Part 1 Cleaning Up Your House

As a seller, how do you plan on making your home stand out among the thousands of available properties? Don’t fall into the category of stumped sellers whose properties linger on the market for months to come.

• Make the first impressions of your house count.  If the appearance of your property is not tired and in need of repair, a lot of potential buyers won’t even walk through the door. The front of your property is crucial when selling. Gardens should be in good condition and well looked after. Walls, doors and window frames newly painted if needed. Bright colourful flowers always make the front of a property more appealing.
• The garden can often be the factor that makes people feel welcome and closes the deal. If you don’t have the time or energy to garden, hire someone. It will be money well spent when the house is sold.

• Clean up the inside of your house. Buyers are looking to buy their dream home and if you want them to part with their hard earned money then you need to sell that dream. The last thing they want to be faced with is dirty kitchen cupboards and floors covered with dirt, dust and grime this is more of a nightmare and will put most buyers off. Remember they are trying to imagine themselves living in your property. Make sure it’s immaculate.
• Take the time to replace a ripped fly screen, add a fresh coat of paint or colourful flowers to a dining room table. Simple touches like these can add thousands of baht to the price you achieve.

• Neutralise. Buyers will generally be looking for a blank canvas on which they can impose their own personality. If your personal taste is stamped all over your property, especially in the form of strong colours, the potential buyers will only see this as more work to change it to what they want. Neutral light colours in your rooms with creams and whites in order to provide that blank canvas and also help to make a small dark room feel much larger.

• Declutter.  Clutter such as clothes, toys, papers etc. discourages potential buyers by making rooms seem smaller and a lot less appealing. Again, it’s hard for buyers to imagine their own possessions in your property when faced with a mountain of mess.

• Stage the home.  Staging the right way can have a dramatic effect on how quickly you sell. Burn scented-candles, or some say bake a fresh loaf of bread, so the smell emanates into main living areas. Pay special attention to the kitchen and bathrooms — “added value” here can have a more pronounced effect on the price people are willing to pay.

Now that you’ve transform your property into a more desirable and appealing dream home for the potential buyers we can move on to Part 2 which is equally if not even more important.

 Thanks to WikiHow for some of these helpful tips and images.

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