The sun is out, the garden is waiting…
One of the things that may be overlooked when preparing your property for sale or rent is the garden. In fact, the condition of the garden can sometimes be make-or-break for getting a buyer interested.
The size and shape of the garden is far less important that the look of the garden – if it looks tidy and safe, it’s an incentive for the buyer to purchase. They can imagine sitting there in the summer, cool drink in hand, looking at the neat grass and pretty flower beds. They don’t want to imagine sitting in the middle of a mountain of weeds while the shed falls down behind them, all the while looking out for broken glass and trying not to catch anything from the rubbish dump next to the fence!
It doesn’t cost a fortune to make your garden presentable, a just a little bit of maintenance every couple of weeks will keep it that way. Think of the time you spend as an investment in your property – it could clinch the sale you are looking for.
Click Here to see The Complete Gardening Course, featuring the Garden Master Plan.
Presenting Your Home
When selling (or even renting out) your property, first impressions count for a lot. Remember, the person looking around will only spend a few minutes looking in all the different rooms, and will not have a great deal of time to evaluate how suitable the property would be to live in.
If you invest a small amount of time to ensure that your property is clean and tidy, you will be well on your way to making more money for the property – it is not uncommon for buyers to offer a lower price if they perceive the property is in need of work doing to it, and an untidy home can give that negative impression.
If you are pressed for time, Mimi Tanner may have the answer for you in her DeClutter Fast system. Decluttering is easy, and a lot less stressful than spending day after day looking at piles of ‘stuff’ just laying around for no good reason.
Click here to find out more.
Buying Below Market Value
It’s getting to the time of year when the property market starts to get really active, and purchasing a property can actually become harder. If a property is priced sensibly – and that often means “below market value”, or how much it is perceived to be worth – then there will be a lot of interest. It does not matter if the property in question is a repossession, priced sensibly for a quick sale, or has been owned for years with little or no mortgage, as long as the price is reasonable, people will be interested.
In these cases, it is easy to get caught in the “eBay trap” – we’ve all seen it. Something is for sale on eBay, and you place a bid for slightly lower than you would pay if you went to a shop. Someone else bids a few pennies higher. You feel this was your item, so you bid higher. Someone else bids. The original bidder bids higher. You….give up and move on to something else. The other two bidders outbid each other for the last two minutes of the auction, and the item goes for four times the original value.
The same things happens with properties – as the price started low, people are willing to make higher offers if other people are interested – and it quickly gets out of hand. It’s not uncommon for prices to go up to 10 or 20k higher than the original asking price, and as the original price was “reasonable”, there’s no problem with getting a mortgage as the property could quite likely be valued much higher.
And you end up paying far more than you originally intended – don’t forget, the interest on your mortgage will be higher if the total amount is higher. It’s a double price rise every time you move up in cost.
So take it easy, and makes offers with you head – not your heart. Other properties will become available, just bide your time and don’t get the eBay fever…
Making a good impression
One thing is for sure – you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression when selling your house. If you can create the impression of a bright and airy property that is clean and spacious, you stand a better chance of selling – and at the price that you want.
In these times, it is common for a buyer to offer 10%-25% less than the asking price, often citing instances of work needing doing or changes that need to be made. With a great looking house and a fairly neutral colour scheme, there’s not a lot that can be said that needs doing – you are effectively offering a spacious blank canvas for the buyer to stamp their identity on.
In any economic climate it is always worth making your property more desirable, but there is no need to go overboard, as long as jobs are done right. The quality of the finish is just as important as the kind of work that is done – a carpet that is fitted with gaps around the edge, or a bathroom that is re-tiled with tiles that don’t match or line up is liable to decrease the perceived value of a property rather than increase it in the eyes of the buyer.
