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Want to sell your house? Then clean it up |
You need to give your home the mother of all spring cleans if you’re trying to sell or rent it. Alanna Gallagher sweeps up all the information you need to get cracking.
SO you’re putting the family home up for sale and the mere mention of Marigold rubber gloves and getting down on hands and knees to scrub has people running for the hills. Every family member is suddenly extremely busy with anything that means not getting their hands dirty.
But someone has to grasp the nettle. The market is slow so how do you make your house shine out from the others. Two and three generations of furnishings, clutter and memories hide a house’s appeal to buyers – a breed already thin on the ground.
STORE
Readying a home for sale involves clearing the property of almost everything that once made it home – a challenging task that requires the help of as many professionals as you can afford.
House and Garden Presentation Services has readied around 4,000 homes for sale. During the boom its service helped people get a premium price, says owner Manny O’Hara. These days it helps push sales over the line.
Clutter in the home is physical embodiment of baggage- something no buyer wants says Sue Ryder of Cleaner Angels. And the average family home is groaning under the weight of numerous life stages. Her decluttering service costs upwards €300 per day and you still have to go through your stuff to determine what you’re going to bin, recycle or save. What it does do is help to get procrastinators off the fence, says Ryder.
It’s a false economy to put the stuff you remove into storage without going through first. Your home’s belongings will be in storage for far longer than you envision so maybe it’s time to find them a new home before they cost you money that would be better spent elsewhere. One mover cites a client who returned from abroad and in an expensive piece of procrastination put his stuff in storage for three years at a cost of €15,000. When he was finally ready to move it from storage, what did he do? He threw it in a skip.
SCRUB
Presentation remains paramount when selling a home says Manny O’ Hara. “In this market buyers are like speed daters. They take 30 seconds to appraise your home and you want it to be love at first sight. Your home needs to look even better in real life than it does in the brochures. Forget photogenic, it needs to be ‘sellegenic’.
This means scrubbing the interior so it shines like the proverbial new pin. This is dirty, time consuming work and something that is worth paying a team of experts to do for you. It is money well spent. It prevents intra-sibling ructions and expedites the task – most cleaning services come with a posse of dirt desperadoes and will be in and out of your home in one day.
SURVEY
Have your home BER rated (seai.ie). This is essential for either sale of rental and can be a selling point if your home is well insulated.
Don’t forget the property’s kerb appeal, says Fiona McLoughlin,whose website Privateseller.ie also allows sellers to sell their homes themselves.
The first thing a would-be buyer will see is your front garden and façade. This outdoor space needs to look verdant and pristine. Hire a power hose to clean mildew from outside walls, spruce up patio and brick work and clean railings or boundary walls. Minimise leakage by blocking up doors and letterboxes with old towels before you start. You can even use the hose to clean the outside windows.
Before you start readying a home for sale, construct a time-table of how long you think its going to spend and triple it. This is how long, in reality , it will take amateurs to co-ordinate the comings and goings of tradesmen, to ensure they do everything they’ve been contracted to do and to clean up each and every mess they make. The experience will take your relationship to breaking point so try and count to 10 rather then explode, otherwise you’ll get nothing done. Add to this the fact that during each task you will uncover other small jobs that need doing, all eating into precious preparation time. It’s little wonder they say moving house is one of the most stressful things you’ll ever experience.
Finally, make sure the photographs taken by your sales agent accurately reflect your house. If the rooms look small and dark, ask them to take a fresh batch.
Finally, it’s worth noting that women still make most of the house buying decisions and that we buy with our senses. All the clichéd activities – brewing coffee, baking bread and putting fresh flowers into vases, do actually help conjure up a sense of home. O’Hara takes this one step further. She spritzes aftershave into the front doorframe because it subliminally draws women to the house. She won’t say what brand works best but admits that in the current market it’s an intangible extra that helps expedite the sale.
It’s a sad fact of life that you will fall back in love with your home once it is all spruced up. “That’s the idea”, says Manny. You want someone to fall so in love with it that they want to buy it.”
The people who’ll help
- Clean, declutter and neutralise colour is the mantra of Fiona McLoughlin of Privateseller.ie (1850 883424, http://www.privateseller.ie she charges a how-to-stage your home for sale consultation fee of €195 and works within the Greater Dublin area.
- 1800 Moving, formerly uPak (1800 668464, www.upak.ie has a deal with Storeit (01 4299555 www.storeit.ie . The contents of the average three bedroom house will take up 100 sq ft and typically cost €175 per month. Moving the contents of an average three bedroom house takes approximately four hours and costs €360
- Want to move yourself? The company will deliver a moving pack to your door. It costs €120 and consists of 30 large double wall boxes, strong enough to be stacked and keep breakables secure, 15 metres of bubble wrap, 300 sheets of tissue paper and three rolls of packing tape.
- A standard skip of A1 Waste (01 4664444 a1waste.ie) costs €169
- For heavy duty DIY jobs you’ll need heavy duty tools. A-Z Hire (01 4502915 www.azhire.ie will deliver tools, such as floor sanders, steam cleaners and more on a Saturday and pick up on Monday. You pay for one day’s use but get the weekend to use the tools.
The Irish Times, Thursday March 3rd 2011.
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