There’s no getting away from the fact that selling your house is stressful!
You feel like your life is in limbo (or at least I did) because you don’t know what’s happening and when. I hated the waiting game – waiting for someone to decide they liked our house enough to buy it whilst desperately hoping that the house we wanted didn’t sell in the meantime, waiting for our offer to be accepted on the house we wanted and now, waiting for it all to go through and be finalised.
I wanted to do everything I could to speed up the sale of our home and I honestly think that the things I did helped…
Don’t under-estimate kerb appeal
I spent an hour in front garden the day before the for sale sign went up.
I tidied up the weeds and used a £2.99 tin of black cast iron paint to repaint the gates so they were shiny black again instead of the tired, flaky dark grey that they’d faded to over the years. I had actually repainted the fencing a couple of weeks before we decided to sell otherwise I would have done that too.
The weeding and a quick touch up of the gate really did literally take an hour to do but it was so worth it as I know that the house would look so much nicer to anyone doing a cheeky drive by which is something we ALWAYS do before making an appointment to look at a house.
First impressions count
I wanted people to feel comfortable as soon as they walked in to our house – there’s a lot of jobs that they would need to take on so someone needed to feel connected with the house straight away in order to look past the work.
The biggest job that we did when preparing the house for viewings was to paint the hall, stairs and landing white. It was a huge job as we only had a day and a half to do it and even in that short space of time we had to fit it around work, an airport run to pick the kids up from a week away and everything else we already had planned in.
It was well worth it though. I added a new doormat and a bunch of flowers and I knew that when someone walked in, they were getting the best first impression we could have given them.
Do the little jobs
We have a little notebook which we use to keep track of various bits of life admin and in there is a list of little jobs that we need to do so if we have a spare afternoon or couple of hours then we might (I say might 😁) have a look in the book and do one of the jobs. Otherwise we put aside time every now and again to crack through a few of the jobs.
When we decided to sell, we added to that list by walking around the house and looking at it through a buyers eyes and made a plan to get as many done as we could.
It’s the little things that people notice as they’re walking around a house and the little things that add up in someone’s head when they are considering buying a house.
Help buyers see it as a home
You want a buyer to be able to picture themselves in your home so if you’re like me and have lots of photos about, pop some away when you have viewings. I put about half of ours away each time we had a viewing for the first couple and got them back out again afterwards but after doing that two or three times, I just left them away to make things easier.
I also made sure that there were flowers in the house because I feel like that makes a house more homey.
Tidy up (or at least fake a tidy house)
I tried to keep our house tidier than usual during the period while we were expecting viewings but it’s a home and not a show home so life often got in the way and the house wasn’t at it’s best when the estate agents rang to say they had a last minute viewing for us.
I never wanted to turn away a potential buyer but at the same time, wanted the house to look as good as it could when they saw the house so I followed the steps in this post to fake a tidy house so I didn’t have to say no to the viewing. 😁
Be ready with information
Potential buyers will want to know how old your boiler is, when your windows were fitted, what your utility bills are on average and more than likely what your neighbours are like. They might also ask to see your electrics and even to be able to pop their head into the loft space.
Being prepared for all of that will give your buyers faith in you as a seller as well as help them make a more informed decision about whether they want to buy your house.
Listen to feedback
Your estate agent should be following up with viewers who look around your house and they should be asking them for their honest opinions. Don’t take feedback personally but use it to understand what (if anything) you can do to help the next people not have that same problem.
I’m absolutely not an expert in selling house but ours was on the market for five weeks with us being away for two of those and the national average is 101 days which is just over three months and I do think that the above helped. 😁
Don’t miss out on future posts like this – receive updates directly to your inbox by email by adding your email address here and hitting subscribe. You can also follow me on Twitter or BlogLovin and I’d love to see you over on my Facebook page and on Instagram. If you’re interested, you can find out more about me here and while I’ve got your attention, if you’re wondering why some of my posts lately are a little bit less frugal then have a read of this post. 😉
Do your future self a favour – Pin this post for later.
