Preparation and presentation – style solutions to sell your home

At Elan Homes we’re offering virtual viewings and will soon be opening our sales offices and show homes, with additional safety measures in place.

If you’re a homeowner with your heart set on a new Elan home, these top tips compiled with help from Stanza Style could help you sell up and move on.

Alex Egan, from Stanza Style said: “There are a variety of things that you can’t easily change when selling your home, such as the location and market conditions, but you can control the look and feel of the property. Making your current home more attractive to buyers can help you sell faster and retain your sale value.”

Declutter

1. When decluttering of all the things you really don’t need or love anymore you are emotionally getting ready to move out yourself and into your new home. Reducing the amount of things you own detoxes your house, which can have a positive effect on your metal and physical health.
2. Mess and lots of “stuff” on show gives the impression the house is too small and can’t cope with your belongings (and respectively theirs). Showing your home has the ability to breath and deal with all the things you have will hit a high note for your buyer.  They are looking for a home that gives them space and more to grow into.
3. One of the highest points on a buyers tick list is storage. Demonstrate how your house has storage, for clothes, children’s toys and don’t forget the hoover and ironing board! If you don’t have a place for your ironing board, remove it from the house on the day of the viewing, but don’t leave it propped up against something in the house.

Nothing personal

4. To sell your home you need a buyer to look inside it. Help them feel at ease as they look around by removing your personal items from view. The person viewing your home will have more of a chance of imagining living in your house without being distracted by your things. When you have filled your home with your personal story, then there’s no room for theirs – depersonalise.
5. Depersonalising your current home while you’re still living in it can be hard, but it’s not forever. Take down family photos, remove excess personal products and put clothes away. 

Make space

6. Removing the clutter of everyday life will allow buyers to see past the furniture and into the corners of rooms, helping to make them feel bigger.
7. The kitchen is one of the most important rooms when selling your home. Clear non-essential items like the juicer from the work surfaces to show as much useable workspace as possible. Clear window sills of clutter and add a vase of flowers instead.
8. Tidy your bookshelves and arrange books with a mixture of treasured items like ornaments and vases to create interest.
9. Always make sure the bed is made. No one wants to walk into someone else’s house to see a messy bed!
10. Make the bathroom feel like a sanctuary, a place to unwind. Create a colourful display with fluffy towels and add scented candles or reed diffusers help to attract the senses. Put products away, perhaps in a rattan basket that you can use as a stool or hide them in a wardrobe.

In a fix

11. To make your home look loved, repair the things that you have been meaning to do but never got around to. Deal with the broken handle, the damaged wall, the terrible bright paint that you have always hated
12. Neutralise your home by giving it a lick of paint. Choose soft pastels rather than white. Take time to stand in each room and consider how it makes you feel, what is the purpose of the room and would it explain itself to others?

First impressions

13. Don’t forget the outside. Kerb appeal is the first chance at making a good impression and you never get a second chance to do that. Go out of your front door and walk away from your house, turn back, stand and look at what a potential buyer would see as they approach. Clean the windows, inside and out, and make sure curtains are tied back tidily.
14. Make sure there’s a clear path to the entrance door and that buyers know where to go to knock on your door.
15. Remove any wilted plants or weeds from the path and garden, cut the grass and trim the hedge. Move the bins out of the way.

If you’re looking for a new home, make sure you visit the Elan website, where you’ll be able to take virtual tours of our show homes and contact our sales executives. We could help you secure a buyer with our Easy Move scheme or may even accept your current property in part exchange for a brand new Elan home.