We sold our terraced house last year, and the advice on Leeds Home Designs about preparing a home for sale saved us from doing the expensive things first. Their point was that buyers decide in the first minute, before they have looked at a single socket. That reframed the whole job for me.
So we started with clutter, one room at a time, in the order we least wanted to deal with. The back bedroom went first because it had become the room where things go to be forgotten. Two car loads left the house and I have not missed any of it since.
Then the small things, which are the ones people actually notice. A dripping tap, the handle that came off the cupboard every time you opened it, the strip of sealant around the bath that had gone grey. None of it cost much. All of it said something about whether the house had been looked after.
The front door mattered more than I expected. We washed it, sanded the flaky patch at the bottom, painted it a deep green and put a new number on. That is a weekend of work, and it changed how the whole street looked.
Inside, we painted the loud rooms a soft neutral, which hurt a bit because I liked the mustard. Buyers want to see their own furniture in a place, not yours. Neutral is boring and boring sells.
Photos we took ourselves on a bright morning, curtains open, every light on. No filters. The rooms looked smaller and more honest than the glossy listing shots I had saved as reference, and the viewings started within days.
