Tips for selling your home in a buyer’s market

When buyers have a lot of choice, first impressions of your property matter more than ever. Put yourselves in a buyer’s shoes. Imagine you’re whizzing around a neighbourhood, taking in multiple open homes in a day, and one looks slightly shabbier and less loved than the others, you might be less inclined to take a second look.

Go outside and look at your property from across or the street, or the bottom of your path. Or, better yet, get a relative or friend to come and do this with you, and ask them what they’d improve. If you’ve lived in your home for a while, it might be difficult to notice things that could stand out to the critical-eye of a busy prospective buyer. The types of things to look out for include:

• Is the garden tidy? Do hedges need trimming, lawns need mowing or paths need weeding? These little things can make a big difference to the overall first impression of your property.
• Is a paint job in order? Is that paint fading from the front door, or external window frames? If so, summer is a great time to get these small renovations done.
• Could you make some additions? Borrowing some outdoor furniture from a relative or friend could help prospective buyers imagine themselves lounging in the sun. Equally, some potted plants can help bring your property’s exterior to life.

Importantly, with the current high cost of building materials, you should think long and hard before deciding to get stuck into major renovations. Unless you’re looking more long term, and might get some enjoyment out of, say a new kitchen, before you sell you're unlikely to see good returns on large projects if you’re simply renovating to attract buyers.

The most important thing you can do to prepare for an open home is make buyers able to see themselves living in your home.

This becomes 10x harder if your home is full of all of your stuff. Not only does lots of clutter make it harder for a buyer to see the potential your property has, it’s also distracting – they’ll feel like they’re walking around someone else’s house, rather than their future home.

Among the first steps in your decluttering mission should be:

• Taking down family photos: put these out of sight for now – let them imagine what they could do to decorate.
• Clear out cupboards: storage is really important to home buyers, and overflowing cupboards will give the impression that your home isn’t big enough for all your stuff, so might not be for them either.
• Take out unnecessary furniture: if you have a large family, or frequently entertain, you might well have more seating than the average household needs. This can make your spaces feel smaller and less attractive, so put some in storage for now.

As part of getting your home ready for viewings, you might want to consider hiring professional home stagers. If you’re selling through an agent this is a conversation you should have with them, and they may have already pitched this to you as part of your initial conversations. If you’re selling alone, there are plenty of options out there, so check out this handy guide on how to find the right home stager. It might seem like unnecessary hassle and an extra expense, but it could well be worth the investment.

If you know about a maintenance issue with your property, you need to tell your real estate agent about this from the get-go. This includes everything from a faulty garage door to a leaky roof. Agents are then legally obliged to tell prospective buyers about these issues.

Ultimately, the choice is yours, you can either get it fixed, or leave the problem there and simply have this information passed onto the buyers. The second option can, of course, be off-putting, particularly at a time when buyers already have a lot of choice, and will almost certainly lead to additional bargaining over the home’s price.

So, it can be a good idea to try and fix up maintenance issues ahead of time. To put it simply, this is just easier for everyone. You don’t need to worry about extra haggling (and haggling that’s pretty hard to argue with), and for home buyers, it’s one less barrier to seeing your home as their best option. Again, however, you need to factor in the costs of building materials right now, so it’s worth getting several quotes for larger maintenance jobs.