Most sellers spend money in the wrong places. They renovate a bathroom that will be ripped out anyway, and leave the front door looking tired. The two weeks before your home goes on the market matter more than almost anything you could spend money on, and most of it costs very little.
Start outside, because that is where buyers start
By the time a buyer walks through your door they have already formed an opinion. They have seen the photo online, driven past, parked, and walked up your path. Every one of those moments happened before they saw a single room.
- Pressure wash the driveway, the walkway and the siding. This is the single highest-return afternoon of work available to you.
- Cut the edges, not just the lawn. A crisp edge reads as “looked after” in a way a mown lawn on its own does not.
- Clean the front door, replace the mat, and if the hardware is pitted, replace it. It is a small spend on the thing every buyer physically touches.
- Put the bins out of sight, and move the recycling off the porch.
- Wash the windows, outside and in. Photographers cannot fix dirty glass and buyers notice light before they notice anything else.
Then take half your things away
This is the part sellers resist and it is the part that works. You are not tidying, you are removing. Rent a locker for a month if you have to.
- Clear the kitchen counters down to two or three items. Nothing makes a kitchen look larger and nothing costs less.
- Empty a third of every closet. Buyers open closets, and a full closet reads as “not enough storage” even when there is plenty.
- Take down the family photos. Not because there is anything wrong with them, but because a buyer is trying to picture themselves living there and photographs of someone else’s life get in the way.
- Remove oversized furniture. A room with too much in it photographs small no matter how big it is.
- The garage counts. Buyers look, and a garage you cannot walk through suggests the house has no storage.
Fix the small, visible things
Buyers cannot price a repair they do not understand, so they overestimate. A dripping tap becomes “the plumbing is bad” in someone’s head. The list is nearly always the same:
- Every burnt-out bulb, and match the colour temperature across a room. Mismatched bulbs make a space look grubby in photos.
- Dripping taps and running toilets.
- Doors that stick, handles that are loose, cupboard doors that do not sit straight.
- Cracked or missing caulking around the tub, the shower and the kitchen sink. Old caulking reads as water damage.
- Scuffed walls. A single tin of paint on the two worst walls in the house is better value than any other cosmetic spend.
- Grubby switch plates and door frames around the handles. Ten minutes with a cloth.
Deal with smell, because you cannot smell your own house
You have gone nose-blind to your home. Everyone has. Ask someone who does not live there to be honest with you. Pets, cooking, damp and smoke are the four that lose sales, and none of them are fixed by an air freshener – that only tells a buyer something is being covered up. Deep clean, wash the soft furnishings, and open the windows for an hour before every showing.
Understand what actually pays back
Buyers reliably pay for a home that looks clean, bright and cared for. They rarely pay back a major renovation done specifically to sell, because they have their own taste and they will do it their way. Deep clean, declutter, paint, light and landscaping are where the money goes. A new kitchen two weeks before listing is not.
The exception is anything that reads as a defect – an active leak, a broken window, a failed seal on a double glazed unit. Those are worth fixing, because they cost you more in a buyer’s imagination than they do to repair.
Get the paperwork together early
Have this ready before you list rather than scrambling for it during the subject removal window:
- Permits for any work that was done, and the invoices.
- Warranties still in force – roof, furnace, hot water tank, windows, and any new home warranty.
- Recent utility bills, which buyers ask about more than sellers expect.
- If you are in a strata, the Form B Information Certificate, the bylaws, the depreciation report and the recent minutes.
- A survey or title certificate if you have one.
A seller who produces documents quickly looks organised, and a deal that moves quickly is a deal with fewer opportunities to fall apart.
The day of photography
Treat it as the single most important day of your sale, because for most buyers the photos are the entire first impression. Every light on, every blind open, every bin and pet bowl and car out of shot, toilet lids down, cars off the driveway. Give your agent the run of the place for two hours and stay out of the way.
The short version
Clean, empty, bright, and no visible defects. Nearly all of it is time rather than money, and it is the difference between a home that photographs well and one that does not. If you want an honest walkthrough of what is worth doing in your particular place – and what is not – that is a conversation any of our agents will happily have with you before you commit to spending anything.