Tips on preparing your house for a viewing

Have you done everything you can with the interior of your home to make sure you will sell today?

1. Let’s start with the most obvious point, which is making sure your home is bright and shiny clean. Carpets, curtains, bed covers, sofas all need to be spotless before a potential buyer’s visit, time to visit the dry cleaners and supermarket for a full range of cleaning products.

If you have marble or tiled floors that look a bit stained or dull you should consider hiring a floor cleaning company to bring your floors back to life, you’d be surprised how good this makes the rooms look. Once everything has been cleaned, it is much easier to keep everything clean for future buyer visits.

2. The fact your property is spotless and clean is a good start, but there are bad smells that you want to get rid of and good smells you want to introduce. Let’s start with the bad smells: no cooking on the day of the buyer’s visit, even with the extractor on at full power, the smell of your breakfast or lunch will linger.

If you have pets, including birds, they give off a smell as does their food and bedding, so make sure your pets and bedding etc are out of the house well before the buyer’s visit.

Villas built 25-30 years ago had very basic damp proofing and can now suffer from the smell of damp especially after a heavy rainfall. My advice is to get your local builder in and solve the problem.

The same applies to properties with poor ventilation in the bathrooms and cupboards: mould smells are unpleasant and unsightly so you should arrange to have extra ventilation fitted to deal with the problem.

Check back next week for more tips on how to make your property more saleable.