It’s likely not news to you that a viewing is a crucial part of selling your home. You can select a trustworthy estate or letting agent, but if they don’t conduct a viewing in a professional, educational, and enriching manner, you’re not going to get an offer, no matter how nice your home is.
A successful showing will highlight your home’s best qualities and encourage potential buyers to visualise themselves in your space. Here, we provide the most effective strategies for making your home more appealing to potential buyers and increasing the likelihood that they will make an offer before they leave.
How To Prepare Your House For A Viewing
Before you conduct a viewing, give your house a thorough cleaning and make sure everything is in working order. At this point, you should be thinking about your potential buyers and how they could envision living in your property. Keep reading to find out more.
Give Your House Some Kerb Appeal
In the real estate market, the first impression is crucial. This is why you need to conduct a great viewing. Most buyers will have multiple houses scheduled for viewings and may have already viewed several before they see yours, making it difficult, if not impossible, to sway their opinion if they aren’t impressed upon first glance.
Make your house more presentable by cleaning up the outside. Consider this question: what will a viewer observe right away? Take the time to maintain your front garden by cutting the grass and trimming the bushes. Keep the driveway free of litter, and put your rubbish bins somewhere out of the way. You should clean the windows and maybe repaint the front door (just remember to steer clear of particularly garish colours).
Think About Your Pets
You can’t expect potential buyers to share your enthusiasm for beloved pets. Give your home a thorough airing and vacuum up any loose hairs from the carpets, rugs, and soft furniture before you conduct a viewing. The smell of a wet dog or litter tray is not going to make a favourable impression. Since you’ve probably grown accustomed to your pet’s aroma, a friend or neighbour with a more objective nose could be of great assistance here. If your pet gets overly excited when meeting new people, consider having someone else take care of it during the viewing.
Show Off Your Floor Space
British homes are increasingly smaller despite the popularity of open floor plans and light, airy interiors. Among British residences constructed after 1930, LABC Warranty found that the largest dwellings were constructed in the 1970s. Sizing has decreased since then. While newer homes have smaller living rooms than those built in the 1970s by around a third, the average number of bedrooms has decreased to just under three from 3.6 in the 1980s.
If your home is modern and on the smaller side, you may want to give the impression of more room than there actually is when you conduct a viewing. Make the most of the extra square footage your older home has to offer. You can accomplish either of these aims by getting rid of unnecessary items and old furniture, but don’t just stuff everything into the loft or the garage; viewers should want to look there if they are serious.
Provide As Much Information As Possible
There will be a set of questions ready and waiting for each potential purchaser. Your estate agent will have less time to accomplish the crucial business of selling your house if they have to spend the entire viewing answering these queries. Therefore, give as much information as possible in advance of the viewing. Is off-street parking possible on your property? Do you know if there are any authentic era details? How wonderful is the garden, if there is one? However, don’t be too dismissive of problems either (we’ll go into this more later).
Be Honest
Earlier, we mentioned that you shouldn’t feel pressured to cover up any imperfections you could find in your house. Caveat emptor (“buyer beware”) has traditionally applied to sales of residential property, however deceiving potential buyers is exceedingly unlikely to result in a sale.
If you’re worried that the truth about your home might scare off potential buyers, the best thing you can do is make sure your estate agent or viewing expert knows everything there is to know about it. Pretending that everything is well with the neighbours when you’re actually in the middle of a heated disagreement over the fence or the volume of your music might seem like a small thing to embellish. The truth always emerges in these cases, and if you’ve already sold the house by then, the buyer will likely try to get some kind of compensation from you.
Leave It To The Experts
You could be tempted to conduct viewings yourself – after all, who knows your property better than you? We recommend, however, that you have an expert conduct a viewing instead. This could be your estate agent, but if they aren’t able to attend a viewing or you want to have a little more control – or you’ve opted for a less expensive package that means you conduct the viewings yourself – Looksy can be there for you. Since giving tours of homes is our day-to-day work, we are in the ideal position to point out the most noteworthy features, address any queries, and determine whether or not the prospective buyer is interested. Get in touch today if you want to know more.
Furthermore, potential buyers may not feel at ease touring a home with the current residents present, increasing the likelihood that they will be too polite to raise pertinent questions and thus delay making an offer. Keep in mind, maybe most crucially, that anyone viewing your home should feel like they could actually live there. That might be hard with the current owners there.