Selling your home?

7 tips and tricks to selling your home

If you’re currently looking to buy, you might also be looking to sell your home. We understand the time and effort selling a home requires. To help you along this journey, we thought we’d share what the experts have to say. There are some common themes and words of advice that we hope will make selling your home a breeze.

Here are our top tips:

1. Roadside attraction.
   First impressions really do count, so make sure the roadside appeal is as good as it possibly can be. Are the hedges neatly trimmed, does the fence or gate need a lick of paint? Have you got grass growing in the gutters? A freshen-up with the water-blaster on pathways and concrete will make the place look far more appealing. You don’t want anyone approaching the house to have any negative feelings. If it sings Home and Garden, you’ve made a good first step.
    
   
     
2. Obvious problems.
   Some buyers will look at your home through the “what’s wrong with it” lens. They look for problems. Is the house level? Is it damp? Are there cracks – do the floorboards creak or bounce? So take a step back from your house and look for the obvious faults that can be easily fixed. A crack in a window or in the gib – are all quick fixes. Noisy floorboards can be screwed down. Peeling paint can be sanded back and given a fresh coat. Leaky gutters and dripping taps will take a plumber next to no time to sort. Often small issues make people think there are bigger hidden issues. So the more you can fix, the better.
    
3. Brush up.
   For some odd reason, paint is expensive stuff in New Zealand and scaffolding, excuse the pun, is up there, too. So choose the areas you want to freshen up carefully. If you think the exterior of the house needs a total do-over, check with your real estate agent first. They may think you’ll be hard-pressed to recover the money. It’s far better to brighten up a dark kitchen or to paint that blue bedroom a less polarizing colour. Painting chips and nicks is again an easy fix.
    
4. Don’t take a bath.
   Spending a small fortune on a new bathroom again could be over-investing. Replacing a toilet, re-grouting showers, and tiles could be all the bathroom needs. A new mirror or light can breathe life and style into a dull bathroom without breaking the bank. If buyers love the house, they will soon see the potential in the bathroom.
    
   
    
5. Hide the family.
   Not everyone is gifted with a great imagination for room dressing. The more clutter you have, the pictures of family and pets – the more distracting it gets for buyers. The best advice is to put everything away in storage and let your house be a bit of a blank canvas. Of course, there are professional dressing companies who can do this for you and the anecdotal evidence from many real estate agents is that dressed houses sell faster and for a higher price. if you’re unconvinced, or can’t afford a home staging budget, just look through the many real estate sites for inspiration for your home and dress it yourself.
    
6. Picture perfect.
   We live in a mobile era, so the chances are your property will be looked at on-screen – on a mobile or tablet. So the cleaner, more professional your photography, the better. Many Real Estate agents offer the latest walk-through style of photography and this can give a prospective buyer a great feel for your home. Think like a buyer, if you don’t show the outside of the house, they will think there’s something wrong.
    
    
7. Homework. Home sale.
   Doing a bit of leg-work yourself, talking to your real estate agent, and understanding the sales in your area will help you put a realistic price on your property. Look at similar homes, similar streets and that should give you a good feel for market value. Nothing will slow a sales process quicker than a price tag that’s out of step with the market.