourful door, invest in a nice pot plant on either side of the entrance with plants that complement your door.  Popular flowering plants include petunias or pelargoniums, which come in reds, pinks, and purples, begonias, which is most commonly red, or pansies and calibrachoas, which offer an assortment of colours. Alternatively, for something more elegant and modern, consider fiddle leaf figs or succulents. Citrus trees are a popular choice for traditional homes.

Improve your Driveway

Don’t forget your driveway too! When it comes to kerbside appeal, an old driveway can be a real turnoff. Affordable improvements like driveway resurfacing instantly improve the first impression of potential buyers. Whether you opt for simple covercrete or coloured concrete sealing, you’re sure to completely transform the look of your home.

Wash the fascia

We keep the interior of our home clean, but seldom do we get outside and give the fascia, windows, doors and even garage door a good clean. When was the last time you washed the exterior of your home?

I was amazed by how much dirt had accumulated on the weatherboards of my investment property over six months, so I would hate to think how putrid it would have looked over a more extended period. It only takes a hose, broom, washing detergent and a little elbow grease to turn a tired entrance into a like-new entrance.

Replace your roof

This may seem extreme, but if you have an asbestos roof. the best thing you can do to help the sale of your property is to replace it. While roof replacement services can set you back $20-$30k, it could mean not only making it back on the sale but having much more interest and offers from buyers. I personally tried to sell an investment property with an asbestos roof and had little interest and the offers I got were over $100K under my asking price – the consistent comment from potential buyers: the asbestos roof. 12 months later with a new colourbond roof, I was able to sell it for over my asking price.

Invest in a picket fence

Lastly – and this really depends on how far you want to go, how desperate you are to sell, and how much you can invest without overcapitalising – consider investing in a picket fence. It’s the quintessential welcoming that will make someone fall in love with your home at first glance. If you have the capital, it is worth the investment.

Conclusion

If you plan to sell your home in the near future, then now’s the time to start thinking about how to achieve maximum sale price. After all, it’s all about the return on investment.

There are many things you can do to sell your home faster and at a much higher price; some can potentially add as much as $50,000 to the sale price if done correctly. So what are these ‘things’?

First, you want to audit your home to identify and fix any obvious unsightliness and issues such as cobwebs, dust, cracks and mould. You can go a step further by investing in a pre-sale building and pest inspection to identify any serious issues and fix them. Inside your home, give it a lick of paint to brighten it up and consider adding new tapware to bring it up to trend. Lastly, there’s the kerbside appeal; if nothing else, do yourself a favour by giving it some TLC. Trim the hedges, cut the lawn, create a pathway to your entrance, give the front door fresh life with a bright coat of paint, get some pot plants and last of all, if you have the capital, invest in a picket fence – people love a white picket fence!

There you have it; everything you need to prepare your home for sale and to ensure you receive the maximum asking price. Whether you have two thousand or twenty thousand to invest, you will be rewarded for your efforts one way or another.

If you’re shopping for home improvement products, head in and see us at Ross’s Home Discount Centre. We are the largest independent home improvement supply store in Perth and guarantee the lowest prices every time.