Decluttering Sells Houses
Never before in our 18 years of renovating and flipping properties have we ever seen the housing market so hot as it is right now, and it seems to be the case right across the nation.
If you’re motivated to take advantage of this buoyant market and considering taking the plunge and sell up, let’s make sure your home is pulling its weight and achieving the best possible price.
Nailing the superficial aspects and styling is super important, but way before we even consider this, we need to clear all the extra stuff out and create a feeling of space.
Decluttering sounds like a no-brainer, but it really needs to be taken seriously. We’re not just talking about the living spaces, it is every nook and cranny of your home, the wardrobes, kitchen cupboards, linen press, garage and even the garden. You really need to be brutal when it comes to cleaning out. If you don’t need it, get rid of it and if it doesn’t fit but you simply must keep it, pack it away and store it off site.
Prospective buyers are not being nosey, but they will open every cupboard to make sure your home will accommodate their lives. So, you need to thin everything out, until every single bit of storage in your home feels abundant and anything but cramped. It’s summer, so pack up your winter coats and boots, and the spare blankets too, and ship them out. As for those sheets filling the linen press that never get used, donate then to the op shop, and the same goes for the extra dinner sets and odd cutlery.
If your garage is anything like ours, it’s packed with so much stuff that it’s a struggle to fit the car – clear it out, if prospective buyers aren’t sure their car will fit, this could be a deal breaker. The same goes for a garden shed, if you can clear it to the point that it feels usable, this could be the selling point for a home handyperson.
Take a wander around the yard, courtyard or balcony. If there is anything without purpose, in bad order (and this includes sad and dead plants), it’s gotta go!
Once you have totally decluttered from top to bottom you can clearly see what you’ve got to work with, and a prospective buyer can imagine themselves here – that’s the key.
Now it is time to really have a good look around your home and consider what needs to be done to impress and inspire prospective buyers.
Join us next week when we get to the fun part, styling your home to its fabulous best, to make it the one the buyers are clamoring over to have as their own.