Tips On Styling Your Home To Sell It
Sharing my top tips on how to prepare your house to put it on the market!
You might have seen over on my Instagram, but our house is on THE MARKET (*well, we've just accepted an offer on it which is SO exciting!!!). Honestly we are both so, so excited for this next chapter!! Firstly, HOW have we been here nearly 2 years, can anyone believe how quickly that's flown by?!
I wanted to start by telling you guys that excitingly we're working with Purplebricks which I'm so happy about! Purplebricks have kindly offered to waiver our fee (they offer a fixed fee which is great as it usually works out much cheaper than local estate agents!), in return for content! I'm going to be sharing our journey / experience of selling the house and using Purplebricks on my stories so please check along with that! :)
Today I wanted to put together a blog post on how to prepare your house to put it on the market as I know lots of you guys are either selling your house or thinking about putting it on the market, the stamp duty holiday swayed us to take the leap and we just thought why not?! We haven't found a house to move into just yet as the market is moving so quickly, but as we've just had an offer accepted on ours, it's time to start seriously looking and we both cannot wait!
I'm so excited to be taking you all on this journey with us! Just a quick note, if any of you guys are thinking about putting your house on the market then I'd really recommend going with Purplebricks, we haven't fully completed our service with Purple Bricks just yet (we've decided to go with them for our conveyancing which we're paying for ourselves), but so far we've had an amazing experience! We have nothing to compare it to, as it's the first time we've sold a house, but Ben and I were saying just last night that we love everything is done via the app, viewing requests, messages and feedback etc. It's SO much easier to liaise directly with your potential buyer, it's been a really smooth process for us to organise our diaries / viewings - we had 15 viewings in total and we loved being in control of our diaries, messages and even accepted our offer through the app which was so cool!
Now, let's dive into my top tips on how to prepare your home to put it on the market!...
I decided to shoot our house myself (just because I really love taking interior snaps!), so I styled and shot it all; whether you're looking to shoot your house yourself or let an estate agent do it, I wanted to share some tips on how to prepare your house!
1.) Lighting: As I mentioned I shot our house myself and I know what time of day the light hits nicely (the front of the house is East facing so gets beautiful light in the mornings, and the back is West facing to afternoon is great!). I'd try to pick a time when you know your house gets the best light, and use as much natural light as possible rather than artificial lighting, it will paint your picture in the best light, quite literally!
2.) Weather: This follows on from the lighting tip, but although we can't predict the weather (especially in England haha!), I'd definitely say check the forecast and pick the brightest day (if you can, hard in Winter I know!). If it's due to rain all day and you'd set aside some time to shoot it could make the house & images dark, you always want to showcase your house in the best possible way so I'd say opt for good lighting and weather (where applicable!).
3.) Make your house presentable: Of COURSE the first thing you're going to do is hide all your excess stuff, give the house a HUGE spring clean, and make sure it's looking it's best! I bought some Sunflowers for the kitchen, lit some candles and plumped up all the cushions - dress your home and present it in the best way you can, after all you're selling it!
4.) But also show that it's loved: A note on from the last point, although you want to showcase your home in the best light, I would make sure that you show your home is lived in and loved (don't put too much pressure on yourself to make your home look like a show home, it's not a show home after all!). Keep your family pictures out and throws on the bed - strike that balance between presenting your home beautifully, and showing that it's a loved, lived in home!
5.) View your home from the buyers perspective: when taking your pictures and getting your home ready for viewers, make sure you're looking at it from a potential buyers perspective! For the viewings we sprayed some nice room spray, lit some candles, dressed our snug area and put our fresh flowers - we wanted to show potential buyers how loved our home is, but just how much they could fall in love with it too!
We were SO happy with our experience with Purplebricks and whilst our sale isn't *fully complete until completion, we have our buyer and our solicitors are doing their thing to push the sale through which is amazing and VERY exciting! The whole process has been so smooth for us, from viewings to scheduling our diary and accepting our offer, we've been super happy with our experience and would 100% use Purplebricks again (although I hope we'll be in this next house for a good few years!! :) ).
If any of you are looking to sell your home, I would 100% recommend - *We sold our house for £10,000 more than two other agents quoted us which is amazing!!
Stay tuned for our adventure, I can't wait to show you our new home (once we've found it!), super excited for this next chapter! xo
*Purplebricks very kindly wavered the selling fee in return for content / coverage, but I have shared my 100% honest opinion on using Purple Bricks - friends of ours used them which is why we went with them, we've had an amazing experience and would definitely use them again, I can't wait to recommend them to anyone selling their property!