Preparing your home for sale? Think self storage!

House prices are funny money: you could strive for years to earn a £3000 rise in your annual pay, and dither over whether to spend £100 on a new toaster. Yet £25,000 could be casually knocked off the price of your home in the process of sale. So how can you avoid that and ensure you get the best price?

First impressions

It is often said that house-buyers make up their minds about a property within 30 seconds of walking through the front door. They may then spend hours or days reviewing and justifying that decision, but in those vital first 30 seconds the die has been cast.

Experience suggests that this is indeed the case. How many of your friends have said “I knew this was the right house for me immediately: it just felt right”? It seems that, in the first instance, house-buying is a question of instinct and emotion, reinforced by layers of thinking and reasoning.

So, if you are selling a house or flat, that first impression is absolutely critical. But how do you make sure the first impression is positive?

Grand entrance

Well, you can’t. You cannot second-guess the taste of every viewer of your property. As is often said, there is no accounting for taste…

But you can have a good try.

So, first things first, literally: make sure the front of the property looks attractive. Polish the door furniture – repaint the front door. Tidy the garden, brighten it up with some bedding plants or pot plants, mow the lawn and cut the hedge. Make it look as though you care!

And when that front door opens, make sure the entrance looks welcoming, upbeat, attractive.

This is not your home!

Put yourself in the shoes of the potential buyers, and forget for a moment that this is your home. It may hard to second-guess what is going to attract buyers – but it should be easy enough to identify what is going to put them off.

Typically they don’t much like:

• Tat and grime
• Too much personal taste
• Clutter

Tat and grime

Essentially, give your house a thorough once-over, as if you were spring-cleaning.

Dust the nooks and crannies as well as the surfaces; vacuum clean and straighten the carpets. Remove signs of wear-and-tear – such as finger marks on light switches. Clean and polish the windows. Polish the taps. Get that black mould out of the bathroom caulk!

And while you’re at it, get rid of any nasty smells.

Too much personal taste

You may have the perfect family, and a wonderfully individual sense of taste – but your house-buyers are not trying to live with you: they are trying to see how they can fit into your home.

So if your living-room is filled with family photos and mementoes, you might consider culling some of them.

You might have a splendidly humorous collection of kitsch souvenirs, but don’t assume your viewers will share your wry taste. Remove them – or certainly shift them out of the limelight.

And if you have grown fond of a bedroom decorated with screaming geometric DayGlo wallpaper, you will probably just have to bite the bullet and say goodbye to it.

This does not mean you have to make your home look like an airport hotel: a certain amount of tasteful home comfort is attractive – that “lived-in” look is appealing, to a degree. But search for the places where that will start to interfere with the imagination of the viewer.

Clutter

Your viewers are not trying to buy your possessions, either: they are trying to buy your spaces. So maximize these spaces.

Get rid of clutter.

That’s not just the children’s toys littering the living-room floor: it could be whole cabinets, armchairs and chests of drawers. Even beds.

Make your rooms look as spacious as possible.

Self storage

And what do you do with all that clutter?

Don’t pack it into the cupboards, or stuff it into the attic, or pile it into the garage – your viewers will be looking at those spaces too.

For serious decluttering you might need self storage: get the clutter off the premises and right out of sight.

Self storage may cost you a rental fee of tens or even hundreds of pounds a month, but that will be nothing when set against the tens of thousands of pounds involved in a house sale.

Remember: house prices are funny money.

2 Responses to “Preparing your home for sale? Think self storage!”

1. Carla Jones says:

   October 19, 2010 at 12:08 pm

   Thanks for the great tips, I’ve found the website so useful.

   Whilst doing my research I came across this competition which may be useful!

   http://www.storagemaker.co.uk/competition.php.

2. david simpson says:

   November 28, 2010 at 6:26 am

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