3 Steps to Prep Your Home For Sale

Posted on Tuesday, July 2nd, 2019

When it’s time to sell your home, it’s important you allocate enough time to thoroughly clean and prep the house before any inspections. It’s only when your home is nicely cleaned that people can see its true potential and be valued accordingly or grab the interest in potential buyers. Here is a helpful guide that touches on some important aspects in ensuring your home is at its absolute best condition before it’s listed for sale.

How to Prepare Your Home

If your home needs significant improvements and you’ll need a renovation loan to bring it up to scratch, but you’d be surprised at how only a few minor touch-ups can make all the difference to potential buyers. Start by taking a walk across the road and observing your home from there. If it has curb appeal then you won’t have to do more landscaping, but we all know we can become accustomed to just about anything, so ask a landscaper if there’s anything that might need tweaking. Make sure the house looks as if someone lives there so mow the lawns, trim hedges, clean the footpath and check that your house number is visible.

Here are three vital steps you should take to prepare your home with some additional tips on how to keep it clean throughout the sale period, making it look sharp and appealing to potential buyers:

1. De-personalise and declutter

Potential buyers need to be able to imagine themselves living in your home, which means all items that make it uniquely yours should be removed or put out of sight during a sales inspection. Show-homes are devoid of personal items for this reason. So, pack up your family photographs and heirlooms, make sure all clothes are hung neatly in cupboards out of sight. Making a habit out of organising and decluttering is also seen to be beneficial to your happiness overall, so you can view this as an opportunity rather than a chore.

Think about the following when decluttering your belongings:

• If you haven’t used it in more than one year, you probably don’t need it
• If you don’t need it, why not donate it or take it to the tip?
• Remove all books from bookcases
• Pack up the knick-knacks.
• Clean off everything on kitchen benches
• Put essential items you use daily in a box to be stored in a closet when not used
• See this as the start of the packing you’ll be doing when you move
• Make sure all cupboards are neat and not stuffed full – people will look inside, and if they see clutter they’ll think their stuff won’t fit in there
• Make sure all items in cupboards are neat

2. Do minor repairs

You’re much better off doing minor maintenance than to lose a sale because a tap didn’t turn off properly or the gate needed re-hinging. You’d be surprised at how much these things matter. Leaky or faulty taps and dishwashers could also lead to last-minute and unexpected messes prior to any visits, so check out the following and make the repairs if necessary:

• Fix hinges on cupboards, gates, doors
• Replace cracked floor, bathroom or kitchen tiles
• Repair any holes in walls and repaint
• Fix all leaky taps
• Fix doors that don’t close properly and kitchen drawers that stick
• Consider painting your walls in neutral colours, especially if you’ve grown accustomed to the orange, bright red, pink or purple ones
• Replace blown light globes
• If your doona covers are worn, stained or dated, replace them
• If your curtains are old and stained, dated or torn, replace them
• If blinds are damaged or malfunctioning, fix or replace

3. Clean, clean, and clean

Clean everything! Make the house dazzlingly clean. Trace along the path of a potential buyer including pulling up outside, checking the house from the kerb, walking through the gate and up the path to the front door. They could be asking questions like does the garden look clean and maintained? Are there any dents or cracks in the front porch that could cost to fix?. Keep imagining you’re a potential buyer even walking throughout the inside of the house and check that floors, walls, and even cupboards are clean inside and out. How’s the stove and sink? Shining, and brilliantly clean? How about smells? Ask a good friend who doesn’t have a dog (presuming you do) to tell you whether there are doggie odours when he or she comes through the front door. Check the backyard as well to make sure it looks tidy and manageable to new home-buyers. As you find things you need to fix, make notes about any repairs or changes you think would make your home more appealing to home buyers.

To make your house radiantly clean:

• Bleach dingy bathroom and kitchen grout
• Bathroom towels must be clean and neatly folded or hung
• Clean out any cobwebs from ceilings, walls, everywhere
• Clean the refrigerator and cupboards
• Clean the windows inside and out until they gleam
• Clean and air out any musty smelling areas. Odours are definitely out
• Dust and polish furniture
• Clean the doorknobs of fingermarks
• Clean ceiling fan blades and light fixtures, especially switches (more fingermarks)
• Clean all floors
• Deep clean the tub, shower, washbasin, and toilet
• Polish chrome taps and make all mirrors sparkle
• Rent a gurney and wash footpaths, driveways and exteriors
• Re-caulk sinks, tubs, showers
• Replace any tatty or worn rugs especially if they’re smelly
• Vacuum and dust every day
• Wax floors that are waxable

Doing all of this by yourself may end up being very time-consuming and can leave you exhausted quite quickly. For the areas of the home that are especially difficult to clean, such as tough grime spots or hard to reach places, this could mean extra hours of cleaning. And without the proper cleaning tools and knowledge, remnants of the unclean areas could still remain. By hiring the professional cleaning services at My Home Clean in Melbourne, not only will you save on countless hours of your time but you’ll be guaranteed a speckless and beautiful home ready to be enjoyed.