Putting your home on the Market …. Part Two
Moving home can be a bit like stepping out into the ‘Wilderness’ .. But look at it as a wonderful adventure …
The Pitfalls & the Positives ….
Bathrooms & The Little Girls Room – Make sure it smells nice! You can hide air fresheners discretely in the room. New fresh towels are a must! A must! They are your stage set for colour, you can move them out of the room when not being used for a viewing, and they give a fresh crisp and clean feeling! Good quality hand soap and hand cream, always looks and smells nice too. Always check the toilets before a viewing …! A new loo seat in a colour coordinating style to your towels can harmonise they the whole look. In some of the bathrooms I have used horizontal poles on hooks over which I draped magazines… Let’s face it people read in toilets and the magazines add a splash of colour and pizzazz. Make sure they are new magazines .. If you get my drift!
Small cloakroom I am working on …
Halls and General Areas - Make sure there is good access, don’t let dozens of shoes block the floor area, remember this may well be the first viewed area when your potential purchaser pop’s their head through the door! Make a statement, this is your big chance! Open up the area with the strategic use of mirrors and maybe a statement piece of art work. Hallways in old houses can sometimes be quite dark, a good way around this can be the use of feature secondary lighting, such as plug in socket lights on a wire cord. When using this type of lighting make sure the spot light is focused on a subject.
Nothing like a splash of light in a dark hallway…
Gardens & Outside Areas – Apart from keeping them tidy, it is always important to make a view, a focal point or two! It does not matter if it is summer or winter, you want to give your buyer an idea of how lovely it will be to relax in this space. If the outside area is small, make it appear to be bigger! Again mirrors! Wall mounted planters or just some simple but bold flushes of colour are essential. If the garden is bigger… Personally I love a water feature, and there are so many to suit any design or budget. But it can be expense work, so if you feel you do not want to run to that, put out a table and chairs, in the summer use cushions make a splash of comfort, pop a jug of orange juice and some glasses on the table, Pimm’s if you prefer! Because I am a avid cook I usually have a cake or two around for the children, pop one on the table with a couple of plates for your “guests”!.. Just for the look, this gives an image of how they can relax and / or entertain in their new home. If you don’t cook improvise with some posh biscuits… Make it look normal and natural, you have to sit somewhere whilst there is a viewing, why not outside? I know it sounds a lot… First impressions count! … You have to pull out all the stop’s my friends!
If it is winter, leave the table and chairs out, keep them clean and pop some colourful foliage on the table in some lovely pots / Baskets … Choose a colour scheme that suits your design… Colour in winter is a challenge, but evergreens with brightly coloured berries are in abundance……
If you have the opportunity to have some pots, hanging baskets or window boxes go for it, especially to the front of the house. First impressions again! Secure them well! ….
Styling box trees makes a great impression ….
GENERAL TIPS …. SHOWCASE YOUR HOME …
There is nothing like making a statement .. By using lighting
Lighting – Go around your house, switch the main lights off and the side lights on, check the focus of the lighting – ambience! Consider if it is worth the relatively small investment of dimmer switches as an option for the main lighting so you can select the effect creating an atmosphere. If any light bulbs have blown …. Change them!
If your kitchen is dark, work tops hidden under overhead cabinets.. Why not brighten things up with under counter / cabinet lighting. Mains, low voltage, LED and battery there is a simple solution, which will not require an electrician or in fact any real DIY aptitude on your part. This can be unbelievably effective and can really make a difference to the feel of the room.
Storage is key to any design .. Make sure you have enough … However to be honest there is never enough!
Storage – Whenever I look at a house for ourselves or for a client, storage is one of the things I consider high on the ‘tick box list’. You can kill a viewing dead with not giving the impression that the property has a good amount of storage space. If you love books and magazines and have a collection they can look great if organised. Put them in piles of similar size and quantities. Erect the shelves according to the size of the books, biggest books at the bottom, largest at the top, it makes a great feature and gets them out of the way. I have been known to use utilitarian garage storage shelving, it is brilliant, it is cheap and easy to erect, you can choose the dimensions of the shelves to suit your items and they come in a range of sizes and frame colours – and they are very strong and durable! In fact they are perfect in children’s bedrooms to get the clutter off the floor, but make sure like all items of furniture that they are securely fixed to the wall! Just in case your ‘little darlings’ find them an interesting climbing frame!
Do a purge, you don’t want to take all this unused ‘stuff’ to your new home, it takes up space AND it will cost you money to get moved there, when in reality you are only going to throw it all away once you get there! Cut out the middle man! Put clothes that you are not going to use away, I store them in suitcases and hat boxes on the top of my cupboards, which look great and it is another way to get things out of the cupboards and make space. What about shoe boxes, they can be easily obtained on line and are a fab way to sort your shoes and they stack neatly. It is good advice…. One big job done ready for your move to your new home, which will reduce the stress levels … Now there is a plus!
Soft Furnishings ….
One last thing … It is so disheartening when you have made all this effort and a viewer comes into your beloved home, flits about the place like they own it already, makes one or two disparaging remarks and the odd very negative comment AND looks down on you like you are a second class citizen. This happens, you do and will have to suffer this indignity but it is always the means to the end! Grin and bear it, they just may buy it!
Don’t get jaded, hang on in there! When you’ve had a number of viewings, but still no offers… It is easy to get a bit low … Don’t …
“The” purchaser can very often be the last person you would imagine! But there is a purchaser for every home. Just keep the faith and keep the house looking like a designer shop…
I have had some very odd viewings over the years, one old couple, two ladies, after the viewing sat in the garden on the outside bench and ate their sandwiches! Needless to say they did not buy the house – Day trippers - Yeh!! On another occasion, [another house] I used to try and keep our delinquent cats out of the house, believe me they were not socially acceptable! Unfortunately, the Estate Agent left the door open and our most outrageous Bengal cat … strolled nonchalantly into the kitchen to join the assembled family of potential purchasers. Without further ado or formality, in my beautiful kitchen, Bangers the cat started to vocalise in a very animated way, “retching” and “retching” as if she had swallowed her entire body weight in fur balls! The guttural howling was spectacular, it was like a soundtrack from a horror film which culminated in her regurgitating one half of a masticated baby squirrel! Hideous and disgusting in equal measures … The family were ushered out of the kitchen, ‘quickly’ and that was the end of that viewing! …. No, they did not buy the property, but as far as we are aware needed no long term counselling either!
REMEMBER HAVE A BIT OF FUN!!
