What is the minimum today's buyer will expect?
Certainly the minimum standard for presenting a home is for it to be clean, tidy and smell nice. The aroma of the house is often underestimated! Not everyone loves doggy smells for example, so ask a friend to take the dog for an hour. Spend time on sparkling windows, bleaching bathrooms and hoovering regularly. Use lighting to brighten gloomy corners and dress the table or side top with fresh flowers or a plant. Creating a lifestyle picture will help the buyer imagine themselves cosying up by the fire with a cup of tea on a cold day. You want to make your home aspirational; a place where buyers want to see themselves.
Do I need to refit my kitchen and bathrooms?
It's rarely worth fitting a new kitchen or bathroom. In most cases I would let the buyer do that, allowing them to design the kitchen and bathroom to their choice. In the mean time, I would advise that the kitchen is simply kept as bright and as clean as possible. Try to keep to one colour theme in the kitchen and bathroom. Excess clutter will diminish the perception of the overall room size, and can sometimes give the perhaps false impression to the buyer that there is work to do. By making a home appealing to the highest number of potential buyers, selling a property instantly becomes a much faster and lucrative process for all.
How honest should I be if work is required?
This is dependent on the state of the house of course, but in nearly all cases I recommend being completely up front. The interested party will step through the door and see that redecorating is required, something that they would probably do regardless. When the surveyor comes in, any structural problems will be flagged up anyway. The less the buyer is aware about these kinds of issues, if any, the more likely the sale is to fall through, or the less likely the chance of a serious price re-negotiation.
How much money should I spend on Home Staging?
There are things you can do that don't cost anything, like hiding the dustbins, pruning shrubs, mowing the lawn and sweeping the patio. But it is increasingly advantageous to have a ready-made house. Spending money on a fresh lick of paint, new flowers for your hanging baskets and touchy feely things that add to the ambiance are definitely worth it. For example, we were selling an unfurnished property, which looked somewhat empty, and so we advised the seller to dress the house.
Luckily they had furniture available and within 2 weeks we'd tied up an offer! On the opposite end of the scale, if you have lots of furniture and hoards of belongings collected over many years, renting storage space could be the best option for you. Leaving boxes around the house is a huge turn off for buyers. If I go into a house and see boxes, even if they're attractive boxes, I immediately think there's not enough storage space. Make each room feel as spacious as possible.
