Whether you’re keen to sell your own personal home soon or want to move an investment property in the New Year, it’s important to do everything you can to get your house looking its best. Of course, cleaning up and styling the inside of a property is always necessary. Don’t neglect the outside areas, either. After all, the first thing potential buyers see when they come to inspect your home is how it looks from the street. Read on for some ways you can improve the curb appeal of your home today.
Get the Lawn Looking Its Best
If you haven’t spent much time on your lawn in recent months, rectify that before you put your property on the market. The lawn is one of the first things people notice as they pull up to a curb. Plus prospective buyers will likely need to walk past the lawn to get to your front door for their showing.
Getting your lawn looking its best takes more than just the occasional mow. It’s important to mow the grass regularly. This way weeds are kept at bay and blades don’t get so long that not enough air, sunlight, or water can get through to the soil beneath. Just make sure, however, that when you trim the grass you don’t take off more than a third at a time. If the grass is too short it can be damaging.
Other ways to look after your lawn include watering. This is particularly important during the hot summer months and at other times of the year when you don’t get much rainfall. In addition, feed your lawn with a slow-release fertilizer at least a couple of times per year. This helps it to get green and lush and allows bare patches to thicken up. Fall and spring are good times of year to do this job.
In addition, don’t forget to aerate your lawn on occasion. Rake up leaves that have fallen on your grass during the fall. If you leave these on the lawn, once they’re wet they’ll stick together and form a mat that can stop grass and soil from getting enough oxygen. It also makes the lawn more vulnerable to disease.
Do Some Gardening
Next, attend to your garden areas. Clean up any mess littering the garden beds and nearby spots, such as old rusted-out swings, benches, wheelbarrows, sculptures, and the like. Tidy up plants that have gotten out of control, too. A messy look can turn buyers off. Particularly if an overgrown garden means they can’t see the land area properly. We want them to get the true scope of the size or usability of the property.
There may be trees or shrubs or other large plants that have outgrown the space they’re in. If so, transplant these to a more suitable area or remove them altogether. You may be able to sell them to a plant nursery or on a site like Craigslist. Also, consider removing plants that make a big mess. If they’re regularly losing lots of leaves, berries, nuts, and the like, prospective purchasers may be turned off by the idea of having more work to do.
If alternatively, your garden is rather sad and empty-looking, with not many plants or trees to speak of, it’s time to go shopping! You might hire a tree service to plant small trees and improve the curb appeal. You can add some color and pizzazz to your gardens with affordable and drought-friendly ground cover, succulents, natives, shrubs, and small trees.
Freshen up the Outside of the House
It’s important, too, to take a look at the outside of your house with fresh eyes. See what people coming to inspect your house might see.
- For example, is the paint peeling on the weatherboard, garage door, window trims, or front door?
- Is the driveway cracked?
- Are fence palings falling down?
- Are the paving stones leading up to the front door broken?
- Does the front door need to be replaced?
- Are there old shutters currently dating the look of the property?
- Will people be able to see their way to your entranceway at night?
After asking yourself these questions and noting what needs work, take steps to make the front façade of your home as appealing as possible. With a fresh coat of paint on relevant fixtures and fittings, the repair or addition of a fence, some new door handles and/or a new mailbox, a sealed and painted driveway, plus some sensor-fitted outdoor lighting installed, you will soon boost curb appeal significantly.
Tackling these tasks will definitely improve the curb appeal of your home. This will, in turn, ensure interested parties come inside your property, rather than being turned off by their first look at it from the street.
