Getting your house on the market

The Best Ways to Show and Sell

When you are getting your home, or any property, ready to sell, the way to go about it might appear to be glaringly obvious. Everyone will have a house-sale story to tell, from your estate agent to friends, family and neighbours. So there is endless advice and confusing opposing opinions as to how best to tackle the task.

Working in at Strutt & Parker, and in the property world since the 1990s, you may think that I would be unfazed by a photo shoot for property particulars for putting my own house on the market. And, indeed, all was going well until I was contacted about the very first appointment – not a Mr and Mrs, but a BBC crew, potential buyers and presenter of Escape to the Country.

This was extreme viewing. In the same way that ironing has found a new lease of life – apparently – as an extreme sport: it was a whole other ball game and some panic-stricken action was necessary. Armed with tips from the estate agency team, and helpful (!) advice from friends and family, I made a list of priorities.

Top of the list – ruthless decluttering: the Lego that permeated seemingly every room in the house was banished to a suitably charming and tasteful chest in the playroom. Windows were cleaned inside and out, bathrooms and kitchen deep cleaned; carpets professionally cleaned – I took a deep breath before spending this money, but it was definitely worth it; all dog toys were removed much to his disapproval; finally, the garden was tidied, mown, and the straggly herbs supplemented with new leafy, low-maintenance, plants. Even the chicken run was spruced up, and the log piles stacked as though becoming a Tate Modern exhibit. Once the fresh flowers were in place, and the fruit bowls charmingly filled, I am not ashamed to say that my final touch was polishing the apples.

I did my homework too: watching back-episodes of property programmes so that I could see what struck me about houses that included a strained “upbeat” reaction: electrical wires and leads snaking up walls, too many cushions, too many stuffed animals, untidy curtains, untidy kitchens, the treasured – but dreaded – pictures on the fridge, too many bottles in the bathroom: suddenly, the prospect of looking at my own house through someone else’s eyes (let alone the day-time watching masses) seemed to be a minefield. And I found a new storage place for my washing up paraphernalia!

I asked a friend who just happened to be an interior expert to look at the house as a fresh pair of eyes – and they made me change the furniture layout in most of the downstairs rooms. It was a revelation: at first, I was reluctant to move anything – after all, it wasn’t how the family lived in our home. However, it was pointed out that this was immaterial! It wasn’t about “us” – it was about how others might see the potential, or whether they would have that potential obscured.

The trick is to not impose the way you live in a house – even if you’re very happy with it – onto potential viewers, but not to cross the line into making your house devoid of personality. Having said that, getting the house ready for being photographed and filmed, and getting it ready for an actual viewing is like learning to drive to pass your test, and then actually driving: worlds apart!

Walking potential buyers round your home definitely requires some evidence of how you live there, and how it works day-to-day in real life – but also the mind-set to accept that there are other ways to use a room: I was taken aback when a viewer completely ignored my lovely dining room as they immediately said how it would “work brilliantly as an office”! I quickly realised that I couldn’t keep chatting about how we’d lived here, and the fun memories we’d created in each space, and expect people to agree: for most viewers will have very defined opinions about what they’d do as soon as they move in, and not just choosing their own paint colours, but how they would use each room to suit their own lifestyle and create their own memories.

I took a straw poll amongst the Strutts’ agents, as well as friends who have recently bought or sold houses, about what negative feedback was most common in viewings: without a doubt, top of the list was any lack of cleanliness, followed closely by “too much stuff”. De-cluttering and dirt can obscure a property’s possibilities – and first impressions definitely count. You have to be able to look past what you live with – and the problem with living in a house is that once it becomes your home, you can’t see for looking. What you see as charming, and as history, to others can both come under the heading of Clutter…

Whilst getting everything right before getting your house on the market won’t guarantee a flood of offers, getting it wrong can definitely have an adverse effect. And, at the end of the day, don’t you really want to sell?

Strutt & Parker Chester