7 top tips on creating great first impressions when selling your home!

- Tue 21 Feb 2023

They say buyers make up their mind whether they want to buy your home within seconds of walking through the door. Although this is not always true, it is definitely true that first impressions are essential when wanting to sell your home. We have put together some useful tips to ensure your home is making a positive first impression.

1. Create more space. Ensure buyers can see the space your home has to offer and make it easy for them to envisage themselves living there. If a property has space it has a lot of potential no matter what the buyer is looking for. Brighten up narrow spaces like hallways with fresh white paint, declutter small spaces and window ledges to open up the space and allow natural light in. All of these things cost little or no price at all and can make a huge impact on whether someone wants to buy your home.
2. Get advice from the experts! If you are struggling to see what you can do to help that first impression in your home, speak to your contact at Bradleys Estate Agents! A second opinion is always useful, we can let you know how to create that first initial impact and how to highlight the best features in your home. Usually if a home is light, clean, spacious and looks well cared for, your potential buyers are engaged from the moment they arrive.
3. Don’t forget about the exterior. Many potential buyers drive by a home before booking an initial viewing appointment. If your home has pealing paint on the exterior, a dirty door and a messy driveway this could put buyers off booking a viewing appointment and jeopardise a potential sale on your home. Ensure your drive way is swept, any clutter is placed away in your garage, shed or tucked away to the side of your property. Give your door a fresh lick of paint or a clean along with your windows and make sure any shrubs or front garden space is well maintained.
4. Eliminate any smells, even if you cannot smell them! Make sure your property smells just as good as your property looks! Any unpleasant smells could lead the buyer to think it is not clean or well looked after and put them off. Open windows or put them on the second latch to ensure fresh air is filtered through to your property, use subtle diffusers and air fresheners where needed, ensure your bins are changed- top tip try spraying the bottom of the bin with clothes softener before putting your new bin liner in! Finally, we all love pets but sometimes they can smell, especially to people who do not have any pets. Make sure their beds are clean, all pet hair is hoovered and removed from furniture and no food is left out at the time of a viewing appointment. Make sure you give your home a quick clean and spray before a viewing appointment and take the dog our for a walk! Although you may love pets, your potential buyers may not.
5. Leave the rest to the Estate Agent. Where possible, it is best to leave your property when you have a viewing appointment, let us take control of the rest. Potential buyers make more use of their time when they can quietly absorb the feeling and details of you home whilst they visualise themselves living there, and ultimately make a decision if they like the property or not. Sometimes it is harder for them to do this when the current homeowner is in and they can feel a little under pressure or rushed to look around the property and potentially overlook key aspects of your home. Any questions they have, we can answer and report back to you on the initial feedback and feeling of how the viewing went.
6. Make your home clean and tidy. This is a pretty obvious point however, making the beds, drawing curtains back, removing clutter from the floors and putting them away in hidden storage automatically makes a room appear much bigger. Make sure you flush toilets and give your bathroom and kitchen a good clean before marketing. Remember you are selling your most valuable asset- make it glean and shine like it deserves!
7. Pay attention to outside space. No matter what time of year it is, you need your outside space to look as good as possible. Make sure flower beds are weeded and neat, lawns are mowed and patios are swept. If you do have any big toys like trampolines or slides, move these into a corner or to the side of your garden so that buyers can see the space, they may even want to consider an extension of the living space which would be hard to imagine in an untidy space. If your garden is looking dull, you could buy some ready grown plants to brighten it up, wash down any garden furniture and cut back any large trees or bushes that may be blocking the sun into your garden.

Whilst this may have added a number of jobs to your ‘to do list’ we hope it has been helpful. If you are considering selling and feel you would like some more input before placing your home up for sale, any of our 30 estate agency branches would be delighted to hear from you and discuss any aspects of the move.

7 top tips on creating great first impressions when selling your home!

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