Andrew’s top 10 tips for selling your home
Impress prospective buyers and maximise your sale
- Put yourself out. Selling your house is all about real inconvenience. If you don’t put any effort in, it could lose you thousands of pounds.
- Make sure your front door is well painted and immaculate. It is the first contact any prospective buyer will have with your home.
- Have a sniff. If your home smells bad, sort it out. Buyers and nasty niffs just don’t go.
- Keep your kitchen spotless. Shining taps and pristine work surfaces say ‘clean house.’
- Good lighting is essential for creating the right atmosphere and making your home look its best. Try to avoid fluorescent and economy bulbs as these create gloomy light.
- Make sure your home is a comfortable temperature. Buyers don’t want to break into a sweat.
- Don’t think the furniture in your house doesn’t affect its sales value – it does. Terrible furniture says you don’t care about the house, while good furniture says you do.
- Be critical of your home. If a house like yours has been sold but it had a new bathroom and yours doesn’t, don’t expect yours to sell for the same price.
- No matter what their style and size, bathrooms must say clean, relaxing and functional.
- Put the stuff that you need day to day in stylish boxes and baskets, with lids. From the book Selling Houses, by Anthea Massey with Andrew Winter, published by Headline, £12.99
Build it up
Looking for a great workman?
A good tip from the Federation of Master Builders is to always go by recommendation – speak to previous clients and check out past work.
The last word
You know it’s time for some changes when…
- You can’t walk through your front door without scrambling your way through clutter.
- Your kitchen units are so old the doors are all falling off… revealing your equally ancient health hazard saucepans.
- Your avocado bathroom suite is so retro it’s come back into fashion.. and then gone out again.
- You have to dress your kids up in protective gear from head to toe before you let them venture into the overgrown jungle which was once your back garden.
- You are still using the Mr Men duvet set your mum bought for you when you were five.
photographs: Nicky johnston, shutterstock, ISTOCK
