In our previous blog post, How To Perfect Your Property Sale, we looked at the fundamentals you need to keep in mind when making choices about preparing your property for sale. Now we take it one step further with a detailed list of how to put knowledge into action.

This is only general information, it won’t be able to cater to every vendor's needs. As always, do your research and talk to professionals in your area who can help find solutions that work for you.

Knowing the fundamentals is important, so if you missed this post please go back and read it. The reason being that every property sale is different so you need to be familiar with WHY these plans are recommended so that you can tweak it to what will work for your property in your market.

If you are selling your home or preparing to get it revalued for a wider range of loan options here are some proven tips to get the biggest value for the lowest dollar.

Now for our Proven Ways To Increase The Value Of Your Investment Property: EXTERIOR.

As per my activity from the previous post you will have noticed that street appeal comes from a specific range of key items. It is by no means accidental. When selling your home you have only a few seconds to make an amazing impression when your potential buyers eye the first fall on the property. The feeling that you create in that short time sticks! Make sure you work your property exterior, from road curb to entrance to get a riveting wow factor from the very beginning.

We will look at Interior Design and how to welcome your hopeful buyers with a home they will want to move into in our follow up post. Make sure you connect next week to wrap up this valuable trilogy!

There are a lot of items listed here, but that's not to say you need to do all of them. Some won't apply to you at all, some won't be an issue, and others won't be right for your ideal buyer's needs. As always make sure you get a good fit between any advice given and your individual needs, budget and goals. Property sales and purchase is always going to be unique to the individuals involved as well as the aspects of the home, which will seldom be exact to their neighbours.  Read through and select the suggestions that your property and your buyers require and focus on making that shine bright.

Exterior Paint

Make sure your home’s exterior paint is fresh (no peeling, fading or chips) and that it has modern appeal with neutral colours that blend into the environment or stand out in crisp white. Use subtle shades to highlight features and create a feeling of modern class.

You want your exterior paint choices to compliment both the home and its surroundings.

This is a project that is DIY friendly and won’t cost the earth. Choose your colours wisely and invest a weekend of great weather and you are all done!

What works: bring some mates in to help with the workload and hire an industrial pressure hose and paint spray gun to cut down the hours of labour and give that professional zing.

Gardens and Landscaping

You don’t have to love gardening, neither does your buyer but having a great looking garden can add incredible value to your home. This is one area when spending more will give you much more back.

If you don’t have a garden at the moment it’s worth talking to a landscape designer to give you some pointers. Bring in some hardy, low maintenance plants and work a little magic. You can even hire large plants in pots if need be, just make sure they aren’t part of the sale contract!

Even a few cheap flowering plants will go a long way for next to no money, helping transform that patch of dirt into a flourishing pool of vivid colour.

Borders and Fencing

This is one you need to weigh up carefully because fencing isn't cheap. Not every property will find this a value booster, but for some, it can make the sale. The rule of thumb is this, if your streetview is horrendous, a new fence will probably be worth it. If you already have a lot in your corner when it comes to street appeal, you can probably leave it, although do replace any broken pieces, repaint if it's faded or peeling and repair any holes or obvious issues.

If a fence isn’t your thing, look into instant screening hedges!

What works: Want to save money in this area. Picket fencing is a great DIY project. Just be sure you talk to the store you purchase the pieces from to make sure you have the right paint process in place. Some woods are super thirsty and without a primer will gobble up insane amounts of paint before it shows a vivid coat.

Roofing

So, remember what I said in the previous post about expensive foundation fixes typically not paying off? Here is the exception to the rule. Roofing is expensive but it’s also visible. Rusting iron, fading paint, missing nails or broken tiles are all pretty easy to spot from the street, and believe me, buyers at your opens are looking at your roof.

What does it say about the property: broken, neglected, needs expensive work.

Safety first: If you are doing your gutters, hire a ladder if you don't have the right one for your roof height and get a friend in to help be your anchor.

Be sure to have an amazing looking roof. In some cases, this might just be a pressure hose sweep and gutter clean. For other homes, you may need new gutters and a fresh coat of paint or a little money into replacing any missing or suspicious-looking tiles. These works aren't expensive and you can shop around for a good deal.

No one is going to pay full price for a home with a roof that leaks. If you do have serious roof problems, any independent building check will show it up.

If your roof is in serious need of repair, it pays to get this amended before the third party checks speak the worst about your home value.

What works: Getting a professional to do your roof. This is not an area to save on labour costs. Roofs are high and slippery and falls from them can be dangerous, even deadly. At the very least consider the cost of being injured, that's a lot of downtime you won't be able to use preparing your property for sale! In the long run, it's going to cost you big to climb up, do everyone a favour and stay on the ground.

Brick Rendering

If you have a red brick home it might look like a date stamp is printed right across your homefront. I AM SO OLD. You can easily bring the look of your old home exterior to modern sleek style by rendering over it. 

Yes, this is going to cost a little upfront (think in the zone of $10,000 plus) but this could be the wow factor you are looking for that will pay off BIG.

Rendering transforms the look of your home so staggeringly, even you won't believe it's the same property.

What works: Because of the high cost, you have to go deep into the research here and know if it will pay back. Get detailed work quotes and accurate timeframes for work completion, and if possible, get a virtual mock-up of what rendering will look like when painted. You can then take this to your real estate agent to see if they think it will be a good fit for the market and match it with your findings about current property worth.

Be sure to check in with our final post on increasing home value series with Increase The Value Of Your Property: INTERIOR

Contact us today if you would like one of the best NSW conveyancers to walk you through your property transaction.