Selling Your Home by Creating a Good First Impression

When it comes to selling your home, a lot of the time, first impressions make or break whether a prospective buyer is interested in your property or not.  See, it’s the first impression of your home that provides the hook needed to create the spark of interest for a browser to become an interested buyer.

The first impression your property creates is fundamental to forming the buyer’s gut instinct reaction to the property, but the first impression starts before they even visit the property, as today most sales are first researched online.  A growing trend is to create a short YouTube video that uses a drone to fly through the house and around the house to create a captivating clip. You should click here to check out the best drones for selling real estate.

Now, moving forward to the moment the prospective buyer visits the property – you’ll want to keep it natural and authentic yet view this as being akin to going on a first date.  It’s a natural instinct, in that you can’t help but let your first impression frame your view of the entire house (or the entire person you’re meeting) in the first few seconds, as that’s all it takes for your reticular activating system to consider whether it likes it or not.

It’s no secret that when selling a house first impressions are critical, but so many property owners overlook the most basic things such as decluttering their space, making it neutral (i.e. no purple and yellow wallpaper), and keeping on top of basic maintenance tasks such as painting fences, mowing lawns, and trimming the bushes.

Declutter

This is the most important principle.  Declutter your home. You want people to see the space at it’s best, they are not buying your life, they are simply buying a space that is a blank canvas in which they can fill with their own lives.  If the space is too cluttered with personal artefacts such as family photos, artwork, and children’s toys it makes it harder for the potential buyer to see the home as their own. Therefore, you need to declutter – even if that means there is one room full of boxes, as long as you create the impression of space and blank canvas, the potential buyer can start to see your home as a place to make their home.

Take care of the basics

If someone were to arrive at a property with an overgrown lawn or hedges, it suggests that the current owners have low standards, in that they simply don’t care enough to make an effort to take care of the basics.  The impression this gives is one of sloppiness and the question that might be prompted in their mind is what other areas have the current owners not taken care of.

Imagine turning up to a property where the paint is peeling, the hedges and lawns are overgrown, and perhaps there are some children’s toys in the yard.  The impression this gives is one of chaos and neglect. If you’re struggling to sell your home then your first step is to make sure the basic maintenance issues are being taken care of.

Make it neutral

Your favourite colour combination might be purple and yellow, but the aim when trying to sell your house is for it to be a house, not your home.  It should be a blank canvas the potential buyer can project his or her own unique personality onto. Most sellers need a paradigm shift in terms of becoming more aware they are selling their house not their home.