Giving Your Real Estate More Curb Appeal When Looking to Sell

Own It Detroit knows that first impressions are key to any real estate transaction. When looking to sell your home, you have significant control over the price of the sale, just by tweaking a few things in and around your home. Step outside of your home, walk a short distance away from it, and realistically decide if this is an attractive house that you’d be willing to even step foot into. If not, then it’s time to increase your real estate’s exterior curb appeal.

Removing Clutter

The first step to improving curb appeal is to remove any debris or clutter away form the exterior of your home. Showcase the architectural beauty of your home by keeping it clean for everyone to see. Below is a checklist you and your family can use to quickly dispose of non-necessities around your real estate:

• Clear/clean the driveway and sidewalks near your home
• Place toys, trash cans, and tools back into the garage
• Repair, replace, or remove anything that is broken or worn out
• Touch up landscaping by maintaining lawn or plants that have become overgrown
• Remove dead plants or weeds that are taking over the home

By focusing on cleaning these issues around your home, your real estate will attract more potential buyers who can focus on the quality of your home, rather than esthetics.

Another key feature to quickly renovating the outside of your home when on a budget, is to only focus on those items that are jarring and need immediate attention. As the saying goes, “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”

Improving Dangerous Areas

Your driveway, porch, and surrounding sidewalks should be safe for anyone to travel on. If you notice anything that is uneven, missing, or broken, it is important that you fix these issues, prior to placing your home up for sale. Most potential homebuyers will not be interested in fixing things that are distinctly broken, and would rather replace items that appeal to their tastes. Use this checklist to make sure all of your damaged items on your real estate are attended to:

• Fix broken steps or stairs
• Correct any uneven or cracked walkways or sidewalks
• Replace porches that have rotted
• Clean up any gates that are rusting
• Tighten anything around your real estate that is loose
• Replace any missing areas of your porch, stairs, railings, or other parts of your home that may stand out quickly
• Fix any brick mortar that is loose or crumbling
• Remove tree branches that are falling too closely to power lines
• Address any exterior paint that is deteriorating and may contain lead
• Remove any termite damage that could have attacked your walls, porches, railings, or sidings in and around your home

The best way to ensure that your real estate is in prime selling condition is to have a professional inspection, before placing it up for sale. This will bring anything you may have missed to your immediate attention, so you can fix these dangerous areas and not worry about them in the future.

Transform Your Lawn

Keeping your lawn as green as possible is the best way to add a splash of appealing color to your existing real estate. Make sure to fertilize your lawn in early and late spring and fall, always keep up with watering, and only cut your grass as necessary, to keep roots a little longer. When your grass is even, but a little longer, the curb appeal on your real estate will sky rocket. Make sure to remove any crabgrass from your lawn, by putting down pre-emergent herbicide to minimize weeds. If none of these options will work for your real estate’s lawn, you may want to consider new sod.

Make Your Entrance Stand Out

You’ve done everything you can to get potential buyers to drive up to your home, now you want to make sure that they’re willing to enter inside. Focusing on the curb appeal of your entry way is crucial to selling your real estate. Create a lasting impression on your home by addressing any issues that may arise before even opening the door. Items such as lockboxes, keys, and proper lighting are key factors that any potential buyer will notice immediately. Make sure to clean, repair, or replace any existing light fixtures that need attention. Here are some other areas that you can work on, when improving your entryway:

• Make sure your doorbell works
• Place a new coat of paint on the front door and surrounding hardware
• Replace or repair the mailbox to an appealing condition
• Make sure house numbers are visible from the road
• Remove any debris that leads directly to your front door, and that the walkway is distinctly defined
• Replace your “welcome” mat with a new model
• Always sweep your porch or entry way before every showing

Most of these improvements are easy to complete, and are of little to no cost for your real estate. Own It Detroit wants to help you obtain the most return on your investment for your real estate ventures. For more tips and tricks on how to improve your home, contact Own It Detroit today! (313) 254-4184.