Staying At Home? Here Are Five Home Improvements Before You Put Your Property on the Market

Whilst the majority of us are working from home and being asked to self-isolate, we thought it would be helpful to collate a list of five small and simple things you can do to help improve your home now or later on, before you look to get it onto the market.

Clean the hard to reach places.

Now is a good opportunity to clear and clean those hard to reach places. When cleaned, they will certainly increase the kerbside appeal of your home.

We recommend cleaning the following areas:

• Gutters / Downpipes / Soffits / Fascias
• External window frames and window sill
• External doors

Do those small repairs

Small repairs around the property, such as replacing a door handle, re-fixing a toilet roll holder or sealing around the bath tub are tasks that often don’t take too long and will increase the appeal of your property.

You often don’t need to be too skilled to do these smaller tasks. You may be able to find a few online tutorials to help you out. Of course, we do not recommend this for any issues involving gas, electrics or mains connected plumbing.

Repair fence panels (if necessary)

If you’re fences were damaged during the recent storms and you haven’t had a chance to get round to replacing them, now is the perfect time! Depending on your current fencing, you could either look to replace them with a like-for-like replacement or look to improve them.

You could improve your fencing by replacing wooden posts with concrete posts or installing feather edge fencing. Although costly, these improvements will increase your fences lifetime and are more beneficial in the long run. If you’re looking to get your property on the market, you could reflect this cost in the asking price and use it justification to potentially get a higher offer.

Gardening

Carrying on with our external improvements, you should use this as an opportunity to tend to your garden. We recommend mowing the lawn, de-weeding the patio and borders, tidying the flower beds, trimming any bushes or foliage.

Now you don’t need to do all of these. However, even if you spend 30 minutes de-weeding the patio or mowing the lawn it will make a huge difference. It will be one less job for the buyer to worry about.

Internal redecoration

Although a fresh lick of paint to the woodwork, walls and ceiling is what we would recommend when getting a property ready for the market, it isn’t always necessary. If you’re not interested in the time and money to do this job, we feel it’s important to do so where required.

By this we mean, to paint over any scuffs in the paintwork or refresh woodwork where the level of general wear and tear is high. This should not take too long and again, will be one less job for the potential buyers to worry about.