How to Improve Your Curb Appeal

Are you looking to improve the appearance of your home? Curb appeal can make the difference between selling your home and getting no showings.

I am writing this article specifically for someone thinking about selling their home or maybe they are trying to sell but don’t have any offers yet. The tips in this article can also be helpful for anyone looking to improve the appearance of their home.

1. Clean and Organize

One of the best ways to make your home look better and appear more valuable is to clean up the outside spaces.

When organizing the outside spaces, you should concentrate on simplifying and decluttering. You shouldn’t make the spaces empty, but this time less is more.
As far as the cleaning goes you should get out the pressure washer. If you don’t own one hopefully you know someone who does that will lend it to you for a day. This would even be worth renting or buying one for.

The outside of your home is going to be the first thing a potential buyer will see. If its dirty they will enter your home with this negative thought in their mind and anything slightly dirty will seem worse to them. If the outside space is cluttered they will also enter your home with a negative thought in their mind. This time they will be thinking that there is not enough room for everything. The more clutter they see the small the house will become to them.

2. General Maintenance

Now you don’t want to get too crazy and spend thousands of dollars on these items. The idea is to make the home appear updated and well kept.

Buy a $3 tub of caulking and go around the windows and doors. This will freshen things up and its also a good idea to do this every couple of years to prevent water damage.

Repaint the doors and trim. This will brighten up the entire outside of your home. This will add way more value than you will spend on the gallon of paint. This might even be a good time to pick a good accent color or change the current color to give life to the exterior of your home.

Repair anything broken. If a buyer sees something in disrepair within the first 5 minutes of the showing they will second guess the condition of your home.

3. Updating

This time you might want to think about spending a few dollars. Updating a few things can change a buyers first impression of your home. Some items that make a big difference would be the Screen door, Door Knobs, Door Bell, Mailbox, Shutters, etc.
Replacing these few items will cost a little bit of money but it will help improve the value of your home and it could reduce the time on market without an offer.

4. Landscaping

In most cases simple is the key. Thinning out your plants might be helpful. You want your home to stand out and not be overcrowded by the landscaping. You will want to freshen things up with new mulch, it will be well worth the expense. Add some color with a few annuals. Make sure your trees and bushes are not over grown, also trim them back away from the home.

It might be worth it for you to hire a landscaping company to take care of this for you. When getting your home ready to put on the market you might start to get overwhelmed. Hiring this out will save you time, on the other hand doing it yourself will save you money. You will need to decide what is more valuable to you at this point, time or money.

These four tips will help you raise the value of your home and reduce the time on the market with no offers. If you are looking for other ways to improve your value or reduce your days on the market you should read my articles “How to Sell Your Home for More” and “How to Sell Your Home Fast”.