What do other peeps think about doing up their houses before selling them?

We will be selling ours in the nearish future and have the summer to sort out anything that needs to be sorted. I must admit though, I do sometimes despair at the programmes i see on TV maintaining the seller needs to put in white bathroom suites, and totally depersonalise and de clutter etc. I wonder how we will ever get to the standard they seem to expect on these programmes!!

If i was buying, we would be looking for basically a very clean house which may need a lick of paint, and a good sized garden with hopefully good fencing. I'm not looking for some modern work of art re. presentation! :D

We plan to put up new blinds in the kitchen, a new carpet on the stairs and upstairs rooms because they are bad, plus freshen up the paint. Oh, the kitchen wil also be painted and have new handles on the cupboard doors (cupboards are very old, they will be painted).  I wonder if this will be enough though!

Lindsay
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Have it clean and presentable, with fresh  paintwork etc, but don't spend a fortune totally redoing the kitchen or bathroom because most people will want to change it anyway!

If i were buying a house i would not be bothered about decor but I would want a white bathroom suite and a kitchen that i could live with for a couple of years.  Things that have put me off in the past when looking are someone was cooking curry YUK another went bananas with cleaning products and we nearly choked.  The thing to remember when selling your house is that there will always be something someone doesnt like you cant please everyone.  I would make sure you set a budget of what to spend doing the jobs required, prioritise them as to what is most important and try not to get too stressed out.  Good luck with selling etc :)

Michelle :)

Good luck Lindsay - the market is as dead as a Dodo at the moment so any tricks you can use will help. Are you moving up to Nofolk ?

Yvonne

That's right Yvonne (sob!)

Lindsay
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For me the main thing is to declutter, if you are anything like us over the time you spend in a house you accumilate a certain amount of 'stuff' which needs to be turned out or stored. Then when you have flat surfaces visible you can see the effects of the cleaning.

We have always bought properties that need paint carpets etc but not structural jobs. However there are a lot of people who want to buy somewhere that requires absolutly no work. When we sell we always try to make sure that decor is clean and fairly neutral and have always sold quicker than we would have expected to in the market.

Good luck, market is not great at the moment, certainly larger houses in this village are really sticking on the market.

My main criteria would be that the house is clean and the right price for it's condition :) We are looking for a house to 'do up' - we don't want to spend money on buying a house with new kitchen/bathroom/decorations that we don't like :)

Daisy

Yes I think that's what confuses me, Daisy :)

I know some people will be just like that and so will we to an extent; I think most like to make their own mark on a place somewhere don't they?
And also to feel that things are "new".

I think the programmes give out the idea that if you spend a reasonable amount (say, a couple of thousand or more) you may get back quite a lot more. So if say one's home was - I don't know, say £210,000, as it stood, you could perhaps get say, £225,000 if you spent maybe £3000 on it. Put like that it almost seems worth it, but I'm sure it's not that simple and a lot must depend on what area the house is in. I understand some houses will go to their maximum price and you just cannot get any more, no matter how much you try (which is fair enough, otherwise the market would be going stupid!).

Lindsay
X

The biggest thing to remember Lindsay (and apart from dogs, property is my 'thing!! ;)) is that the majority of people have no imagination.  So I would agree with you, that if I'm looking, I assess the location, size etc, and can see through anything that I don't like.  I can assess the potential!  BUT the majority of folk can't do that and so if you want a quick and smooth sale, then you have to take that into account, and make your home can appeal to the majority of people who will walk through the door.

Property around here - in Somerset - is still selling well if the price is right (the vendor/agent isn't trying to be toooo greedy) and the property is offered with the full potential obvious!!

Val you are so right about the lack of imagination in some people.......  We bought our house after it had been on the market for 18 months.  Yes, it has a green bathroom suite, but we'll get around to replacing that, and yes, the kitchen fittings were cheap and cheerful and are now falling to pieces :(  The conservatory was rough and ready timber, the back garden had a chicken shed and a concrete garage.  BUT it had a HUGE living room, a kitchen diner the same size, and the conservatory was the same size again! The two bedrooms were two good sizes (all be it with a nasty white contiboard fitted wardrobe with VERY 70's handles), and a smaller one would make a good 'office' for Big Dave - AND the loft had been boarded in to make a good play room, with an added window.  The owners were so desperate to move, they'd already packed everything and it was stacked in the porch!  We knew it was the house we wanted as soon as we'd seen downstairs - there was just so much room.........  We've had all the old double glazing replaced, and the conservatory completly re done with double glazed panels - now just the bathroom, bedroom and kitchen to do........  But it was the POTENTIAL we saw that we are no realising :)

Another property we looked at we dubbed dog poo alley - the house was lovely, very similar to this one, but with an additional two bedrooms built on over the garage - BUT the next door folk had several dogs (large breeds fed on cheap dog food judging by the state of the garden :( ) and we couldnt' consider it - I felt quite sorry for the lady as she was recently widowed, but I really couldn't see her selling quickly - you'd be put off as soon as you peered behind the net curtains :(

Maybe they should put "good" neighbours on the property info as a major + :)

100% on the lack of imaginations Val. I have bought houses and turned them around in 6 months for very little money but made a little fortune on the way. 

Clean, clutterfree, fresh, neutrel colours, no marks on walls , carpets and clean windows. Fresh flowers and a very tidy garden..

People then imagine their life nice and peaceful.. :-)

You want to have seen the colour in this house when I bought it. I nearly never managed to convince my other half that we must buy it..  it is like another house.

I agree with the others clean and clutter free -I don't think its worth doing any major jobs now especially if you want to move this year ( house prices are still rising here- NW)  -as long as someone can look at the house and not have to think it needs money spent on it straight away -good luck ;)

It's so difficult knowing exactly how much to spend :) We desparately need to do up our bathroom. It hasn't been done for nearly 20 years and we haven't touched it as we thought that we would have moved by now, so it wasn't worth doing. But we are now unlikely to actually sell this house for 2/3 years, so the bathroom MUST be done. Now I don't like doing things on the cheap - because they always look tacky and deteriorate very quickly. We priced up a new bathroom this afternoon, putting in all the things that people would expect in our type/size of house and it came to £10,000 (and this was NOT the most expensive things Now we are off to Homebase etc to look at what it would cost if we bought everything there. Decorating a room, you can get away with a quick, cheap job - but not in bathrooms/kitchens - also we will be using it for a few years, so want it to be reasonably nice.

Daisy

Our bathroom's in the same state - it really must be done. But decent new baths cost a small fortune - especially the one I think would be lovely :o

We went to one bathroom showroom (OK - it is well known for being very expensive) and they wanted £3500 JUST for a washbasin and stand, plus a mirror and a couple of shelves :D :D The company that I work for make illuminated bathroom mirrors which sell for nearly £300 :D

Daisy

Flipping heck!

I'd love a bath with the taps in the middle of one side ....

JG brings back very happy memories of our holiday if Foyee (sp) back in October (sp) The bathroom was something else ! :D  The very big free standing bath and the double shower were so good ! :D A bottle of champagne and some lovely music, it was heaven :D :D

Lucy
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Some of the shower units that we saw today looked like a cross between an American fridge/freezer and a telephone kiosk :D They even have built-in stereo music and alarm clock. Also, they had special televisions to put in a bath/shower cubicle I must have been on a different planet for the last few years :D

Daisy

I have seem some of those big shower units selling on Ebay for a few grand !

Oh talking about the American type fridge freezers....... we had one delivered on Thursday :D :D

It is so nice :D

Lucy
xx

Just don't try taking a shower in it :D

Daisy

ROFLOL daisy :-))

We had our bathroom units made by a local joiner, they look (IMHO) better than the 'shop' ones and cost less than half the price.

The thing that shocked me was the price of tiles - I know we had floor to ceiling but they were £50 a square meter and they are basically white. The contrasting strip round the middle was even more shocking!

On baths try going to a proper builders merchants, you can often get a good quality bath without having to pay the overhead of a flash showroom.

We had a qoute recently for a new bathroom suite, from a certain sea life creature company! They do everything, design it, supply it and fit it, and they were having a half price sale, so we got some one round. We spent 3 hours getting the design done, and then she priced it up... are you ready for this.... £14,000 !!!!! That's 10% of the value of our house! And if it was a half price sale, does that mean the original price would have been £28,000 !!!!!! Needless to say we didn't go with it and bought the suite from home base and fitted it ourselves, all for under a £1,000.

I have retired friends who fell for that one Joules.  They use any tradesmen, not their own, and my friends bath doesn't even drain because it's not fitted level!!  She has to mop it out with a towel after use - just what an OAP needs!!

I bought a white cast iron bathroom suite from Focus 2 years ago for under £200 and it's the most comfy bath to lie in that I've ever had!!  Old bath out and new bath in by a local man and I finished off myself, for not a lot of money!!

Other things to think about is Do you want to sell it quickly IE right awat as another house in pipeline or do you want as much as you can get for it regardless if it takes a few more months.

You can do a bathroom for £1000 but add £3000-£5000  and so on with the kitchen, decor, garden etc but it comes down to the work you are prepared to do and the money you are prepared to spend.

Most jobs if done reasonably and I don't mean spending the earth will add at the very least the cost of the job to  the value.

I kind of look at property as an investment and capital maker so I personally would rip and bathroom out spend £1500 and like wise rip a kitchen out and spend a few thousand. These 2 things along can add at least £10,000  but  it can be a bit of work.

If you want a quick sale and are prepared to be knocked a bit in price then clean it up , de clutter without any cost.

A bit of a toughy..